Shepherd pulled off one of her boots, tugging her leg free from clothing so that his mate could climb to straddle him. She wrapping around his body as if she might actually possess the strength to reject his verdict and hold him there. As he caressed her bare buttocks, she reached between them to set his member free. Lowering to accept him, she begged him to stay with her, sliding her body down with no urging from his hands, until he was sheathed root to tip.

He told her he loved her so many times he lost count, brushing his lips over hers, feeling her clench as he rolled his hips up to meet her warm internal embrace. With desperation on both sides, far more wrapped up in the press of their lips, in the war of searching tongues and shared breath, than even the act of mating, each of them tried to communicate why things must be their way.

Shepherd’s hands were buried in her hair. She never once stopped kissing his face, feeling the wetness on his cheek, unsure if it came from her or him. When she came, it seemed almost too soon, and Claire tried to fight it until he murmured, “Please.”

Moaning his name against his lips, calling to her Alpha, climax rolled over her no matter the despair. “Shepherd...”

Shepherd held her tighter, his body shaking with the plea. “Please... just tell me once.”

Even as the waves of pleasure filled her with warmth in her core, even as she felt sexual gratification, her voice broke, and with hitched breath, she met his eyes and sobbed, “You already know I love you.”

His release came, paired with a man pulling in a breath as if it was his first. He looked at her with undying devotion, liquid iron eyes memorizing every last detail of her tender expression, of her heartbreak.

Through the entirety of the knot, Shepherd touched her as if she could not be real, kissing every part of her face. Petting, stroking, as if the memory of her flesh was something he could carry with him if he just caressed a little longer, lingered a little more.

The mating, the purrs, the worshipful touching, blended with the power drugs. Before he could leave her womb, his Claire had fallen back into the slumber of her drug-induced sedation. He embraced her so powerfully she would be bruised, so that when she woke up and he was dead, she would know he had been with her.