by Addison Cain
Her purpose had not been forgotten.
Thinking back on the conversation with Maryanne, the idea of redemption, Claire frowned and asked him softly, “Could Shepherd change?”
“No, little one. In this I could not.”
And it was so heartbreakingly sad. Feeling her eyes well, looking into the face of her captor and her Alpha, Claire met mercurial eyes harboring an expression caught between insult and reassurance.
She drew a deep breath and offered the only thing she had left. “If you answer all my questions, I will give you your kiss.”
Voice cold as death, Shepherd spoke. “It is not so simple, Claire. If you wish to speak of our history, to know of my Followers’ inner workings, then you must prove you are dedicated to me in every way. I will need much more than a kiss.”
But she had nothing else to give him.
Shepherd stated plainly, “You will tell me every detail of this plot you’ve thought to carry out against me.”
She shook her head, scowling slightly. “What plot? You know what I want.”
“You are lying, little one. You think you have been cunning in the war you wage. But I have decades of experience and have outmaneuvered your every move. There will be no negotiation. Either you give me what I want, or I tell you nothing.”
Claire did not even hesitate to lay out exactly what she desired. “I want you to fail in Thólos, Shepherd. That is not a secret. Even pair bonded to you, even carrying your child, I would stand against you in this matter for as long as I could. I also won’t pretend I don’t partially understand your motivation, that what I saw out there didn’t sicken me. But a cause that uses the suffering of many, innocent or not, to make your point, is something I could never condone. I have to believe in redemption or all I have done has been for nothing.”
“I already told you the resistance was fully infiltrated months ago,” Shepherd explained, his voice was riddled with disgust. “You were not duly upset. The reason you accepted my words was because you hope, you believe your Corday might overcome the invisible prison he’s trapped within.”
“My Corday?” The pit of her stomach dropped out, Claire understanding just who Corday had been smiling at out of frame of the pictures Maryanne had brought her: Svana. “Are the pair of you really so insidious?”
“The reason I was called away before our first dinner together, was because Senator Kantor had been beheaded. Since that day, the resistance has crumbled into dust.”
Claire blinked twice, her face impassive, and felt that flicker of guilt knowing the resistance had been infiltrated because of her, because Corday had been seen with her. Green eyes looked to his chest, to where they were chained forever, and she tried to convince herself that Shepherd was lying, that he was trying to trick her.
He was not.
She’d been the one lying... lying to herself. And she could have stopped all of this if she’d only ignored her pain and focused on fact. If only she had let herself recognize the woman sooner and warned her friends.
Shepherd always flipped the table on her in these battles, outfoxed her with cutting information he could wield like a weapon. Not today. Today she would make her stand and she would not back down.
Claire shared her story. “I was warned by Senator Kantor himself, that should the city be made aware of who I was and what I was to you, that the resistance would hand me over. I was told I had to be hidden. I begged him to reconsider, argued that his best chance would be to use me and the baby as a hostage—inciting a rebellion at once in hopes you would not unleash the virus. He declined. In that moment, I knew any operation that mirrored yours, that counted one life as insignificant, would fail. The truth is, I have had no faith in the resistance. My faith is in the few unruined by you. My faith is in the few who survived your worst and came out better.”
He took her jaw, held it gently but strong enough to make a point. “Do you really think you’re going to win?”
Her repulsion was obvious. “We both know that I am not going to win.”
“Did you give him your ring?”
Black lashes lowered and a pair of tears ran over pale cheeks. “It was my mother’s. He found it in my house while I was trapped here. Corday returned it to me after I jumped off the roof. The morning I decided to kill myself, I slid it on his finger, so he would have something to remember me by.”
“Did you ask him to kill me?”
“No.”
Shepherd’s chest expanded in a great breath, as if relief might have found a way inside a heart so black.
Claire chose to correct his moment of emotional reprieve. “I did not ask him to kill you, I didn’t encourage it. His oath was offered without my prompting.”
Shepherd looked at her as if she were the most deceitful thing he had ever beheld. “Do you love him?”
Her hand came to where Shepherd cupped her face, her move on the game board not yet finished. He had made specific demands, and she would see them through, she would show him that she was stronger. Turning her face into his palm, into the heat of a hand that had crushed throats, beaten the weak, that knew every curve of her body, she held his eyes, her own laced with worry for them both, and pressed her lips to his palm and kissed. “I have given you what you demanded.”
“Not everything,” Shepherd answered, absolutely unashamed. A large thumb traced the lips that had just kissed his palm. “Love me.”
That worming thread was so needy, so invasive and searing, and his wants were so remarkably simple, animalistic even, but she could not give in to him. Claire swallowed, and leaned into his hand.
Shepherd spoke first, as if he knew the very Sun Tzu quote and intention she had in her mind, “It is easy to love your friend, but sometimes the hardest lesson to learn is to love your enemy.”
Seeing her eyes widen, hearing her soft inhale, Shepherd explained, “I watched you read The Art of War at the Omegas’ hiding place. You have used its lessons well, little Napoleon.” He pulled her closer, drew her near until their lips brushed. “The night you marked me, when you touched me, I did feel your affection. Other times as well. I know you care for me. I also know that you don’t want to, just as you don’t want to care for the baby you adore who grows in your womb.”
Claire was walking thin ice and she knew it. “The night I marked you I pretended you were the husband I had waited for, the one who loved only me as I loved him... that there was no sticky evil permeating our link. No ruination. No disappointment. No Svana I had to share you with,” those words had cost her and it was written all over her face. Claire pressed, saying that hated name again, “Svana, the woman who pretends to be Leslie Kantor. She is the one who overtook the resistance.”
Shepherd nodded, his eyes taking in every facet of her expression, tracing parts of it with his fingertips.
Steeling herself, drawing in a breath to face a greater opponent, Claire fought the demands of the link and outlined the little she knew. “Before the breach, it was Leslie Kantor who set this nightmare in motion. You told me she came to the Undercroft, discovered you. She whispered in your ear, in Senator Kantor’s ear... in Premier Callas’s ear.” His hand on her cheek slipped down to her shoulder, gripping her claiming marks as Claire added, “And because I can feel how strongly you loved her, I believe that you were unaware of Svana’s intentions towards your enemy. You did not know of her affair with the Premier, not at first.”
Shepherd did not nod or agree, he remained silent which was answer enough.
Claire took a breath, and spoke what the link whispered to her, “She seduced him, you destroyed him, and your Followers took over Thólos. But there is something very important that you have failed to mention during our talks in the past. I suspect the reason, the real reason that motivated this madness, has been hidden from me.”
The Alpha was stiff, his eyes smoldering as he corrected, “I was honest with you in regards to our purpose. Thólos must be cleansed of evil. It is why the Followers exist.”
; “Your beloved, she laid with the man you hate most,” Claire put her fingers over Shepherd’s heart, “and put grave pain here, pain worse than any torment you’d survived in the Undercroft. And still you follow her.”
“Claire...”
Looking him directly in the eye, Claire risked pushing him past the point of no return. “We are too different in our ideals for love to ever be easy—especially given... what happened, what still happens.” Her voice caught, unsure if it was his suffering or hers that threatened to drown her. She took a moment, and then gave the last fraction of herself. “And that gives me pain, because I would like the dream, more than you could ever know. Affection is natural, I see that now. But love...” she shook her head, “If I was to allow myself to love you the way things are now, it would destroy me.”
“You will kiss me again.” He demanded, something strange in the recesses of his gaze.
“For the rest of the night if you wish,” Claire countered, unwilling to bend until he broke. “But the cost was the truth. You have not given me that. Tell me, admit to me what she did.”
Breath labored, Shepherd continued toying with a strand of her hair as if it might bring him comfort. “Svana fornicated with Premier Callas to create a child that might carry the Callas bloodline’s superior immunities. It was her belief that future generations would be enriched, that the resource, no matter the man, should not have been wasted.”
“That is a lie—one you don’t believe anymore than I do.” She leaned over him, looked him dead in the eye. “The probability of an Alpha female conceiving with an Alpha male is slim to none—even with the help of pharmaceuticals. She is not pregnant. If she wanted his baby, a woman as calculating as Svana, the woman responsible for the fall of our government, would have covered all bases—had him use a condom so she could collect his semen and tried in-vitro—kept him alive and imprisoned, where she could harvest what she needed from him, like you did to me.” Claire sat straighter, glaring at the male who was linked to her forever, feeling her anger and personal outrage mingle and surpass his. “That’s not why she slept with him, Shepherd. Svana did it because she is a sick emotional predator, shameless and self-absorbed; because her agenda is flawed; because she...” her voice faded away and she stopped herself before she went too far.
Vehement, Shepherd bellowed, “Say it!”
Deep panting breaths stretched the Alpha’s ribcage. Claire knew when she spoke he would strike her, but it was another brick she could take from his delusion, a price she would pay. This was the very reason she waged the war.
Looking into his eyes, her own soft with pity, Claire cupped the cheek and spoke with certainty. “Because Svana never loved you. She never could have to have done such a thing.”
The blow never came, instead something strange happened. Shepherd’s eyes welled, and the monster Claire could hardly think of as a man did something utterly human. He spilled a tear.
It was only one silent drop of salt water, yet it must have cost him greatly. Claire brushed it away in the kiss he wanted, soothing him as he had done for her each time he’d brought her to tears—only she did something he never did, she felt remorse at another’s suffering and offered with trembling lips, “I am so sorry, Shepherd.”
Her words made the man screw his eyes shut. When Claire tried to shift, to move away and leave him in peace, his arms snapped around her, squeezing, holding as if she might vanish to a place he might never reach her.
Claire settled closer and asked softly, “Would you like me to sing you another song?”
He nodded once.
Chapter 6
When her song had finished, Shepherd held her where he could look at her, the man staring for hours. It made her uncomfortable, the intensity of his scrutiny, but each time she turned her head away he would gently bring it back so that the green of her eyes was not denied to him.
Their cards were on the table. Claire had proclaimed Svana did not love him, and in doing so proclaimed he was a self-deluded pawn. The revelation cutting him deeply, though she suspected it was something he already knew and laboriously struggled to accept. Shepherd had accused her of harboring thoughts of killing their child before Svana or Shepherd might ruin him. She did, and it made her hate herself for all the doubt that flourished inside her, how every day her resolve weakened.
Neither was at peace, each of them raw from battle. But Shepherd was still bigger and he would not let her move.
Between them the thread was... a nameless sort of discord. And it kept changing, evolving. A part of Claire wanted to continue the assault, to demand that Shepherd stop this madness in Thólos now that he must accept Svana for what she was. The wiser part kept her silent.
When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard. –Sun Tzu
Confronting him about Svana, it may have been Claire’s greatest victory against Shepherd yet, but she took no joy in the deep-set anguish she sensed in the Alpha. Nor did she feel content in the confessions she’d made to get what she wanted. She may have brought him to his knees for a moment, she may have bluntly torn at his delusion, but for some reason, she wondered if she had not given him, an unscrupulous man, more reason to fight.
Thólos was a plaything for Svana, an entertainment and ploy for some endgame Claire could not grasp. Thólos was a mission to Shepherd, a man who had been a lifelong inmate in one sense or another—a man who truly believed in the cause. Following through on the mission, Shepherd wanted to do it to save them all; to even save Claire from herself.
Maybe that’s why Shepherd was looking at her; maybe he was afraid for her. Or maybe he had finally seen the purity he seemed to adore was gone. Perhaps now that he knew everything, now that he realized the truth, he would kill her. A part of her wanted him to. Watching his eyes, the unending stare, the hardness and calculation, Claire felt her bottom lip tremble just enough to give her wretchedness away.
Flexing her muscles, sick of his game, Claire found again he would not allow her to retreat. Just like with each other time she fussed, Shepherd’s answer was to place the weight of his palm on her chest and increase the incessant purr only long enough for her to still again. All the while those eyes were moderately narrowed, heavy upon her, communicating something she could not even begin to fathom.
It seemed like hours passed before the mass of the Alpha finally lifted and set her free. At once, she left the nest, locked herself in the bathroom, and tried to find solace in the solitude. There was no comfort there, not in the haunted face of the green-eyed woman staring back at her from the mirror.
She bathed and attended to the needs of her body, stretching out the time, hoping that when she left the steam filled room, Shepherd would be gone.
Claire was not so lucky.
He was there waiting for her, still naked, standing proudly near the nest.
Stern, his brows drawn low into a scowl, a large hand came forward. He flicked his fingers, still silent after so many hours, and beckoned her forward.
Claire shook her head in the negative, feeling exposed and awkward. The man did not hesitate to approach, to take her by the shoulders, but it was not with a harsh, punishing grip. Shepherd was holding softly, rubbing her chilled skin with his thumbs.
When he leaned over, when their faces were only an inch apart, Shepherd let one hand slide down her arm to take her fingers in his and bring them up to touch his face, placing her palm over his scar spattered stubble.
Shepherd was calling forth the debt.
The timing could not have been worse. Claire did not want to kiss him; she didn’t want to touch him. All she wanted was to hide from those eyes and burrow in her nest. Her cowardice made her feel weak, and she was tired of feeling weak. That was why she forced herself to draw his head down the final distance so she could touch her mouth to his and be done with it.
The sensation was strange. Shepherd’s plump lips were not foreign to her, he’d pressed them uninvited to hers many times, but som
ething about applying pressure back... about actually kissing him... it made the experience completely different.
The slow extended moment of a simple kiss, Claire still heartsick over their conversation, knowing he was too, the almost cautious fusing of their lips felt... it made her feel a little better.
In the past, living as a Beta, there had always been an issue of growing aroused. Slick was an aroma no soap or pill could cover. That was the reason she’d never really kissed a boy, not even after the end of a date. Just a quick peck if anything... similar to the platonic way she kissed Maryanne. Yet standing with him at that moment, hardly moving, hardly touching, Shepherd’s kiss was utterly different. It was decadent and soft, the feather light slide of his mouth on hers pleasurable.
And he seemed so patient.
Claire suspected that he was giving her time to feel it out, as if he knew she was a novice. When it seemed the natural time to stop, she let her heels hit the floor, and looked at his mouth, rubbing her lips together as she wondered if it had been done right.
“Yes.” Shepherd said it softly.
Claire hardly had time to address the fact that he had answered her thoughts before a low rumbling throat noise came from the Alpha. He backed her against the wall, and with a breathy groan, retook her mouth.
Shepherd feasted, grunting the second she hesitated—a damn bully, until she followed his lead and ended up breathless and dizzy.
Where there had been silence, an aggressive purr filled the air. Where there had been discomfiture, there was loss of sadness. Claire had never known kissing could be so consuming, so fulfilling, that the act could be so very intimate.
Between the assertive purr, the strength of his hands roving all over her body, and the long forbidden enjoyment of his mouth and tongue, Claire felt the transformation from ragged to something reconciled. Everything was different, but it wasn’t, but it was. Every breath in her lungs came from him, air they shared, and when he made the growl, it was not because he needed to call forth the slick, for she was pooling with it. It was simply because he was an Alpha calling to his Omega mate.