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Chapters (51)
  1. Cover
  2. Introduction
  3. Join my Newsletter
  4. Born to be Bound
  5. Praise for
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
  12. 7
  13. 8
  14. 9
  15. 10
  16. 11
  17. Born to be Broken
  18. 1
  19. 2
  20. 3
  21. 4
  22. 5
  23. 6
  24. 7
  25. 8
  26. 9
  27. 10
  28. 11
  29. 12
  30. 13
  31. 14
  32. 15
  33. Reborn
  34. 1
  35. 2
  36. 3
  37. 4
  38. 5
  39. 6
  40. 7
  41. 8
  42. 9
  43. 10
  44. 11
  45. 12
  46. 13
  47. Epilogue
  48. STOLEN
  49. FREE BOOK: BRANDED
  50. Addison Cain
  51. Also by Addison Cain

He nodded once.

6

When her song had finished, Shepherd held her where he could look at her, the man staring for hours. It made her uncomfortable, the intensity of his scrutiny, but each time she turned her head away he would gently bring it back so that the green of her eyes was not denied to him.

Their cards were on the table. Claire had proclaimed Svana did not love him, and in doing so proclaimed he was a self-deluded pawn. The revelation cutting him deeply, though she suspected it was something he already knew and laboriously struggled to accept. Shepherd had accused her of harboring thoughts of killing their child before Svana or Shepherd might ruin him. She did, and it made her hate herself for all the doubt that flourished inside her, how every day her resolve weakened.

Neither was at peace, each of them raw from battle. But Shepherd was still bigger and he would not let her move.

Between them the thread was... a nameless sort of discord. And it kept changing, evolving. A part of Claire wanted to continue the assault, to demand that Shepherd stop this madness in Thólos now that he must accept Svana for what she was. The wiser part kept her silent.

When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard. –Sun Tzu

Confronting him about Svana, it may have been Claire’s greatest victory against Shepherd yet, but she took no joy in the deep-set anguish she sensed in the Alpha. Nor did she feel content in the confessions she’d made to get what she wanted. She may have brought him to his knees for a moment, she may have bluntly torn at his delusion, but for some reason, she wondered if she had not given him, an unscrupulous man, more reason to fight.

Thólos was a plaything for Svana, an entertainment and ploy for some endgame Claire could not grasp. Thólos was a mission to Shepherd, a man who had been a lifelong inmate in one sense or another—a man who truly believed in the cause. Following through on the mission, Shepherd wanted to do it to save them all, to even save Claire from herself.

Maybe that’s why Shepherd was looking at her; maybe he was afraid for her. Or maybe he had finally seen the purity he seemed to adore was gone. Perhaps now that he knew everything, now that he realized the truth, he would kill her. A part of her wanted him to. Watching his eyes, the unending stare, the hardness and calculation, Claire felt her bottom lip tremble just enough to give her wretchedness away.