Reborn (Alpha's Claim Book 3) (20 page)

“Shepherd is not there!” Corday climbed off the bench to glare down at her. “Do you hear me? Shepherd is dead. He was a monster. He hurt you! He hurt a lot of people! What you think you felt for him was forced by the pair-bond and the baby he drugged you to create. Pure manipulation. You didn’t love him!”

Corday had figured out a long time ago that she’d need time, having sat in the hearings as the government officials pieced together what they had learned from inspecting her cell, her paintings underground, the nature of her rape. There was a reason so few Follower bodies were found. They had used the ancient transport ships docked atop the Citadel. They had abandoned Thólos... Shepherd had tried to get her out of the city. Even the letter on the wall made that clear. It was the only good thing he’d ever done for her, and Shepherd had failed at it. And in the fucked up half-drugged reality the doctors kept her in, his Claire could not see what was right before her, as if she had shifted the blame to that bitch Svana and didn’t remember the truth of her history.

Fighting to control his temper, Corday put a hand on her shoulder and turned her to face him, purring as loud as he could to cut through whatever sound her mind was creating. “Claire, I am a living breathing man and I do love you. I would never hurt you. And I am willing to wait for you to get your head together, but you have to open your eyes and accept facts.”

A little suspicious, the Omega remained silent, her ears pricked as she listened to the Beta purr. Shepherd’s was still louder, it was richer, and it was far more beautiful.

That night after Corday left, Claire lay in her bed in the dark and waited for the phantom hand to touch her hair. Sniffing into her pillow, she felt the throb of the link, the twist that came to warm her insides when she was lonely.

It had been almost a year, and though her body had healed, her spirit was adrift.

Corday was deluding himself; the Beta would never understand. Whatever future he had imagined could never exist. She would rather die than mate another man. And though it had never been officially said to her face, she knew there was no leaving the room and walled garden they kept her in... unless she submitted to another Alpha. This was her prison, why else would the guards walk the halls with assault rifles and every door be locked like a vault? Even her windows were inches thick glass, seemingly unbreakable, probably bulletproof.

She never talked about Shepherd. She never talked about Svana. And only once in those horrible group therapy sessions had she been able to speak about the rape. And she’d spoken, and spoken, and spoken until she was screaming and threw up all over the floor. They had kept her sedated for days afterward. Several times Premier Dane had come to speak with her about the event and Claire refused to even look at the woman. All the Omega had wanted was the noise that wasn’t supposed to be there and the dreams that occasionally fought through the drugs where Shepherd held her in their nest, whispering that he loved her.

Though Claire knew it was only the rush of the wind against the side of the Dome, it was as if she could hear him, calling to her. And like she always did, she slipped her toes from the covers and left the warmth of her bed to look out the window, hoping that for once she might actually see the man waiting on the horizon.

The nightgown swished around her legs as she crept to the glass doors to look out at the blizzard on the other side of the Dome, and heard him again, louder.

She was done with this place and hollow echoes, if he was calling her to the storm, that’s where she would go.

Claire had seen the code enough times to punch in the correct order of numbers until the mechanical hiss of the lock being thrown met her ears. She went outside, clambered to the highest point of the Dome she could reach, needing to stand in the wind, to hear
little one
once more.

The blasting cold on her face as she wandered through the ripping gale, climbing towards the source of that call, rushing through the driving snow, ignoring the sting of her feet.

He was there.

Claire could see him, blurry, standing like a mountain, the golden thread between them singing, chiming with each nearer step. All she had to do was climb over the side of the safety rail and take the hand he offered.

So she did.

Violent wind whipped her hair around, she ignored it. She ignored everything.

He was so close, and the glow of his eyes was full of pleasure to see her. It was so loud in the storm, like thunder and pounding of a beast’s heart, but Claire smiled and never wavered in her purpose. Not even when the bitter cold waved around her and began to leach away her strength. So long as she could see those smiling eyes, the fact she was falling was meaningless. Because his arms were around her and the sharp needles of pain seemed to drain away until only black warmth remained.

It was a small service, closed to the public and attended by less than six people. Nona French gave the eulogy, the homilies were lovely, and the people who actually cared about her, devastated.

It had been an absolute nightmare for Corday. He sat there, the Premier in the seat beside him, and glared at the empty coffin while he worked his jaw.

The date of Claire O’Donnell’s death had been two weeks prior, but the fucking North Wing doctors would not release the body. He had screamed, railed, threatened to bring the wrath of god down if they did not hand her over. Yet they continued to claim that her plummet off the crossing had left the body in pieces, so they delivered ashes in place of a corpse.

Corday had absolutely lost it.

Omegas were supposed to return to the earth, the death ritual burial... Dane’s bastards had desecrated her.

When word traveled between the wretches subsisting underground that the infamous Claire O’Donnell had killed herself, she was suddenly a saint in their eyes. It was sickening. Those same people had treated her name like a curse, had blamed her for their suffering after Thólos’s liberation. Now the tragedy of her suicide opened their eyes?

People were disgusting.

On the dank walls underground, pictures of her were pasted everywhere Corday turned.

The Premier even called a day of mourning, and Thólos had a fucking ten minute moment of silence.

Corday had gone through her loss once when she’d disappeared from the Omega sanctuary. It was nothing to the pain he was in now. Everything had gone wrong; furthermore, the guilt was killing him.

Why had they not given him the body? Was the fall really so bad she was totally unrecognizable? Thinking back over the last year, obsessing over every last detail, Corday searched for the thread that would explain away his building feeling of foreboding.

How many times had he sat in the softly colored blue room with her when she had hardly been lucid enough to speak? Why were they constantly sedating her?

Claire had never complained about it... and he wondered if she’d had the mental capacity to understand the extent to which they controlled her. She was just one small Omega the Premier kept sequestered like a pampered pet.

Why had they not pulled the plug when she refused to breathe for weeks after she had been found in the Citadel?

And the doctors had been so possessive of not only her, but of the things Claire kept in her room... like she was some specimen, or experiment, and everyone wanted to see what she would do.

Corday began to have a sinking feeling whatever they had been pumping into her was not for her benefit, but for theirs. That was why they would not release her body—they wanted to poke around inside first, to take her apart.

Did they think she knew where the virus was? Had they been using pharmaceuticals to try and pry it out of her?

Corday had slunk around the building that imprisoned her enough times to know, the North Wing was exactly what it claimed to be: a refuge for Omegas who could not protect themselves had they been forced to live with the masses in the Undercroft. So why had they kept him away? And then why had they suddenly given him carte blanche to visit her? The doctors were aware he was gently courting her. In hindsight it seemed almost as if they encouraged it, even the less than congenial Premier Dane.

He’d always assumed it had been beneficial to her recovery.

But that went back to the original question. If she was recovering, then why was she constantly sedated?

After the funeral, he returned underground. Sitting on a worn chair, tucked into the small stone grotto where he slept, Corday stared into space, distracted by the injustice of the situation.

Something was very wrong. Why did he feel like everyone, including Dane, was lying to him?

He waited until nightfall before sneaking into the Premier’s Sector.

He cornered Dane alone in her office, and put a knife to her throat. “What did you do to her?”

Even as he threatened her life, the Alpha had looked somewhat impressed. “You saw for yourself, we were only trying to help Claire.”

In the months he’d had access to the Omega, he’d been blinded by his own joy, had stopped asking questions and stirring up the people underground. He could see it now—that’s why Dane had let him near her.

He let the blade dig in until a line of blood dripped along the sharp edge. “You’ve lied to me enough.”

“You were the one who unleashed Svana on us, who pointed Shepherd’s men at our resistance.” Hissing, trying to pull her neck away from the blade, Premier Dane growled, “You cannot be trusted, Corday. Be glad that I let you live, allowed you to continue work as an Enforcer, and that no one knows what your part really was in the suffering of our people.”

The words cut him deeper than his knife pricked her throat. “You know the circumstance, the reasons, for why I did what I did.”

“Yes.” Dane did not say more.

“I want to see pictures of Claire’s body. I want proof she’s dead.”

Continuing to appear unperturbed by Corday’s threat, Dane gestured to her desk’s COMscreen. “Patient file 142.”

Withdrawing the knife, Corday typed in the file name. There was a year’s worth of gathered data on Claire: physician notes, photographs of her paintings, a log of her treatment. At the end of it all was a series of disturbing images. The face of the dark-hair corpse had been crushed on impact. It was just gone. Something had darkened her skin to grey, left it blotchy in the places where bone stuck out.”

“It took us three days to find where she’d landed in the Lower Reaches. We don’t even know how she got out of the North Wing. The only video we have is of her walking down the hallway, alone.”

“Why does her skin look like that?”

“The heat of her body melted the sludge just enough that it encapsulated the corpse. Sewage leeched into her, there was some kind of chemical reaction.”

Corday cut her a hateful look. “I know you Dane.”

A frown defined the wrinkles on her cheek. “I know you do.”

It’s what she wasn’t saying, what she’d never say... because unlike him, Premier Dane knew how to keep her mouth shut.

Since the breech, it had been a hard two years for everyone under the Dome, perhaps even hardest for Dane. Now that she was Premier, she had the responsibility of every person above ground and below. Day in and day out she toiled with her cabinet, organizing repair crews, trying to figure out how to keep livestock and crops alive without sun. Her people were starving, several had gone mad.

It didn’t matter that she was warm in the Premier’s Dome. The weight of the world was grinding her down. Corday knew it, he didn’t judge her for it, but he did hold her accountable for everything concerning Claire.

Dane offered him one small hint. “If I could have unhooked Claire from the ventilator, I would have done it. But, so long as the virus is still unaccounted for, it was not a safe risk to take for the people of Thólos.”

Eyes narrowed, Corday stood totally confused. “What?”

“I did everything in my power to keep the Omega safe, well fed, and happy.” She wasn’t defensive, she wasn’t explaining herself to Corday, Dane was merely stating facts.

As if the reason was suddenly obvious, Corday’s eyes grew wide. Horrified, the man felt the yet unseen nightmare sink in.

There was only one reason a pragmatic woman like Dane would have done such a thing.

The reports were a lie. Shepherd had never died.

That’s why Claire had heard him; that’s why they sedated her... and every purr she had imagined had been real, sent from his side of the link to comfort his distressed mate as she recovered.

“Did she kill herself?”

Dane shook her head because the truth was not quite so easy. “She left her room and wandered out into the storm... we found a body.”

Heart in his throat, Corday demanded, “WAS IT HERS?”

The greying, exhausted woman only offered a whisper. “All tests were inconclusive. We don’t know.”

The End

Addison L. Cain was born in sunny California, but found herself drawn to dwell in older, history-rich places. Japan, Ireland, Qatar, and now Washington DC, Addison is always on the move, always eager to immerse herself in new cultures and people. Her stories reflect the antiquities she loves: deep and sometimes very dark. Driven to push her characters beyond the pale, Addison’s books are not for the faint of heart.

An alumni of California State University Fullerton, she earned a degree in Japanese and spent years in Asia studying indigenous Japanese religion. Primeval forests and worn pathways have led to her obsession with gardening. Her Great Dane approves, loping around the yard and getting into mischief. Unfortunately the cat has to watch from a window, and because Addison is a total sucker for his sad golden eyes, he gets hours of belly rubs and too many treats.

Visit her website here:

http://www.addisonlcain.com

Don’t miss these exciting titles by Addison Cain and Blushing Books!

Born to be Bound: Alpha's Claim Book One

Born To Be Broken: Alpha's Claim Book Two

A Trick of the Light

Available Summer 2016:

Reborn: Alpha's Claim Book Three