Shepherd Read Online Free PDF

Fortunately, sanity stopped her. “Esme.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “My name is Esme.” Wasn’t that the first rule? If they had your name, your interaction became personal, making it harder for someone to kill you. Oddly enough, she had never bothered to give the Regent guards her name.
    He shook his head. Evidently, he was familiar with the rule and her ploy. “Fine, Esme. Now sit here and try to keep it together.” He removed a small device from his pocket, pointed it at the lock mechanism, and then glanced up as he tested the door with both of them still in the room.
    The lights remained on. With a terse nod, he latched the door and left her alone.
    She glanced up at the irregularly shaped bumps dotting the ceiling. Small transmitters, probably. Forcing her mind to scrutinize the technology of the room and puzzle out the connections, she grappled for any way to keep her thoughts from regressing. He had heard her and probably seen her too, so it wasn’t a soundproof room.
    Somehow, that helped. She’d been in enough places where no one could hear her scream.
     
    ***
     
    “What the hell am I going to do with her?” Clay repeated under his breath with a snarl. He stalked toward his rations room, trying to dispel the image of rich tanned skin and soft light brown hair. No, not tanned. The dusky brown would never come off her body no matter how much he touched and tasted, no matter how long she lived in the darkness beneath New Delphi’s grid.
    Clay cursed and grabbed a canister of purified water, then rooted through his provisions, suddenly intent on finding something to tempt her appetite. She didn’t look emaciated, but with those dark rings under her gorgeous golden eyes, she didn’t look healthy or nourished. Yet in spite of her fear, her eyes had gleamed with fight. She had touched a long-dead part of him, freeing pain and tenderness he had hoped to keep locked away forever.
    Stuffing a packet of kelp wafers into his pants pocket, he grabbed a ripe apple from the basket Trace had left last week. He paused and glanced back at the locked door, then returned the apple with a sigh.
    If she was a spy, letting her know there was a supply line for healthy food outside the kelp distribution would put not only Trace and his small band of underground renegades at risk, but Ty as well. He couldn’t bring down a whole infrastructure just because he wanted to feed one woman an apple. Damn if he didn’t want to, though.
    Digging back in to his rations, he extracted a tin of hash. Granted it was the standard green kelp and smelled atrocious, but at least she’d have something nutritious.
    Then what are you going to do with her? He shoved the thought away. No doubt, Ty would tell him to let her go. However, what she had overheard and the risk to the latest mission couldn’t permit such leniency, even if he didn’t have a solid plan yet. Aaron’s name alone would be enough to target the young man for termination.
    As beautiful as she was, with all those soft, rounded curves, she could easily be a Regent spy planted to flush them out.
    He paused. The vivid image of her shaking in fear and her pupils dilated in shock bore into his brain. No. He shook his head. He wasn’t that much of a fool. Given the way she’d screamed and begged—hell, she probably didn’t even realize she’d spoken aloud. He had seen enough survivors to know a victim of the Black Guard’s interrogation techniques. Hardly a wonder she looked fragile.
    Though they could have bugged her, be using her now without her knowledge. Neither of those scenarios explained her following Ty. And he was certain the only way she could have entered his secure shipping storage was on Ty’s heels. He didn’t need the playback of his net images to confirm her stalking.
    For now, he would feed her and keep her locked up. She couldn’t get in to any trouble in the containment room.
    He would be fine as long as he didn’t think about her.

 
     
     
    Chapter