Reborn (Alpha's Claim Book 3) (9 page)

She felt physically ill, plagued by all the anger bearing down on her from the male. The link was aflame, her eyes pricking. When she could bear no more, Claire leaned up, her humming ended, and she put her fingers to Shepherd’s chin. His face was turned away, the man pointedly looking elsewhere. Silver eyes were boring a hole into the wall instead, and even Shepherd’s scent was full of the warning musk of imminent violence. So Claire sat up and began to sing to him, a soft song in a pre-Dome language she suspected he would find pleasure in.

The fire of his eyes jerked in his skull and settled on the little thing straddling his chest. He growled at her, not sexually, but with immense threat. Her voice did not waver, the song continued, and with strength of purpose she lured him. The beast continued to watch, to follow the movement of her mouth, and Claire saw his neck twitch, saw him swallow and fractionally relax.

The last refrain passed her lips, the music ended, and she did not start again.

With a voice grainy and dark, Shepherd demanded lowly, “Do you know the meaning of those words?”

“I have a general idea.”

“You sang that you loved me, that I was the one you longed for—that you would grow old in my arms.”

“It was just a song, Shepherd, sung for a man who was angry and needed to take a breath.”

Bitter eyes watched so very carefully. “And so you are offering your mate comfort.”

Claire had touched him, she had petted him, she had done it all for that very reason. “You once told me that bruised emotions would not serve me. They will not serve you either.”

One hand unfisted, meaty fingers reaching up to twist around a strand of midnight hair hanging over her breast. “You are far too clever, little one.”

Not clever enough to have failed to notice something so important sooner. “I want to know about Svana.”

“And you wish to offer some trade with me for knowledge?” he growled derisively, angry, because he could see plainly what his mate thought to bargain with.

“You could just tell me,” Claire added, absolutely serious.

“I could.” A malicious light turned his expression to evil, the pad of his thumb ghosting over her lips. “But I won’t.”

He was expecting her to deny him, pushing her so she would drop the subject and he could win with minimal effort. But she couldn’t. The very fact he was reluctant to discuss what he sensed in her thoughts made it clear it was something she needed to know.

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.