Heat Race - Tanya Chris Page 0,5

it was sure better than nothing.

Elias gave Jasper a tight nod. He was in.

“Only if he wants you though,” he clarified. “You have to ask him before you claim him, and if he says no, then it’s no.” As if he could back up the edict he was laying down. “You have to promise,” he insisted. He didn’t know why he thought Jasper could be trusted to keep a promise, especially in a situation as rife with hormones as this one, but when Jasper promised, Elias believed him.

“You know how to find him?” Jasper asked.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea of where he’ll end up. Can’t you track him?”

“Not as well as you could. I only got one whiff of him back there. But we’ll move faster if we head straight to the general area and pick up his scent from there.”

“You really want me to come with you?”

“Yeah, I really do.” Jasper ringed a hand around the back of Elias’s neck like he was an omega about to manhandled into submission. “Let’s go, smart boy.”

SAUL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Saul pulled the bandana from his back pocket and took a deep inhale, then turned his nose into the wind and waited. The bandana wasn’t cheating, not strictly, but alphas didn’t usually carry something with a particular omega’s scent unless the omega had given it to them. Which Jack Henry had. Sort of.

Okay, technically Jack Henry had dropped the bandana as he’d left the dance studio last week. He must’ve used it to mop his neck with, because it was damp when Saul scooped it off the ground, fully intending to catch up to him and hand it back. Only he hadn’t.

He’d been thinking about this day for months, maybe years. Thinking and watching and almost approaching Jack Henry to say outright what he felt and then chickening out and going back to thinking on it some more. He knew he wanted to claim Jack Henry, and maybe Jack Henry wanted him to do it, but since he hadn’t found the courage to ask directly, he would have to do it the hard way—by tracking Jack Henry down before someone else did.

Jack Henry had smelled so delicious in the lineup earlier, so ripe and ready and eager. There was usually a kind of shell around him—a confidence Saul found hard to breach. And every time he failed to breach it, he felt less worthy of claiming what was surely the most desirable omega in this year’s crop. Because Saul knew he was a fraud. All big and burly on the outside, soft and nervous on the inside.

Did Jack Henry’s confidence mean Saul could be himself around him? Or would Jack Henry expect him to have a stereotypical alpha need for control? Saul didn’t see why he ought to be in control of anything other than himself, and with the scent of heat growing in the air, he wasn’t sure he was in control of even that much.

He took another deep whiff of the bandana. This was the prize he sought. His stomach quivered at the idea of asking Jack Henry to be his forever. He would find Jack Henry and claim him. Then he would spend the rest of his life trying to make him happy.

With Jack Henry’s scent fresh in his nostrils, he lifted his nose to the wind and took a deep inhale. The breeze was blowing west to east, and it didn’t carry any of Jack Henry with it, which meant he must’ve gone east. Not surprising. Jack Henry was too smart to let himself be caught easily. Saul would have to earn this. He stuffed the bandana into his pocket and started loping east as fast as he could go. Jack Henry’s dancer legs would carry him quickly.

Every few minutes, Saul stopped to scent, refreshing his memory with another whiff of the bandana, then searching the air for it. When he didn’t pick anything up, he continued to head downwind, trying to get close enough that even a breeze couldn’t stop him from smelling the omega he longed for. Around him, other alphas crashed through the woods, their footsteps heavy, some of them calling out, as though an omega might surrender himself if summoned. And some of them probably would.

At the base of a tree, Saul saw Lon peering up into its branches, which were fully leafed and hard to penetrate in the growing darkness.

“See someone?” Saul asked. He took a quick whiff, assuring himself that if Lon had someone treed,