Reborn (Alpha's Claim 3)

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.”