When he tried to pet her hair, she slapped his hand away and shrieked, "Don't touch me!"

She bent over, hid her face in her skirt, and sobbed. Shepherd stood by through the good ten minutes it took before her wailing distorted into gasping hiccups.

"If you will stop this crying, I will take you outside and show you your sky," he offered, his jeering replaced with subtle enticement.

She stayed bent, her face hidden, and slapped at the air in his direction. "Go to hell."

The thread, the little link between them, had been so happy, so full and warm, only an hour before, but now the thread was only pain, like a razor blade in her chest. She hoped to god it hurt him as much as it was hurting her, that the damn greasy cord was a two-way sense of torture. But then she remembered that he was only a psychopath with no heart, incapable of human emotion... that he was torturing Thólos on purpose.

Thinking about her mother, Claire understood everything that must have been going through that woman's head all those years... eating away at her until she just couldn't take it anymore. Her father may have been a decent man, but even Claire could see that her mother had not wanted him... that she'd longed for the female Alpha next door that she could never have. How freeing her suicide must have been. Control of her destiny, of the one thing the pair-bond wielding Alpha could not decide for her. The idea was growing increasingly appealing.

"I do not approve of the direction of your thoughts," Shepherd growled, low and threatening.

Claire ignored him.

Large hands circled her arms and pulled her up to stand. Refusing to look at him, she sniffed and turned her head, staring pathetically at the far wall.

"We will go outside. You will see your sky and you will feel better." It was a command. "This emotional response from the medication will pass."

It was like he had no idea how people worked.

All the signs of a steadily encroaching heat cycle were there: trembling shivers, cold sweat, her digestive tract shutting down. All the cleaning, the need for the room to be ready... Shepherd was right. In a few hours she would be begging him to fuck her.

Covering her mouth, another wave of nausea came.

He let her go, watching as she ran to the bathroom to vomit. Between her stomach vacating retches, she distantly recognized that he was holding back her hair, that his hand was stroking her back. Everything she had eaten was expelled until nothing but bile came up. She felt so utterly sick and so completely debased, sitting there on her knees with the very cause of her torment the facsimile of comfort.

"Why are you doing this?" she breathed, even as he wiped a cool towel over her face.

"I desire offspring. A legacy."