Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 65151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
And made him work to keep her.
Because her thoughts were everywhere else. Watching her mother play the piano in her memories. The way her childhood bedroom smelled. Coffee from the best corner store near her art school. Her dad’s laugh.
How uncomfortable her black dress was at her mother’s funeral.
Shame that she hadn’t been enough for her mother to choose to live. Self-loathing for never confronting her father for what he’d done… stealing an Omega and forcing her to be his mate.
A childhood spent trying so hard to make everyone happy.
“She owes you this.” Rage gone cold, an Alpha who dreamed of murder and his own gaping secret loss, knew what to say, because he had prepared long for this. Svana had betrayed him first. And then he’d betrayed himself. But not now. Now, he was taking what he deserved, because Svana would have never given it otherwise. “Her name has value, and she owes it. To you. To me. And I took it with pleasure. Used her corpse to elevate my queen. It’s only a collection of mouth sounds now. I have no love for it in any sense but for how it protects you. She’s gone. No legacy but the one I built for you. So, take it. Because the world will never give you what you deserve. Not unless you let me give it to you.”
“You and I… I don’t think we can ever be happy.” Said as Claire rubbed her face against his bare chest, nuzzling, working his scent into her cheeks and nose as she felt how empty she’d really become. “You are beyond reaching.”
“You don’t mean that, Claire.”
“But I do. I mean it. In what universe you thought you could bully me into pretending to be her, I don’t know. You took me because I looked like her. You fucked me because you were angry with her. You betrayed her with me and me with her. I was a tool, a thing, a houseplant to you… one you grew fond of. But you would never have loved me for my humanity. I know it charms you, but—”
A hand covered her mouth, the Alpha angry and rattling, but careful with the delicate bones of her neck as he silenced his mate.
Those green eyes wide and so, so sad. An expression that was certain it would not get better. That there was no smug quote he might dig out of his mind when all she said was true.
“I am not who I was. And you are not who you were. And Svana is dead. Her corpse is in pieces in a freezer where you can go see what’s left of her anytime you want.”
The idea made her skin crawl. “Why would you keep it?”
“It’s valuable.”
A female hum of dismal acknowledgment. “Do you visit it?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?” It stung deep in the bond to think of her mate and husband had visited the body of his former lover.
“I like to break pieces off of it.” Shepherd was morbid and honest and not at all ashamed. “It makes a very satisfying sound.”
“I think you should stop doing that.”
Shepherd cocked a brow. “Why? She can’t feel anything. She’s dead.”
“It’s not good for you.”
“I think of what she did to you, of how much you’ve suffered for it. About our baby…” There was anguish in his eyes, and then there was fury. “And I can’t reach into hell to strangle her myself. All I can steal is her legacy to lay at your feet—the thing she wanted most—and enjoy the satisfaction of stomping on her corpse now and then.”
“Does it make you feel better?”
A definitive male. “Yes.”
“Really?” Oddly curious, Claire peeked up at him, needing to see the silver eyes she’d painted a thousand times.
He knew just what to say. All he had to speak was the truth. “Steal from her the only thing she cared about. Make it into something better. And maybe wonder if the world gave it to you because she would have infected Greth with her greed until it was even uglier than Thólos.”
“And you would have helped her do it.”
That got him. Placed a pause in a man that seldom lost his words. “You think you cannot be happy with me, not the way you want to. But I am happy. I am. You make me happy. Just being near you… it makes me so happy. Even when you cry, I’m thankful I get to hear it. And yes, I would have helped her, and maybe I would have always been blind. But you saved me.”
Ignoring the little flutter in her heart, Claire made her point again. “I’m not going to that dinner. I’m not. And if you try to make me, I’ll tell everyone what you did. You cannot always win.”
“I will give you anything you want if—”