Breathing hard, she reared up until eye level with the man. “Now you will fuck me, hard, in every way that pleases me. And when it is done, you will get me food, because I’m fucking hungry!”

He was on her with such force the breath was knocked from her body. Shepherd did exactly as his mate demanded, pounding into her with a fury that set her howling amidst their shredded clothing. In Shepherd’s experience, there had never been a coupling like it. She was beyond estrous, beyond fiery passion. Her angry possessiveness blended so beautifully with the lustful need to claim what was hers—but it was so much more than that. What began as violent evolved until they were more than physically joined. He had what he wanted, her covetous emotion honest and pure in the bond. Shepherd gluttonously reveled in it.

She wanted him.

They had never openly discussed it, or even furtively shared whispers after the sham meetings they pantomimed week after week for Shepherd’s surveillance team. Both Brigadier Dane and Enforcer Corday had played their parts, openly quarreling at the old location, hosting meetings where nothing of value was accomplished. It was all a performance, but the continuous suffering of their people was very real.

The old resistance was dying. Their friends were dying—not just from violence, but from crushed hope. In the eyes of the Dome, Brigadier Dane and Enforcer Corday were two great failures.

The title did not disturb either of them. Both clung to what really mattered: survival.

Not their survival, both of them could see the writing on the wall. They needed their people to live. They needed to give Leslie Kantor and her growing band of rebels a chance.

At least that’s what they told themselves.

More people died, more disappeared.

Since the day Lady Kantor told him in secret exactly how she was going to take back the Dome, Corday could do nothing but nod dumbly. It sat there, that horrible knowledge, like a rock on his chest, but he could not see any other options.

Brigadier Dane had needed to know what her actions would be consigning, what the two of them were a part of.

That’s why they found their way to one another the first time they’d met in secret, how they found their way to the ruined safe house where the headless remains of Senator Kantor still lay wrapped in garbage bags on the table.

The causeways were empty, the city hollow, and cold, the two standing in a room that reeked of decay.

There was no one there to watch. Lady Kantor and her minions, Shepherd and his Followers... no soul knew who met and why.

No one ever visited the corpse. It was more than the smell. After all, the entirety of the Dome stank of unburied dead. People didn’t come here because only three people knew whose body was decomposing in that room.