Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 65151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65151 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 326(@200wpm)___ 261(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Our Collin would have celebrated his first birthday this month. I would like you to paint him for me.
There had been no incident to warrant that note, just a date she had never allowed herself to consider. A baby that had been lost, so many layers of complication behind it that even the notorious Dr. Osin would never be able to unravel what Claire felt.
Because, sometimes, she didn’t know.
Being forced to face her failings… Claire had not spoken to him for three days after receiving that letter. But she had painted the picture. One he pulled from the easel himself, her husband offering the softest, “Thank you, little one.”
And she had not seen it since.
Claire didn’t know where that painting hung, if others could see the imaginings of her little boy. If anyone might possibly know how much of her pain was on that canvas.
Claire didn’t know if a single Follower might suspect that Shepherd felt things deeply yet never displayed them to the world. Only she could see, his link open and honest, even when that honesty was acid. Even when he lied to her. Knowing that he wasn’t sorry for any of it.
Coming to terms with the unsettling fact, that he grieved their lost child even more than she did? It might be her greatest shame.
That was more than an Alpha commander walking around with a feather in his hair.
And for some reason, that was the note she held to her breast as she breathed through it.
There was a love for that note that she hated, a need to have it burn her with the naked honesty of a male and the corrupted dishonesty of herself. Claire had never mourned Collin. Not as a person. She had been too lost in the why of his death to remember the person lost while she had walked to the Citadel.
She’d grieved her loss and pain, not the fact that Collin didn’t get to grow up.
So she wept, alone on the floor, clutching that hated and loved note so tight it deformed the parchment.
When she had exorcised those demons, she put all the notes, all the sweetness and barbs, back in her box and put it back in her drawer.
Beside it, green waited. Green dresses, green robes, green everything. Yet there was one green thing that had been relegated to the back. Local flavor. A top that cut off under one’s breasts. A breezy skirt that tied at the hips. So many times, Claire had seen something of this nature on her COMscreen.
Thólos had been surrounded in snow, and though before the Dome had cracked, it had been warm within, the clothing had been conservative in comparison. Greth was flamboyant.
Greth was sweltering.
Greth women were sexy, they were loud, they were fun… according to her COM.
Claire was quiet, soft spoken, dowdy, and prim. She was boring, even in the most scandalous clothing Shepherd might find her. And it felt strange to pull that silk over her hips, to knot the blouse under her breasts. To adjust the shoulders of her top to display her bitten claiming mark.
Which did not bleed as Shepherd’s did that day.
He was always careful with her. Even when she drove him past reason.
And he would like this, to see her this way.
Was watching, no doubt, from wherever he was. Maybe smiling.
And then she messaged Dr. Osin and told her to come speak with her immediately.
Like a queen commanding a servant.
And told the old woman she hated through and through everything she’d told Shepherd the night before.
For the first time, Osin smiled—a gloating, self-satisfied, shitty little smirk that made Claire want to scream.
Or slap her.
But instead, she just kept vomiting up all the ugliness she kept deep, deep down while the bitch took notes.
She talked about Nona, and how she knew she was dead. How she knew everyone in Thólos was either dead or dying. And that she didn’t want them to see her, because she was ashamed of what she’d become while hiding in this pretty house.
Playing happy family.
Her life stuck.
How she sometimes dreamed of beating Shepherd to death and woke up scared. How she liked to control him with her little blue pills and denying him her estrus. That it felt good to hurt him in that way.
That she loved him and it was wrong.
But it wasn’t going to change.
Even though he was an evil man who deserved great suffering.
And that was why she could not help Guadalupe. Claire had nothing to offer except lies. The fact was, that Omega was in a hopeless situation where there was nothing to do but accept there was no escape unless she chose to follow in Claire’s mother’s footsteps and kill herself.
And, of course, the males knew this. That’s why they had leverage against them all.
Claire didn’t want to know what that scary-looking Alpha had over the Greth beauty. She didn’t have the capacity to hold it. There was enough shit inside her already.