Stolen, page 6
The only one in the cargo ship who Shepherd found fault with at this moment was Dr. Osin. Shepherd glared, eyes threatening death, certain the woman’s voice was disruptive to Claire’s rest. “Leave us.”
“As she is still fully medicated, I suggest you mate her the moment she wakes. It will be better to have it over with rather than something she ruminates over. Anticipate fear.” The woman stood, spine ramrod as she exited the forward cabin of their transport to join the soldiers in the cockpit.
It had been over a year. Clinically mounting his mate in the cargo hold of a transport ship was not exactly the elegant treatment Claire deserved, but there was wisdom in Dr. Osin’s suggestion. It was something Shepherd had already considered himself. And it needed to be done.
Transition would be easier if the bandage were ripped off, so to speak.
A quantity of blankets had been prepared, set in a quasi-nest in case she needed such a comfort. Once he laid her upon it, Shepherd woke her with the growl. Dazed, Claire groaned, half aware when her body automatically responded and slick flowed. The instant he parted the jacket covering her damp nightgown, her eyes went wide and the Omega fully awoke.
Her end of the link frayed, buzzing in panic when an Alpha pressed her down to something soft and held her there under his weight.
“Shhhhhh,” Shepherd cooed, trying hard to resonate properly for her so Claire would recognize that he was not going to hurt her. “Spread your legs for me, little one.”
It was as Dr. Osin had claimed. Claire was frightened. “Shepherd?”
He placed a kiss on her lips, over her cheeks, moving his mouth to her ear. The Alpha growled again, louder, calling to her to remember what was theirs. More slick dripped, but Claire’s breaths were shallow and uneven. Every part of her was tense.
Sex was not going to be pleasant for either of them.
Unzipping his trousers, Shepherd took his member in hand. He was still clothed when his thighs forced hers to open. It wasn’t the romantic coupling she deserved, it couldn’t be. He lined up. With the initial thrust, looking her right in the eyes, Shepherd found her almost as tight as the first time, and knew without estrous it was uncomfortable for her. For ages he did little more than slowly stretch her, pressing his cock deeper and waiting, stroking and petting, calling her beautiful while she trembled and endured it.
Shepherd knew the secret places of her body, teased and rolled the sensitive nerve bundle atop her sex, all the while speaking to her as one spoke to a frightened animal. It took time, but she grew pliant, the little Omega’s pupils blown when she relaxed her pelvic floor and finally let him in.
Bottoming out, Shepherd groaned.
The noise excited her further. The Alpha withdrew, Omega hips followed. It was a gentle rocking, cautious, and only for her pleasure. But pumping into a willing body, feeling her cunt squeeze him so tight—remembering the look on her face as she climbed atop the causeway’s safety rail to answer his call—Shepherd could not have loved her more in that moment. He kept her cocooned in his body, brought her to climax, calling out his own long needed release once the knot began to swell and his seed surged deep.
While they were joined, she touched his face as if he could not be real. “They told me you were dead. Why did you make me wait so long?”
He wasn’t going to lie to her. “You needed to heal, little one.”
Claire began to grow uncomfortable, the knot something she had not borne in ages. He had to catch her hip and hold her still so she wouldn’t harm herself by trying to force out his girth with her squirming.
Staring fixedly at her face, Shepherd watched as sadness overtook her expression. Between the war and their separation, the last few years had been unbearable for her; they had changed her and taken from her.
“They wanted me to accept another Alpha.”
Murder was written on Shepherd’s face. Silver eyes smoldered, his hips snapped, and the knot was pressed even deeper. “You are mine. No other male will ever touch you.”
His anger was reassuring. Shepherd’s feeling on the matter absolute.
His Claire held on to it, on to every scrap of true emotion in her mate. “Are they going to come looking for me?”
“No one will look for you.” Shepherd nuzzled her cheek, stubble lightly scraping over her skin. “And even if they tried, Thólos is an ocean away. You no longer need to worry over such things.”
He knew his Claire didn’t want to know the details about her city or people. She did not want to know what he’d done to retrieve her. She knew enough horrible things already.
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.”
6
Warm… 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.
What good was freedom now?
No, the nest was best. Whatever the bedding was made of she could not say, but it felt like velvet and there was enough to burrow as deep as she wanted. If she was careful, if it was dark enough, and Shepherd was beside her to hold on to, there would be no bad dreams in that nest.
She told herself this, and she lied.
They had arrived only the night before, the pitch black showing her little of her new home. Shepherd carried her because he preferred it, because the nearness of armed and uniformed Alpha strangers made her nervous once they had disembarked from the transport ship. There were gates with high walls, a new Dome that did not smell of rotting flesh.
He took her into a stately fortress; an elevator swept them to the top. There were courtyards, fountains, green things… security, privacy, a mansion if she’d ever seen one. Once inside, Shepherd had to pry her off so he might bathe her, rubbing where her fingers had grown swollen because she’d held him so hard.
The shower was far grander than the one they’d shared before, but Claire noticed little, severely uncomfortable with the idea of Shepherd seeing her naked once he began to tug at her dirty nightgown.
She knew these feelings were foolish.
But she cowered and clung to the fabric. He stopped and removed his own clothing first. He stood before her, stripped bare and still beautiful, the perfect Alpha specimen. But she was sickly, scarred, and she didn’t want him to see.
Her reprieve was short lived. Shepherd tugged at her simple sheath, tore it, giving her no chance to refuse. Once naked, if silver eyes caught where another’s cruel nails had marred her skin, if that weighty gaze ran over bites from men who were not her mate or stitch marks from closed incisions, she didn’t see. Claire kept her eyes screwed shut, her arms tight around her middle, and she cried.
But then there was warm water washing the smell of the sweat from her hair, warm hands massaging in shampoo just like she remembered, and she grew pliant. The man’s understanding of the human body could be a wondrous thing. Shepherd knew where to knead, which bones to press, and just how to draw a hum from a broken Omega.
He was happy. She felt it sing through the link.
She was empty, so she let his emotion fill her up.
Her arm slipped about his waist, her face to his chest so the Alpha could finish a ritual he had always enjoyed.
There had been moments like that in the past that had been theirs no matter what was going on beyond them. In Thólos, Claire had chosen to disregard them, to ignore them out of anger. After Thólos, she had fought to remember each nugget of secret peace, clinging to them like a life raft.
It was surreal to be living it, to stand in the comfort of the shower where there was no need to feel guilt for enjoying warm water over chilled skin.
“I like this.”
Shepherd was very pleased. “I can see that, little one.”
The shower had been nice; the nest was better. Everything smelled of Shepherd. She could rest there. She was safe.
The usual torture of searching for sleep was driven off by it. He was there, she wasn’t lonely. He purred and petted. Nightmares only woke her twice.
That’s how she knew it was real. Even with Shepherd there beside her, she was terrified when horrid memories stormed in.
When he asked her about them, she lied.
The question of sex was a complicated one. The act of fucking was healthy for Alphas and Omegas, essential to the bond—some would even argue chemically necessary. She had slept almost two days upon arrival, waking only when forced so Shepherd could press her to eat and swallow medication. A firm schedule was important, and he knew Claire had a tendency toward escapism should he not enforce it.
He’d held her, let her sleep, and had not tried to initiate penetration again no matter how hard he was or how much he ached to pump seed into her belly. She had been skittish, hadn’t really enjoyed the first time beyond the compelled orgasm, and needed a reminder that physical pleasure was permissible.
Shepherd gave her forty-eight hours. When her time was up, there was one more daily injection and when she was smiling through the drug’s high, Shepherd burrowed under soft covers. She hardly moved. But, when his tongue swiped right between her legs, exactly the way he knew she loved best, his Claire woke with a stifled cry. He delved deeper, lapped and sucked, flicking about inside her as she squirmed.
“You are perfect here.”
He gave her no time to think on his words, Shepherd moving to tongue her swelling nub so his fingers might explore where she seeped slick. It was almost easy to gorge himself, swallowing up all she offered, nipping just enough for her thighs to spread obscenely. Over and over he met her eyes, watched her pant for him as her hips jerked. He let her come that way, where she was stuffed full of only his fingers, his tongue frantically licking at her clit.
“Shepherd!”
She had not called his name on the transport ship.
Hearing it drew a growl of approval, a large Alpha prowling over her to urge that sound again. Where she shied, he forced his way, his erection heavy against her thigh. That first taste of her mouth, the flavor of her pussy still on his tongue, was bliss.
He surged in, hips snapping to sheath fully in one swoop. Claire’s breath hitched.
He fucked in again. She gasped.
“Touch me, little one.”
Her body was twisted, one leg straight, one hooked on Shepherd’s arm. She was pinned where they fit together, unable to rock her hips or wriggle away. Green eyes remained locked on the veined rod, seeing it disappear inside her, watching it retreat wet with her fluid. At its base was the bulbous hint of the coming knot.
She didn’t move. She stank of fear.
Shepherd took her hand, aware she had not heard him, and put it on his face. “Touch me, little one.”
Her attention left his cock to find him excited, silver eyes burning and so very in love. His cheek had been shaved, was smooth under her fingers, the scar in his lips puckered near her thumb. His neck was still thickly muscled, but what caught her attention, what made him hers, were the claiming marks she traced while Shepherd fought himself not to rear and pound harder than her weak body could tolerate.
“Claire, kiss me there.”
She wanted to, wanted to scrape her teeth on her mark. She also wanted to run away, to hide.
“You’re mine, little one. I’m yours. Bite me as hard as you like. Hurt me if you need to.”
A heat grew in her belly, a sense of possession that tightened her cunt and made her want to do all those things. As if Shepherd had read her thoughts, he set her leg free, rewarding good behavior with swirling grinds of his pelvis where friction would only make her croon. The second her teeth locked onto the marks she’d left in his shoulder, Claire came, lapping at the taste of him, breaking skin so she might know the taste of his blood again.
The male roared. Jets of come, the swelling knot, the Omega’s back arched and Shepherd cried out like a dying man. Everything inside him wanted to fill her up. Another rush of his seed bathed her insides, Claire so tight around him that for the first time in a year, he felt whole.
His tongue moved to her ear, Shepherd demanding as that last rush of fluid poured from him to fill her up, “Tell me you love me, little one.”
Breathless, still clenching around an organ offering pleasure she’d forgotten, Claire panted, “I love you. I’ve missed you…”
Shepherd kissed her shoulder, peppering the scar he’d given her with affection.
This time, when Claire began to cry, it was not from pain.
While his Omega sobbed, he flipped them over so she might own the position she loved most—so she could rest her ear to his heart while the knot held her tied. So he could tell her things he knew she would not want to hear where she was most comfortable and unable to get away.
“You have a schedule here, Claire, a responsibility to pick up where you left off in your recovery.”
He had her in the mating high, he had her drugged on his seed and opiates. He did not have her compliance. “No.”
“In the morning hours you’ll meet with Dr. Osin.”
“No doctors.”
“Afternoons may be spent as you wish, but therapy is not an option. I have given your doctor leave to enter this house at will, even this room, should you think to avoid the work you must do. You will find that she is not a woman who will allow you to slack.”
Feeling anger toward Shepherd was something far too familiar. It felt right, and it felt ravenous. “You are still a bully, but you have nothing you can force me with now. Who are you going to threaten to kill if I disobey?”
He gripped black tresses tight in his fist, pulling her head back so she might meet his eyes. There was no softness in his words, and no mercy for the sting in her scalp. “I love you, but you need to recover. You cannot live your life hiding in this nest. I won’t allow it.”
