“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 6When 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.