‘This is the entrance to Purgatory.’ Maryanne pointed to the map alight on the screen between them. Tracing the snaking tunnels that lay right below the concrete footpaths of the Lower Reaches, she said, ‘This floor is for administration and separated from the true Undercroft. If your Omegas are being kept in this shithole, Shepherd would not stash them any lower than here. Not if he wanted to keep them alive.’
Claire stared down at the COMscreen. Seeing her people locked away like livestock brought a wave of unbearable sadness. The Omegas slept ten to a cell, segregated by age, and there were less than the fifty-six that had been taken. Three Shepherd had hanged, the remainder Claire assumed had either died or been pair-bonded and dragged away. There were hardly even forty, and one was in estrous, isolated and being rutted by a stranger… the girl only sixteen.
In her heart, Claire had been terrified Shepherd may have allowed his men to inject the Omegas with the same drugs he’d used on her… to set up a brothel of mindless estrous sex for the taking, and she had to admit she was marginally relieved to find he had yet to stoop so low.
‘Looking at them like that isn’t going to change anything, sugar pie,’ Maryanne cooed, crouched at her side.
‘Even you must see how sick this is.’ Frowning, Claire looked away from the COMscreen so her friend might meet her eye. ‘Don’t let me down.’
‘I’ll get you in. Then I’m gone.’
Claire nodded. ‘For your own sake, I suggest you run fast.’
As per their agreement, Maryanne tapped into the system and hacked the prison’s upper level controls. Handing over the technology, she gave Claire patchy dominion of Purgatory’s security systems.
‘You need to know, small fry, not every castoff was released when Shepherd staged his coup. There are paths in there you don’t want to stumble down. If you get lost… you let Shepherd find you.’ With those final, frightening words, Maryanne gave Claire a quick kiss and disappeared.
Claire had to make the next move alone. Holding a device constructed from duct tape and a few stolen circuits, praying to her Goddess that their plan worked, she flipped the switch.
Scattered explosions went off, all four of the handcrafted bombs Maryanne had distributed functioning flawlessly. Right on cue, Claire began phase two. As her friend had promised, the Followers on screen rushed towards the disturbance with alarming precision. When the soldiers were separated and in halls or elevators, she trapped the men with updated overrides to the systems they would have to countermand at each terminal.
Lips a hair’s breadth from the screen, Claire took control of the prison’s internal communications system. ‘Omegas, the doors to your cells are unlocked. Anyone who would prefer freedom to Shepherd’s slavery, claim it. The guards are scattered, trapped, but I can’t hold them for long. Band together, I’ll lead you out. Do not forget your sister being held in the room at the end of the corridor.’ Venom dripped from Claire’s voice. ‘I don’t imagine Shanice dreamed her first heat would be spent mounted by a soldier three times her age.’
On her small monitor, seven women, Nona included, stood and rushed out of their cells. More stood to watch, afraid but rallying. Over lingering seconds the numbers began to grow, women throwing back the bars and racing out to join their sisters. But Claire’s attention was elsewhere; a band of Followers had already overridden control and broken free.
Lacking the skill to manipulate the system with the same finesse as Maryanne, Claire cried, ‘Four Followers have made it through. You have to stand up for yourselves! If you want out, you must fight back!’
At first sight of an unwelcome Alpha, the Omegas fell upon them like locusts. More Followers tried to grab at the women, only to discover supposedly weak Omegas attacked in packs. Even the strongest male could not stand against forty enraged females. Gunshots were fired, two of Claire’s sisters fell—but all four of Shepherd’s soldiers were destroyed as the group forced their way forward. By the time they descended on the room where the estrous high Omega was being rutted, the pack had fallen into a frenzy.
The rutting male was ripped away, torn apart by teeth and claws.
They scooped up their sister, and followed every last direction Claire shouted over the speakers. In less than five minutes, women began to flood the very passages the Castoffs had employed the day they broke free.
Once they had pushed past the final doors, Claire stepped out of the darkness and called out to them. Nona reached her first. Over the sound of shouting, Claire yelled hurried instructions into the woman’s ear. One nod of understanding, and Nona took Claire’s COMscreen.
Claire pushed her crude trigger’s final button.
Blinding flashes preceded cloying green-grey smoke—it filled the prison’s access road to the point where Claire could no longer see Nona, she could not smell her, and she would not have the chance to wave goodbye.
The screech of tires and trucks packed with Shepherd’s Followers skid to a halt outside the causeway. In moments, armed soldiers had created a perimeter; the only plausible exit blocked.
There was no turning back. This was the end.
Claire recognized the blue-eyed Beta leading the men, watched him squinting when the billowing smoke parted just enough to show who’d dared strike a blow at Thólos’ new regime. With a gun held to her temple, Claire walked forward until she was exposed to Shepherd’s men.
Eyes sharp, Jules commanded, ‘Put the gun down, Miss O’Donnell.’
Seeing them so close, so organized; the Followers were exactly as Maryanne described—killers; remorseless, walking nightmares—and she was just one woman standing up against far more powerful men.
Raising her chin, defiant, Claire shouted over the fray, ‘Every Omega here gets to walk away, or I pull the trigger and kill Shepherd’s child.’
Ignoring the accumulating smoke, Jules marched to the edge of the barricade. ‘And how far do you think they will they get?’
The Beta was expecting an answer; Claire did not give one. All she did was stare right back into those unsettling baby-blues.
When long minutes of silence continued, when no further move was made by the female, Jules finally seemed to understand.
Claire smiled.
‘Now that I think about it,’ the gun still pointed at her skull, Claire took a deep breath. ‘Putting the women in the Undercroft was actually an excellent idea. I think we’ll stay… without the debauched visitors and scheduled rape, of course.’
‘Do you really think a handful of women will be able to hold the prison from us?’
‘Yes.’
A strange look passed through the man’s eyes. He looked about to speak but was silenced by the sound of heavy footfalls approaching from the shadows.
The nightmare was coming.
She felt him before she saw him. Her eyes never left Jules, but it took every ounce of Claire’s self-control not to step back into the blanket of smoke and ruin her plan when Shepherd emerged in her periphery.
‘Little one,’ Shepherd’s voice was soft and enticing, flowing just like the vapor at her back. ‘Point the gun at me.’
He was so very big. Even with a good fifteen paces between them, Claire had the impression that all he needed to do was reach out to drag her back to hell.
Though she was afraid to look his way, though she kept her attention anchored in the vibrant blue of Jules’s stare, Claire’s words were for Shepherd. ‘If I thought I possessed the skill to aim and be certain a bullet blew right through your skull, I would not hesitate to shoot you. But I’ve told you before, I’m not stupid. Pointed where it is, I don’t have to worry about missing.’
Shepherd took a step closer; Claire stiffened.
Showing her teeth, she forced herself to look at him. ‘Your approach is making it very tempting to pull the trigger. If I die, your child dies with me. Stop. Moving.’
With her attention on him, Shepherd paused, guiding the conversation as if they were having an afternoon chat. ‘It is good to see that you are mostly uninjured from the fall, and that you have been eating.’
‘I didn’t fall, I jumped.’ Claire lifted her chin higher, exposing the bruises blotched across her pale throat for every last Follower to see.
Only with some great effort was Shepherd able to speak levelly. ‘You have made your point. I will even admit I am impressed with your little coup. But it’s over now.’
‘I don’t give a fuck what you think!’
A stifled bark came from the Alpha, his mouth curved into a snarl. ‘I know you are angry—’
Her voice dropped low, coarse as she hissed through clenched teeth, ‘Angry does not even begin to describe what I am. I have been defiled, manipulated, betrayed, and broken. I am way past angry.’
‘Everything that was done was necessary,’ Shepherd countered, taking another intimidating step closer.
‘You may have had me for a moment there, but your woman opened my eyes to what you really are.’ Fierce, Claire’s lip curled in threat. ‘I should be thanking you, Shepherd. Your horrible lesson of insurrection was an inspiration. You taught me that even the weakest can rise up against tyranny with the right encouragement. Well, I’m rising up against you and the perversion of your ideals.’
She had stood there long enough.
Trembling so hard she was certain every last man there could see her fear, ready to do what she did best, Claire took a backwards step into the smoke.
Shepherd countered, struggling to rein in his rage. ‘Do not make me come and collect you, little one. You may get injured, and I would prefer that not be the case.’
‘What are a few broken bones and a potential gunshot or two?’ She pressed her free hand to her heart, Claire’s face the image of anguish. ‘They wouldn’t matter. I feel nothing. Nothing at all.’
Even Shepherd could not deny the echoing truth in the fractured bond; it was like she wasn’t even there—the greater fragment of her spirit simply gone. But she was more at that moment than she had been when her every hour was spent in a stupor underground.
She would recover.
Looking deep into such pain-filled eyes, Shepherd spoke in a voice of certainty, of authority. ‘Your place is with me. You will return to your mate.’
‘You are no mate to me.’ Claire spat on the ground between them. ‘I will stand with my people on my terms! If Thólos is to suffer, your child and I will suffer with it.’
Shepherd was going to reach for her, she knew it. Claire spun, black hair flaring as she darted into the smoke. Shepherd was so very fast for a man of his size, and Claire could feel him and his Followers bearing down on her. But out of the dark, thin arms reached for her.
The embrace of an old friend was followed by a sudden loss of gravity.
Maryanne Cauley had come back, a cable propelling them high above the Lower Reaches before the raging giant or his men had even seen where Claire had gone.
The amount of security protocols that had been overwritten during the Omegas’ escape was extraordinary. All the surveillance footage had been wiped, many of the mechanized doors manipulated to trap his soldiers still malfunctioning. Purgatory’s grounds had been turned into a maze that took Shepherd’s most skilled Followers over an hour to penetrate, only to find there was not even one Omega inside.
The females had vanished as if teleported by the smoke.
Seven Followers dead, twenty-four trapped, and one man barely breathing. Claire’s plan had been either extremely well-coordinated, or she was gifted with sheer dumb luck.
Deceitfully complacent, Shepherd turned to his second-in-command. ‘Explain to me, Jules, how an Omega female who paints pictures for children’s stories accomplished this feat with only four days to plan?’
‘I can’t. Not yet, sir.’ The Beta stood at attention, unsmiling and severe. ‘We tracked the Omegas to the sewer access and know they went north, but the scent…’
‘Was lost in the waste they rubbed all over themselves,’ Shepherd finished, knowing exactly what they would do. His lip curled. ‘And they are armed with weapons taken off our fallen men.’
‘Weapons they do not know how to use,’ Jules offered.
‘Those women went on a rampage and killed five Alphas with their bare hands. I am fairly certain they will learn how to fire assault rifles in no time.’ A strange feeling came to the pit of Shepherd’s gut, the sensation quickly ignored in favor of the satisfaction of clenching his fists until joints popped.
‘We have profiles and photographs of all known surviving Omegas. The odds that one will be seen are exponentially higher with so many. They will be found.’
‘The situation with Claire takes precedence over retrieving the Omegas. Her escape route was divergent. She must be moving through Thólos as we speak. Assign our best trackers, and when she is found, no one approaches but me.’
Jules knew the female had been serious about ending her life; it had been the only reason he’d not disarmed the quaking woman at first glance. ‘Cornering her would not end well. Her mental state is unbalanced. Miss O’Donnell is a danger to herself until her desperation recedes.’
Shepherd cut a dangerous glare at his lieutenant. ‘What is your point?’
Intense blue eyes sat static in a face devoid of emotion. ‘Your appearance turned her fear to rage; her finger tightened on the trigger. I had a measure of rapport with her; you did not.’
The slight flare of Shepherd’s nostrils, the intake of breath, was nothing compared to the growl that stained his reply. ‘Her entire plan hinged on distracting us with the ploy. She did not pull the trigger, she ran.’
Jules did not baulk. ‘Her success will give her confidence, and may lead her to expose herself to needless danger in order to fulfill her agenda. Shall I create a situation she’d want to resolve? We could draw her out on our terms. Miss O’Donnell could potentially be captured before any more trauma accumulated.’
Shepherd momentarily considered the suggestion before he shook his head in the negative. ‘She is too clever for that.’
‘Where do you think she’ll strike next?’
‘I do not think she will strike at all. Not one of her bombs killed a Follower; she could have executed all our comrades trapped inside. Casualties were kept to a minimum. As far as we know, she never fired the pistol or pointed it at anyone but herself. No matter the show she put on, Claire O’Donnell is a pacifist. Her ideal would be to inspire, just like she threatened.’
‘If she exposes herself to the public, they will bring her in,’ the Beta assured.
‘Her faith in the scum of this city is far more dangerous to her than any gun. If they knew of our bond, the people of Thólos would not deliver her home. They would rip her to shreds.’
Curled together like kittens in Maryanne’s bed, Claire slept with one hand over her belly and a troubled frown on her brow. Maryanne watched her fitful sleep, certain again that she’d lost her mind for going back to drag the obstinate fool away.
After witnessing the showdown with Shepherd, watching as the hulking killer spoke as softly as he could even though he was clearly furious, Maryanne couldn’t wrap her head around it. When she’d been forced to work for him, she had seen him at his most ferocious, and it was nothing compared to the cautious demeanor he displayed to his mate.
The man was fucking terrifying. But just for a moment there, Maryanne had seen it. He’d been desperate.
Pair-bonds were strange things, a condition Maryanne had purposely chosen to avoid until the day she died. Who would want to give up their freedom and be tied to another person forever? The very idea was repulsive. Sex was sex—and Maryanne loved sex—but the urge to forge a tie, to bind oneself… no thank you!
As an Alpha female, options of whom you could fuck ranged far and wide, and fear of getting knocked up was basically non-existent. The only way to ovulate required the use of hormone injections or a male Omega in heat to inspire such an event. Maryanne didn’t have a thing for scrawny guys, which was good, since the likelihood of finding a male Omega was pretty dismal. It was Beta boys she preferred, though a girl now and then had been fun, too.
Being born an Alpha had been a boon. She was stronger, aggressive, quick, and able to move through society in a position people like Claire coveted. The small thing in her arms had always resented her dynamic, even when they were little. Maryanne couldn’t blame her. Once Claire’s scent began to fill the room with sweetness instead of just little kid stink, the world started treating her like she was made out of glass. That was half the reason Maryanne had dragged her into more… interesting pursuits.
Childhood shenanigans had been good for Claire.
Or were, until Claire began to hide what she was under the practiced mask of a Beta—the pills, special soap. It was sad to see someone try so hard to be something else.
Considering the alternative of being bonded in a heated stupor with no real protection if the Alpha went against the Omega’s wishes, it was understandable.
After all, look what had happened to Claire’s mom—the paragon of the downside. It was no surprise Claire had never embraced her true nature. Looking at her now, Maryanne wondered if the dark-haired woman even knew the absolute finality of her bond with Shepherd, and the lengths to which he would go to recapture his mate.
Or he would just kill her… he probably would kill her after tonight, at least.
Grinning stupidly, Maryanne thought back on Claire’s taunts and the burning vehemence practically rising like flames from the giant. Maryanne would have paid good money to watch that show. If she wasn’t so anxious that Shepherd was going to rip the wall off the side of her den and come to fetch back his very unbalanced mate, she would have probably laughed at how perfectly Claire had owned him. She’d got her prisoners out, she’d stood alone against the Followers, she’d even threatened to kill herself and probably would have… simply to give the Omegas more time to follow through with the second half of the plan.
But Claire had always been a stubborn, sentimental fool.
A little fool that was clinging to her in sleep with a face so full of misery, Maryanne almost didn’t recognize her. Claire was ten kinds of messed up. It was more than the scrapes and bruises, or the gross state of her feet; it was something in her makeup. The Omega female stood like a marionette missing a few strings—not at all the spirited girl she had been when they were kids. A small part of Maryanne wanted to ask what had happened. The larger, more reasonable part, was determined to wash her hands of this trouble as soon as possible. Whatever was going on between Claire and Shepherd, whatever had caused Claire to provoke a man of his size and deadliness, Maryanne did not want to get dragged into it.
Defiled, manipulated, betrayed, and broken…
Well, that happened to everyone. Apparently it was just Claire’s turn. Threading her fingers into the tousled, sooty hair, Maryanne began to comb out the knots.
Claire pressed nearer, a whimper catching in her throat. ‘Shepherd…‘
And that was the final reason Maryanne would not be able to keep her. Everything went back to that pair-bond. Claire might be fighting it, might be fueled by rage and pain, but eventually she would waver and crack. It was inevitable, a tie of souls or some such nonsense. So long as she was running wild, Shepherd would hunt her, be fixated on a rampage, and Maryanne was not going to get trampled when nothing would change the outcome. She didn’t owe Claire a damn thing; in fact, the way it looked now, Claire owed her.
Maryanne closed her eyes and cursed Shepherd to hell.
When she woke, there was no need to make a complicated decision regarding her lodger; Claire had made it for her. The little black-haired Omega was gone.
It was strange to walk through Thólos.
Claire may as well have been walking through the apocalypse. Everything she saw was far worse than the nightmare where the rabid pack was chasing her through the streets. Nothing seemed alive; no stores were open, no restaurants offered food. Buildings stood in shambles, broken glass and debris scattered about. Even bodies were left in the streets to freeze.
As her stroll continued, the warmth of Maryanne’s bed leached away as if Claire had never known the comfort. She wandered, confused… wishing she could unsee all of it. In less than a year the city had become a wasteland, another world that poisoned all it touched with frost, ice, and loss.
Shepherd’s plan had been a success. Thólos was destroying itself, and all the man had to do was sit back and watch.
A whoosh of breath left her lungs and Claire stopped walking. Hunched against the wall was a dead child—blue, frozen—a little boy no older than nine.
Kneeling over the stiff corpse, Claire reached out and brushed back his matted hair, wondering how Shepherd could think this child’s death would satisfy his plan. What great lesson would society learn by a lost life no soul would remember?
Slumping to the kid’s side, mimicking the body’s posture, Claire tried to find a reason for any of it. Tragedy in Thólos was nothing new; since the occupation, orphan children died all the time.
More children were orphaned every day.
This was the new norm.
And who took them in? Where were they to go?
The people failed. Claire was not even sure if she could justify it anymore, not after seeing this. Leaning her head to the side she rested her cheek on the dead boy’s hair and stared forward. There was no pleasure in her freedom or her view of the sky… there had not even been a sense of victory at her success freeing the Omegas.
Even in Maryanne’s company she had only played the part, falsified emotion on instinct.
Closing her eyes, she let out a breath, ruffling the stiff brown hair under her lips. There was no point in being Claire anymore; instead she would be nothing, as hollow as Thólos had allowed itself to become.
It was the sound of a sob that woke her, and for a moment she thought it was from the boy she slept against. Waking abruptly, her bleary eyes darted around and found nothing—just the same empty alley and the same piles of icy garbage. The only difference from before was the darkness, a thing her eyes adjusted to quickly after so long underground.
Oblivious to the freezing cold, Claire stood, ignoring the crack of stiff knees. Her pillow, the forgotten corpse, sat as rigid as before, the child staring forward into the same future as hers… into nothing.
Claire claimed him, and with more strength than she felt, she hoisted the boy up on her back, the corpse’s limbs not easy to manage.
Not a soul disturbed her as she walked with her macabre prize through the streets of hell.
