Stolen (Alpha's Claim 4)

Green eyes full of fear, wet with unshed tears, her voice broke. “I can’t ever go back there.”

Shepherd understood. The largeness of his palm cupped her face. He wiped her cheeks as he had done a thousand times before… when she’d been his in the underground den… when he’d kept her safe. “Never.”

Encased in the arms of her lost mate, warm, the purr pouring into her, Claire sobbed. “I can’t do that again. I can’t, Shepherd.”

He could hardly bear the torrent of tormented feeling resonating from her end of the link, but he would. He would do it with devout resolution, because he deserved every ounce of pain her sorrow might stir in his breast. “Quiet down, little one. It’s over now.”

She looked so happy and so heartbroken at once. “I watched you die.”

“No, Claire.” The tortured look in his eyes was nothing to the sorrow she felt on his end of their link. “I watched you die.” Damaged as he was, he’d been able to do nothing but watch. He’d watched Jules run toward them, watched his second-in-command administer CPR, the man bleeding from a wound to the torso. He’d laid there as Jules pulled tubing from the med kit hanging from his shoulder and hastily slapped together a direct blood transfusion, the Beta pumping her heart with his fist until he’d passed out.

When the resistance finally found the opportunity to storm into the crumbling Citadel, Claire wasn’t breathing, Jules lay pale and unresponsive, and Shepherd… he had to watch as the Thólosen scum dragged his mate away.

If the building had not begun to crumble, they would have finished him. But the ground fiercely rocked, fissures cracking through the marble floors, and they left him there for dead to save themselves.

One or two had even laughed as Shepherd lifted his hand and tried to reach for Claire.

In that moment, he prayed her soul had fled to the Goddess, watching her flop over the shoulder of a man who had no right to touch her.

His vision blurred, death closing in.

“Debris smashed into my roof, you fucking son of a bitch. Everything I’d prepared was ruined!”

Bleary eyed, Shepherd had dared to turn his head, and saw his unlikely savior. Gods he hated her. He hated more that he passed out the instant she tried to move him.

The next time he woke, he lay wrapped in bandages, trapped on the last, stuttering transport ship out of Thólos. And Claire, she was parted from him, in a fortress on a ventilator.

All reports claimed she was too damaged, that she would not survive—just as his child had not survived. He had raged before the ragged remnants of his men, broken in that cargo hold. Lost in grief, three of them he had condemned to death for abandoning her and saving him. But he could not carry out his intended punishment. Shepherd had been too wounded to move.

Once alone, he’d wept like a child.

But day by day he could feel that Claire hadn’t died, she was too stubborn by half—even if the people wanted her blood. While lying savaged in the Premier’s Sector, Thólos, her Thólos, had made her into a villain. The very people she’d fought for spat her name as a curse.

Shepherd wanted to hate them, but he could find no room. His hate for Svana was too consuming.

That lying cunt’s quick death at Jules’ hands had been a mercy she did not deserve.

Reason returned when Shepherd had learned Claire took her first unassisted breath.

And now he had her back in his arms.

His anger at such a memory grew sharp. He knew Claire found the link too much to bear, made himself stop, made his mind blank, and focused only on her.

In a whisper, she confessed, “I don’t want to know what was done to get me here.”

“All you need to know is that I am taking you home.” Between them, the thread harmonized. Shepherd showed her love. He looked at her as if she were precious, the purr strong.

That was all she needed, that look forever. The knot felt less invasive, the ache in her body bearable. Where her legs shivered from the tension of spreading, she strove to relax them.

Shepherd saw the effort on her end, pleased she was trying. “Sleep, little one. Soon we will be comfortable in our den and our life will begin. You have no need to fear, you’ll see.”Chapter 6Warm… soft…

The nest was too comfortable to leave. Who would want to leave a place so safe? A place her mate shared, where no one would dare to touch her. The windows’ light almost seemed intrusive, a part of Claire longing for the dark and solitude of the underground where she had been safer than she’d realized.

All it had cost her was her freedom and her sense of self.