The apartment they were in was in shambles, the stained mattress he pressed her to as disgusting as the rotting chain in his chest. Gripping his staff in his fist, he met her eyes, lined up with the opening slit of Alpha pussy, and shoved in remorselessly hard.

The immediate sense of victory he saw in her shining eyes was appalling. Gripping her legs and turning his attention to look out the dark window over the city he’d conquered, he rammed hard and fast, just as he’d done on Claire’s nest to save the Omega’s life.

Just as before, Shepherd found less satisfaction in rutting a female who did not possess the smaller frame and the tighter cunt that would milk him when she came, that would draw out his essence until every last drop had been savored. There was no musical voice sighing his name as if it were the most beautiful sound in the world. Alpha females did not respond that way; they were built to mate with Omegas, to be dominant… they hardly even self-lubricated.

Shepherd felt no humming connection, no mental depth, just aggressive, angry sex… and it was eating at him. Svana was performing well, making her calls and trills, spreading wide to show the beauty of her body. It was not enough. His abject fury did not abate, it only distorted, it left him in ruins, and Shepherd began to feel the unsettling wrongness grow with every thrust.

He did the unthinkable and flipped Svana over, to mount his beloved from behind so he would no longer have to look at her. She gasped, tilted her hips at his strength, and seemed to relish the rough handling. To keep her head forward, Shepherd fisted her hair, immediately noticing the tactile wrongness of it. It was not silky black, but a coarser brown, and his growl led to no surge of wetness that bathed his cock and beautifully scented the air.

The woman he rode was not his mate.

Even with his eyes closed, even thinking of another, all he could see was Svana… altered, seemingly tainted by what she had done, by what he knew and could not forget. Once she came, tugging at her clitoris in little flicks of her fingers, Shepherd could not continue for another moment. Pulling out, he tucked away his already softening dick.

Spinning about, she gaped at him. “Dearest… everything will be as it was. Come, let me soothe you. I know what you need.”

Already she was reaching for his zipper again, leaning forward from the bed to take him into her mouth.