Nona had been expecting the young Enforcer, and walked forward to greet him. ‘When you did not return I was worried you’d been killed. Claire assured me you were not—said she could feel you still lived.’
There had been no chance to sneak off with Leslie demanding so much of his time. Three days he’d worked on translating the Followers’ written language. Every hour they learned more, but at the cost of time he needed to be with Claire. Had he been here, he could have stopped Claire’s lunacy. ‘Do you know what she did?’
Nodding, Nona gave a tired smile. ‘I do.’
Corday held up the crumpled flyer. ‘How could you allow it, Nona?’
‘There is no stopping that girl now.’ Nona gripped his arm, trying to get the boy to see what was right before him. ‘There is no stopping what’s coming.’
Corday cocked his head and had to agree. ‘You’re right. Claire unleashed a storm of trouble with this shit.’
‘Corday—’
He didn’t want to argue with an old woman. Corday wanted to argue with Claire. ‘At least tell me she is here.’
‘She is with the boy.’
Corday narrowed his eyes, teeth clenched. ‘What boy?’
‘Her dead boy.’
‘Oh…’
‘She buried him in the compost pile out back.’ When Corday shifted away, Nona gripped his arm again, stopping the Beta so she might speak her piece. ‘Claire only just returned. She is tired; don’t expect much.’
Not interested in wasting more time, Corday held his tongue, marching right through Omegas who were less than happy he’d called again. A reinforced door swung in, sunlight invaded, and there she was, head bowed over a freshly turned pile of dirt.
The angle of the building hid her from view, forcing Shepherd to shift from his perch and move like a shadow over the roof. And then there she was, still as a statue, less than thirty feet away, staring down at a small mound of snow-dusted earth. Captivated, Shepherd let out a breath, watching the Beta approach her.
It was as if she didn’t register Corday—not until the Enforcer shoved the flyer under her nose. ‘What is this?’
The Omega brushed the hair off her face, rubbing her skull as if it ached. ‘A picture of me naked.’
‘Do you think this is funny?’ Corday snapped, working hard to keep from raising his voice. ‘Do you realize what you’ve done, Claire? Everyone will know. There will be no safety in anonymity, EVER!’
She would not need anonymity, but she did need Corday to move. ‘You are standing on my boy.’
After a quick exhale, Corday stepped off the mound, pulling her to him. He hugged too hard, his voice breaking. ‘Your message… it is going to cost you any type of life. You will be hounded until the day you die.’
The Omega pushed away, sniffed, and wiped her tears with the heel of her hand. ‘I know what I did. I know you cannot understand, that our agendas don’t line up, but I cannot wait for the resistance to stop dragging its feet. There is no hero, Corday. There is no savior. Thólos has become hell and I cannot even heap the blame for it at Shepherd’s feet. What has happened here, we did to ourselves. Either the citizens see what complacency in the face of evil has cost them, or they are all going to die.’
Corday pressed his hands to his face to keep his frustration in check. ‘Are you trying to inspire a revolution? You promised me you would not attack Shepherd’s men.’
Claire took his hands, pulling them down so he could look at her. She looked like death; exhausted, dark marks under her eyes. ‘It is not an attack on Shepherd. It’s an attack on conscience. It’s an attack on the people of Thólos.’
Why couldn’t she understand? ‘They will hate you…’
‘I don’t care.’ Claire took a step back, her temper flaring. ‘I told you there was nothing left for me. Don’t you get it yet? This is all I can give, so let me give it and stop being so goddamn selfish!’
He tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, saying, ‘Survival is not selfish. Citizens who hate the bastard will simply kill you for sport. This was suicide.’
Claire’s voice was flat, steady as she affirmed the obvious. ‘I know.’
‘Have you lost your mind?’
She licked her chapped lips. ‘Look at me, Corday. I’m running out of steam, I throw up everything I eat; sleep gives me no peace… I am already dying.’
‘You are not dying, you are killing yourself!’ the Beta shouted, clutching her shoulders as if he might shake sense into her ‘If you would just rest… If you would come home with me, I could take care of you.’
‘No.’
‘Aside from Nona, the Omegas hardly tolerate your presence here. It’s only a matter of time before you’re cast out.’ Why wouldn’t she see that he could cherish her? ‘Why won’t you listen to reason?’
‘I CHOOSE HOW TO SPEND MY LIFE! NOT YOU, NOT SHEPHERD, NOT SENATOR KANTOR, NOT THE FUCKING PEOPLE OF THÓLOS. DO YOU HEAR ME, BETA?’
He had never once seen her with such fire in her eyes. ‘You’re upset.’
Throwing her hands up in the air, Claire agreed, ‘Of course I’m fucking upset! All I want to do is scream. Knowing that all I can offer Thólos is a naked picture on a flyer makes me loathe myself. How DARE YOU reprimand the fact that at least I am trying to do something while I still can? Your precious resistance does nothing!’
‘Claire.’ He reached out to hold her, soothing what made her tremble and cry. ‘Please…’
‘I can’t be what you want me to be,’ she sobbed against his chest. ‘I can hardly be myself anymore.’
‘I am sorry,’ Corday whispered, his heart breaking to see her so sad. ‘Don’t cry. I will purr for you, and you can rest. Okay? I should not have shouted.’
His offered low vibration began, Claire weeping like a child in his arms. Her arms went around him, her broken apologies lost in the wretchedness.
Muttering nonsense, Corday stroked her hair. ‘We’ll go inside, we’ll eat and you won’t get sick… I will stay so that you can sleep.’
He had to carry her and she let him, clinging to his neck as if he would disappear otherwise.
From a distance, Shepherd fought every instinct that told him to rush in and take her from the man comforting what was his. He hardly registered Jules’s hand gripping his forearm, the silent reminder to be still and measure the consequences. Because it was clear now his second-in-command was correct. Even if he dragged her back, she would not survive in this state.
Claire had lost the will to live.
Throughout the day, Shepherd observed her actions inside the reeking plant. Corday was correct in his assessment. The Omegas avoided her and Claire seemed utterly unconcerned as she kept to her corner, purposefully distancing herself. All but the old woman had turned on the very catalyst of their freedom.
Envisioning a long row of women swinging, their hanged corpses on display to any who would deny his mate, Shepherd measured each wary look they turned towards Claire, even hating the women who gently ignored the suffering, dark-haired girl.
They were all unworthy of her, every single one; just like this city of lies and evil.
The Beta did tend to her, made her eat and held back her hair twenty minutes later when it all came up. He fed her again, pressured the small thing to drink water, all the while holding her in his lap, chest to chest, her legs wrapped around his torso, as if she were a child or his lover. The second serving seemed to stay down and in minutes Claire was dead to the world, snoring on his shoulder.
It was impossible to hear the exchange between Nona French and the Enforcer, especially with the man’s lips pressed against Claire’s hair. Eventually the Beta lay down, and the old woman pulled the man’s long coat over the pair.
The dark arrived, Claire cried out in her sleep. When Corday’s horrified eyes looked up to find Nona’s sympathetic expression, Shepherd focused on the movement of the Enforcer’s mouth and watched his lips form the words.
‘She just called for Shepherd.’
The absolutely crestfallen expression on the hated Enforcer’s face brought a curl to Shepherd’s own lips. The Beta might be the one holding her, but even damaged as the bond was, his Omega’s mind was full of thoughts of her rightful mate. A sign from the Gods, a reminder to them all, that Claire was his.
Claire woke less haggard. ‘I am feeling better. Thank you.’
In a voice so low that no member of the spying Followers could hear, Corday pressed his lips to her ear and whispered, ‘Claire, it’s going to be over soon, we have access to their communications now. So hold on. Hold on until I can kill him. I swear to you I will.’
Doing her best to pretend she wasn’t ill, Claire nodded and kissed his cheek. ‘I have a great deal of faith in you, Corday. You are a wonder.’
‘And you will be free.’
‘I will,’ she acknowledged, eyes soft.
Slender fingers carefully pulled off her mother’s wedding band. Under their makeshift blanket, she took Corday’s hand and slipped the band on his pinky.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I want you to keep this for me.’ Claire smiled as she gave her token. ‘A reminder, so that you don’t forget I’m rooting for you.’
She was making him uneasy. ‘I can’t keep this.’
‘I am only lending it,’ she corrected, squeezing his hand. ‘You are to give it back to me when Thólos is free.’
He hugged her, felt his heart soar. ‘Claire. I have faith in you, too.’
‘You are my hero, you know.’
Corday wanted to kiss her, was so very tempted to thread his fingers in her hair and pull her lips to his. But that was not what they were; that was not what she could be…
At least not yet.
‘Now,’ Claire broke the moment, shy. ‘You need to get out of here before the sun comes up. If I don’t feel you’re safe, I’ll worry.’
Already untangling herself, she eased out of his embrace. Corday was not allowed to linger, Claire urging him to leave before light might make his journey dangerous. It was obvious he did not want to go, but she seemed so much better, her eyes more alive and a smile on her lips when she spoke.
The Beta retreated. The second he was gone far enough down the causeway not to hear her, Claire doubled over, and quietly lost her stomach all over the frost by the chute.
Corday did not hear her vomiting, nor did he see even a hint of the Followers that had surrounded him so flawlessly when he stepped out of her sight. He popped his collar to warm his neck, and shuffled off with his hands buried deep in his pockets—smiling.
Shepherd left Corday in the hands of Jules’s team, his attention on his ill Omega and the change that came over Claire the instant the boy was gone. The false smile fell, and she moved far from the group and their fires to sit in solitude, as if invisibly drawn nearer to the place where Shepherd hid in the dark.
He could almost reach out and touch her.
Once comfortable, the female pulled a worn book out of her pocket and lay back to read. Shepherd cocked a brow. His little mate was reading a book he knew by heart, The Art of War. It was oddly endearing, the man imagining future conversations about the text.
What was her favorite passage?
Claire read while most of the women still slept; she read the same book she had read every day since she had found it, and let her eyes linger on memorized quotes. Sometimes she fancied that it was like reading a segment of Shepherd’s soul. She could see his mentality in the book, his tactics, and sought vainly to understand—fixated to the point where she did not notice that Nona stirred.
The old woman prepared instant coffee, readying a serving for Claire.
‘What wisdom do you have for me today?’ Nona asked, pressing a steaming cup of swill into the young woman’s hands.
Claire tossed the book on the ground as she always did when done with it, treating it badly. ‘According to Sun Tzu, great results can be achieved with small forces… But I choose to interpret that as: pissing off a bunch of women is a really bad idea.’
The old Omega chuckled softly, eyes dancing as she watched Claire sip the coffee and grimace.
Nona stroked back Claire’s dark hair and teased, ‘You always did love your cappuccinos, but I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.’
Looking down at the shitty watered down beverage, Claire tried to banter. ‘I have many reasons to hate Shepherd, but reason number one is that I have not had a decent cup of joe since I was run out of my home… the jerk.’
Her friend offered a soft chuckle.
Claire took another sip of the steaming brown water. With Nona at her side she sat in miserable stillness, her bloodshot eyes growing resolute. She did not know what was causing it, but her ennui was beginning to fade. What was replacing it was acutely painful.
She had altered… crushing indifference warring with an unbearable sense of loss.
She should have felt victorious—she didn’t. She should have felt pride; she’d forgotten even knowing such a sensation.
Nona was speaking some nonsense about the coming sunrise, Claire robotically drinking the tasteless beverage. When the brew was finished, the cup was set aside.
It was time.
Claire stood up and just walked away, leaving her friend without a goodbye.
She would see the sky for herself, observe the sunrise alone. But it would not move her. The sky had lost its magic.
The old woman watched her go, watched as dark hair disappeared… and knew Claire had made her choice.
Outside it was cold, colder every day. Claire wrapped her arms around her body and stumbled away from the Omega’s haven. There had been no direction in her death march, but somehow she found herself standing at the edge of the Thólos water reserve. The top had crusted with ice, covered in white as blank and colorless as she had become inside. But if she squinted, she could see through it to a world of water, where everything was washed clean.
Tucking a loose piece of hair behind her ear, she shivered and waited for the cloud heavy sky outside the Dome to glow. Just as it turned an off-shade of pink, Claire felt that if she allowed any pleasure from such a moment, pain would seep through instead. The only way to continue was to feel nothing forever. So she took a step forward, then another one, and alone out in the earliest gloomy light of the morning, Claire walked the ice.
There was no question of hesitation; her work was done. She had completed her mission, given everything she could. She had earned her release from prison. Air crisp on her face, the unmistakable smell of cold, it began to soothe where salty tears burned her cheeks.
Those first steps and the ice already began to whisper complaint. The next ten paces were met with misleading silence. Claire chose to fill the quiet with the customary Omega prayer whispered into the wind:
‘Beloved Goddess of Omegas, great Mother who nurtures and protects,
I thank you for the life you granted me.’
It was not until she was standing near the center of the reservoir before the sound she anticipated arrived—the crushing threat of cracks and imminent death.
‘I am your image. I am your delight. For you hold me in your care. Watch over the world—’
‘Do not move, little one.’
The first thought at hearing the sound of that commanding voice was that she should have known he would be there. The devil would have to witness her final moments. There could have been no other way.
Her focus left the horizon and moved down towards her feet, to the fractured pattern that bloomed under her stolen boots. Claire sucked in a slow breath, felt it stretch her chest, and glanced over her shoulder. ‘The city is a horror show and I don’t have anything left. You win, Shepherd.’
‘You willfully misunderstand,’ the urgent coarseness of his voice was insistent… nervous. ‘Svana would have killed you had I not…’
Claire felt her mouth form a small smile at the man behind her. ‘At least I know what made you the way you are. It wasn’t only your life in the Undercroft. It was her.’
Shepherd held out his hand, his eyes wide and unblinking. ‘It was the only way I could appease her and keep you.’
A look of pity—and it was pity she felt—saddened Claire’s face. ‘You tell that lie almost as if you actually believe it. The choice you made was not the only way; it was the way you chose. You chose to do that horrible thing… to do many horrible things… for her.’
Shepherd’s lips wavered, he looked confused. When he spoke next, it seemed as if the words were foreign to him, ‘If I was to offer an apology, would it make any difference?’
‘No.’
‘Then I will offer this instead.’ He stretched his hand out farther. ‘If you return to me, I will give you what you want. I will leave the Omegas in peace and see that they are left alone. You have my word.’
Claire hummed, her attention returning to the cracking ice under her feet.
He tried again, determined. ‘Svana will not be allowed near you; nor will I ever touch her in that manner again.’
Claire ignored him.
Exasperated, he gritted out, ‘I will even allow you to see your sky.’
She mouthed the words, spoke them as if the very idea meant nothing anymore, ‘My sky…’
‘I will care for you.’
Water fell from her eyes, ran down her cheeks. Her voice was so sad. ‘It almost sounds like you mean it… how funny.’
It took a great deal of effort for Shepherd to manage the last inducement. ‘I will spare the Beta, Enforcer Corday, whose death will otherwise be very slow and painful.’
That was the tipping point. The hazy quality of her green eyes sharpened and her soft lips pressed into a firm line. She listened closely.
‘I am offering you the lives of forty-two people, little one.’ Shepherd employed a voice of reason, his purr rumbling to show sincerity.
Claire looked at his upturned palm, at the largeness of it, the lines and the calluses. She thought of Corday, of his vow to free the city… of everything that had been whispered between them in the dark. She thought of the child she felt utter indifference for, and put a hand to her stomach.
‘That is right, little one, think of our baby.’
She would never allow Shepherd’s evil or that horrible woman to have the child, but she could buy Corday time. If he failed, she would kill herself and the life growing inside her before it might be born; she could do that, and she would. The smooth turn of her step, the little movement necessary to face the giant made the ice crack further, yet still she stood above what should have been her watery grave.
Shepherd knew she would say yes, that she would subject herself to him to save every life he’d mentioned. Claire could already feel it through a link that should not have been there; a burning barb knocking about where her lungs fought to expand. Her breath hitched painfully, and she fisted the leather of her jacket over her heart. ‘There is one more life I want.’
‘Who?’
Despite the invasion of the clawing worm, Claire sneered at the Alpha. ‘I will only tell you if you give me your unequivocal word that this person will never come to harm.’
‘And if I do this, you will return to me and live fully as my mate?’ It was what he wanted, he could see it, feel her just a little bit more through the link, and he did not stop the malicious greedy evil that fostered his grin.
She felt his pleasure, glanced into rapacious eyes, and saw every ounce of his desperate elation. ‘Yes.’
Shepherd nodded and crooked his fingers. ‘You have my word.’
‘Maryanne Cauley.’
There was a flash of insight, a minute narrowing of the eyes. The Alpha nodded in understanding—the slippery traitor… Maryanne Cauley, a prisoner who’d once sworn her allegiance to him in exchange for safe haven in the Undercroft, was the one who had helped Claire free her Omegas.
Claire took a step towards total abasement, cursing the Gods when the march to Shepherd did not shatter the ice and suck her down. The weight of her cold fingers she set in his, not returning the smile when the devil’s hand engulfed hers. Shepherd touched her face, and she instinctively jerked away when the heat of his palm cupped her cheek.
His large thumb brushed away the line of tears, he knew she was in pain by the burden of the intensifying bond clawing its way past her resistance.
Intense, overexcited, he reached for her, unwilling to wait another moment to cart her home. Claire continued to fight the claim, clutching at her heart, battling to maintain the sense of endless nothing that had carried her to the ice. She did not want to be Claire anymore, oblivion had become her armor. If there was no Claire there was no pain. Nothingness was her pride… then she remembered she had no pride. She had lost it all the day she started to care for the man cradling her in his arms.
As if he knew her thoughts, he gripped her a bit tighter to his chest and gloated. ‘Forty-three lives, Claire.’
Her eyes screwed shut at his use of her name, the unwelcome anguish at the memory of the only other time he had spoken it ruining her. She lost the war—Claire felt something: the hurt and grief she had been unable to feel that day, and everything shattered.
Her pick-up had been organized with military precision. Shepherd held his reclaimed prize, purring loudly in arrogant triumph as he carried her through the subterranean halls towards his den.
It seemed a waste of noise. The purr was not soothing Claire; she was past comfort as the worm inside her swelled, each breath hurt, corrupted and hated.
The sound of the deadbolt, the finality of the moment, all this went past her as she fought so very hard not to show what she was feeling—not to give him the pleasure of acknowledging he had the power to hurt her again. But he wouldn’t stop touching, he even pried her fingers from where she clutched at her chest so he might rub the heat of his palm where she was so very clearly pained.
Shepherd encouraged the meltdown because he knew what was tearing at her insides. ‘We will start afresh,’ he crooned, his huge hands pulling at the layers she was dressed in, stripping her clothing just as he stripped away her freedom, ‘my little mate.’
Green eyes flew open, full of outrage, full of all the seething vehemence she should have screamed at him two weeks prior. ‘Mate? MATE? You are less than nothing to me! A deceiving monster I abhor. You are depraved; you disgust me! What you did was unforgivable. I HATE YOU!’
Even as she screamed, even as she beat against him, he stroked, he hushed.
Claire ranted, the stream of vileness bouncing off grey walls, until screams turned to great soul-wrenching sobs. She cried so very hard she could hardly draw breath. She begged him to kill her, cursed him to hell for tempting her from the ice, and only found the softness of the mattress under her back his answer to her pleas. Those great hands were everywhere, tracing the scrapes, the stitches in her knee, exploring every bruise, until Shepherd commenced his inspection with a long possessive stroke of his fingertips along the outline of his still healing claiming marks.
There seemed to be no end to the agony of the cancerous tether inside her, it twisted like an outraged alligator, tearing out her organs. She had her eyes shut tight, trying to will it all away, until naked lips came to her chest, to the very spot that had been so corrupted. Claire began to fight back, shrieking like a banshee. There was no stopping his penetration, or the throaty groan that escaped him at feeling her tight heat gripping his cock. Shepherd suckled her breasts, ran his teeth lightly over her neck, tried to kiss her mouth between licking away the tears and restraining her flailing.
The sounds from the beast, the soft noise that issued forth over the rending of her brokenhearted wails were those of a thirsty man who had finally been given water. Every stroke of her tight velvet channel as he thrust his cock lifted him closer to that unattainable heaven; to freedom. She was his again, trapped and tied, and he would take her any way he could—even if she hated him, even if she was only a slave to the bond. Because he needed her.
He growled so low and deep it made her flutter and ooze, made her shriek in horrified hatred, and he moaned into her mouth at the slick and scent. Taking what he needed, he rode her gently, spread her legs wide to see the thickness jutting from his groin enter her over and over. Rolling his hips and toying with her nub, he stole what he demanded and the wave blasted through her resistance until Claire reached a shattering, uncomfortable climax that made her arch and choke.
He drove her back powerfully against the bed, knotted as deep as he could, and shared her completion, filling her with heat, with his very essence, breathing hard at her ear as he groaned the words, ‘I love you, little one.’
It did not lessen her pain, it only cut her deeper.
Claire keened as Shepherd held her through it all; still gushing, still knotted, swearing he would never let her go.
