The noise excited her further. The Alpha withdrew, Omega hips followed. It was a gentle rocking, cautious, and only for her pleasure. But pumping into a willing body, feeling her cunt squeeze him so tight—remembering the look on her face as she climbed atop the causeway’s safety rail to answer his call—Shepherd could not have loved her more in that moment. He kept her cocooned in his body, brought her to climax, calling out his own long needed release once the knot began to swell and his seed surged deep.

While they were joined, she touched his face as if he could not be real. “They told me you were dead. Why did you make me wait so long?”

He wasn’t going to lie to her. “You needed to heal, little one.”

Claire began to grow uncomfortable, the knot something she had not borne in ages. He had to catch her hip and hold her still so she wouldn’t harm herself by trying to force out his girth with her squirming.

Staring fixedly at her face, Shepherd watched as sadness overtook her expression. Between the war and their separation, the last few years had been unbearable for her; they had changed her and taken from her.

“They wanted me to accept another Alpha.”

Murder was written on Shepherd’s face. Silver eyes smoldered, his hips snapped, and the knot was pressed even deeper. “You are mine. No other male will ever touch you.”

His anger was reassuring. Shepherd’s feeling on the matter absolute.

His Claire held on to it, on to every scrap of true emotion in her mate. “Are they going to come looking for me?”

“No one will look for you.” Shepherd nuzzled her cheek, stubble lightly scraping over her skin. “And even if they tried, Thólos is an ocean away. You no longer need to worry over such things.”

He knew his Claire didn’t want to know the details about her city or people. She did not want to know what he’d done to retrieve her. She knew enough horrible things already.

Green eyes full of fear, wet with unshed tears, her voice broke. “I can’t ever go back there.”

Shepherd understood. The largeness of his palm cupped her face. He wiped her cheeks as he had done a thousand times before… when she’d been his in the underground den… when he’d kept her safe. “Never.”

Encased in the arms of her lost mate, warm, the purr pouring into her, Claire sobbed. “I can’t do that again. I can’t, Shepherd.”

He could hardly bear the torrent of tormented feeling resonating from her end of the link, but he would. He would do it with devout resolution, because he deserved every ounce of pain her sorrow might stir in his breast. “Quiet down, little one. It’s over now.”

She looked so happy and so heartbroken at once. “I watched you die.”