Chapter 8
Shepherd had hurt her in his fervor, in his need to see her mated while the bond reformed…
to ensure that she could not escape it. There was a little blood between her legs, as she had been dry and aggressively resistant when he first thrust. Even her mouth was swollen from his unwelcome kisses.
New bruises were forming around her wrists and between her thighs.
Shepherd relished each one of the stinging scratches marring his own flesh, his reminder that she was his again—each wound a trophy, and testament to what was between them.
His little one had put up a good fight, but Claire had quieted over the hours, though not calmed completely.
The thread in her chest was frazzled. It pained her, so Shepherd held her tight and kept the heat of his palm where her nails tried to scratch through her skin.
The tears had ended and instead, she was in a trance, fighting sleep, yet clearly exhausted.
The purr never ceased, and though she gave him her back, Shepherd stroked and soothed, allowing her little defiance.
She needed nutrition and hydration, yet he withheld his immense dissatisfaction at the state of her body to allow her some respite after her struggle—to let her think she might rest on her terms for a moment.
Unwilling to leave her, he sent out an order for medical supplies, and covered Claire from sight. Holding her in a grip of iron, he allowed Jules to set what was required on the small table beside the bed. When the door was locked, he found her still refusing to look at him. It didn’t matter.
Shepherd had seen her reaction to food, was certain that she would hold nothing down as upset as she was, and took her arm.
When the needle pierced a vein, she remained unresisting.
Intravenous fluids were administered. While the IV emptied, he bathed her with soft towels, each wound treated and bandaged, the stitches grunted at, and her feet, a thing that made the beast openly angry, were wrapped in soft strips of cloth.
When the process was finished he gathered her again in his arms.
“I will build you a new world, little one—a kingdom worthy of you and our son.” He whispered his distorted ideals, raking his fingers through her tangles. On and on Shepherd elocuted, articulating all he would accomplish, how he would be a legend, how he would do this for her.
In Claire’s hazy understanding, Shepherd had never spoken so much and said so little.
On her belly, with her back to him, she found herself listening to the pipedreams of a madman until she could not stand it another instant.
Rolling over, interrupting his game with her hair, she argued with that same passionate defiance, that same misplaced goodness that had yet to vanish no matter what had happened to the rest of her.
“Do not use me as an excuse for the horrible things you do. I will have no part of it!”
He grinned, smiling darkly at her hoarse complaints. Hand molded to the shape of her belly, Shepherd patted where their child grew. “The very fact that I have you back proves the Gods side with me.”
Claire had cried herself dry, her chest was rotten mush. “You have me because I would rather save the lives of forty-three people than kill myself.”
“Shhh.” His hush was brushed over her chest. He kissed where their bond thrived. “Everything is mending and your sadness will fade in time.”
It was not mending, it was scarring.
There was a gleam in his eyes, confidence. “We will begin again.”
Lip curling, Claire laid out his sins. “You forced a pair-bond, drugged and impregnated me, fucked your crazy Alpha beloved in my nest…” She did not finish.
Instead her pain surged again and Claire found her eyes could indeed leak more tears.
“I recognize, Shepherd, that I am only here to be your toy. I’m a slave, a kept thing. I sold myself for them.”
It was predictable, the storm of fury in his eyes. What was surprising was the small dash of regret. Where he had been rubbing her chest, his hand moved to a breast and began to roll and pinch the nipple until the soft pink darkened and the bud elongated under his fingers.
Of course he would fuck her again no matter how unappealing Claire found the idea. That was always his recourse for her mouth. That was his answer every time she was resistant or unhappy.
Lying still, too tired after hours of struggling to put up a fuss, she remained limp… ready to get it over with.
The other nipple received the same treatment; all the while Shepherd watched her with that calculating gaze.
A thumb traced over her lips and dipped just a bit between them to play against the flat of her tongue.
The growl was made, the aroma of her slick scented the air, and his free hand began to play with her pussy.
Shepherd pressed his chest to hers, growled low and deep once more, watching so very carefully.
She closed her eyes and chose to ignore him.
With his fingers coated in her slippery fluid, he began to speak.
“In the Undercroft, I had my mother for so short a time, I hardly can remember her face. She died from the harsh use of many men.” A slippery finger slid to her puckered anus and Claire started.
Shepherd slowly added pressure against her rectum, her breath catching at the uncomfortable cramp of that place being stretched.
Wide eyes showed her distress. Claire reached down to grip the wrist of the offending limb, her complaint lost around the thumb still teasing her tongue.
When she had stilled, realizing he was not moving, not penetrating further, Claire watched him with absolute attention.
“As women never lasted long, prisoners took their pleasure from men in this way.” The probing finger slipped past Claire’s clenched ring.
“Or by using the mouth of another. The beasts in that hole would howl in the dark as they gratified their bodies on the small and weak. The sounds of screams, of tortured begging—even the moans of those who took pleasure in such things—that’s the lullaby that lulled me to sleep every single night. ”
The sensation he was creating was unpleasant, the tip of his finger wriggling. Claire tried to squirm but his weight was on her, and Shepherd growled again until more slick dripped down to coat what penetrated her rectum.
She whimpered.
“I was smaller than you are now the first time I was cornered. My back was to the wall, a man with sores on his face pulled out his member and reached for my throat. What he didn’t know, what nobody knew, was that my mother had whored herself for a knife.
I shanked my attacker. During the struggle, I earned the scar across my lips that you in your estrous called beautiful. ”
Had she?
There was a purr, a short offer of soothing as he pressed his digit further up her ass, knowing the stretch was unwelcome, but using it to make sure she listened to every damn word he said.
“I left his corpse strung outside my cell, his cock hanging from his mouth as warning to others. He was only the first, and I was surrounded by dark-hearted monsters. As I grew bigger, grew stronger, the small and feeble would come to me, offering their mouths or their bodies for protection from those same men who hounded them. I found them repugnant, weak, and beneath me. I killed several just to make my feelings on the topic clear.”
The thumb in Claire’s mouth stroked her tongue in little circles as he spoke. “One day, something from the light found me in the dark, a young woman with a knife of her own. It was already bloody.”
Svana.
“She’d heard of me, had crawled into hell to seek me out. She gave me the means to rule and asked for nothing. Her visits were often, her affection splendid. Like me, her mother had been killed before her. Like me, her future had been stripped away.
“Her mind, the things she knew, were beyond anything I had been taught. She offered to share such wisdom, brought me books, found worth in the monster whom inmates feared. The angel even brought me the file with my mother’s name on top.
” Shepherd nuzzled her cheek. “In that missing person’s dossier was a photograph.
My Beta mother, before the Undercroft rotted her teeth, had been very beautiful, like you. I hated hearing her screams.”
Claire put her hand to his flank, she felt his pain break against her.
The Alpha continued. “I could not save her, and to this day could not tell you which one of the demons underground was my father.”
Claire did not want to let his history touch her, but it was so pathetic she could not help but feel pity.
“I was not the only man trapped in that dark by corruption above. Like my mother, more than half of the men forced below were innocent enough, but inconvenient to the powers that be. I learned secrets from them, things you cannot imagine… if you only knew the infection creeping through the hearts of this city, little one, if you could read the stories scraped into the rocks below us.”
Why was he telling her this? She began to struggle, and flinched when his finger inside her surged deeper, stretching her until she stilled.
“Open your eyes, little one.” The growl was menacing, guttural. “You will look at me when I say this.”
She did not want to look at him, felt invaded by that single, oversized finger, and the way he still teased at her tongue with his thumb. Jerking from the penetration, she met his gaze.
“These men, this rotten society—in your goodness, you fail to see the flaws. I could tell you things that would keep you awake at night. Everyone, man and woman, hanged outside the Citadel participated in, or knowingly ignored, atrocities. Like the imprisonment of my mother.