Reborn (Alpha's Claim Book 3) (18 page)

There was so much blood, Claire clung to the woman with the soft eyes, the one who had come to save take her from the pool of pain and take her out of that cage. She only had the jacket and her long hair to cover her, but once they were clear of the tunnels, the Enforcer tried to wipe her down with her own shirt, cleaning the wounds as best she could, while Claire leaned against the wall in a stupor and felt more of her insides slip out.

“They killed my son,” that was all she could manage, confused and unsure where she was.

“You are miscarrying.” The older woman nodded sympathetically. “Yes.”

The sounds of a battle raged all through the
city,
and Claire dimly recognized what it must mean. A revolution had begun. That’s why strangers were rushing by. That’s why the woman had saved her.

It did not fill Claire with the rush it should have, there was too much pain for that. But somewhere past the shock she knew, though her life was over, at least a few would be redeemed.

Under the support of Brigadier Dane’s arms, Claire tried to walk through the heaving crowds. Her savior was shouting over the mob, calling for a medic, a doctor, anyone who might staunch the Omega’s wounds.

Claire was bleeding to death—no amount of makeshift bandages and encouraging words from a stranger would change that. Nothing would bring back the son that had been ripped out of her womb. All that was left was to die with her mate.

The instant the woman turned her back to dig though the nearest dwelling for some supplies, Claire found the strength to get up from where she had been placed. On the cusp of unconsciousness, her legs did not want to work, fresh blood was running down her thigh, but Claire forced herself out the door, shuffling through the streets, a trail of red drops speckling the ground behind her.

It was like moving through a dream, climbing upward towards the light. What remained of the Citadel was shockingly close, Svana having arranged her torture near the very place Claire had been forced to call home.

The war, the rebels, they were right in front of her, all around her. Gunfire, explosions, screams, but all she could feel was Shepherd. He’d been right there the whole time.

She walked as steady as she could, but tripped over the mangled body of one of Shepherd’s Followers. The cracked marble steps, those same steps she’d walked up the day she met Shepherd, were only across one last barrier. She opened her eyes, realizing she had almost fallen asleep, and knew all she had to do was crawl through the field of corpses and pull herself up to where she felt her mate’s great pain.

That was what gave her the strength to move again, to crawl forward even as the ground shook, and huge chunks of the Citadel began to fall off.

None of it mattered. There was only time for Shepherd.

Claire continued forward.

Her love was so close, and there were only a few more stairs to manage. Claire pulled herself up that last step, resting against the nearest pillar to catch her breath.

Her vision swam just as another corner of the Citadel began to crumble.

The great door was before her. Claire shuffled through blood and glass, finding her legs again, ignoring the way her bare feet felt each shard. And there he was, twenty meters, ten, five...

On his back, still as a corpse, Shepherd lay.

Half-dead, she went to him, saw his silver eyes find hers and fill with horror as he took in what she’d become. All her black hair was matted with blood and fluids, the corners of her mouth torn and crusted. There was so much damage, a river of fresh bright red trickling down her battered legs, smeared from her journey on her thighs.

Falling to her knees at his side, she tried to speak his name, voice hoarse, to call out to the man bleeding and trembling as if trying to move. But he was badly hurt, bright red, seeping from under his charred armor.

There was a noise in his throat, those silver eyes trying to express love past the panic.

Pawing his face, seeing that her fingers were gnarled and swollen, Claire whimpered in grief as she tried to crawl over him. “Svana took our son from my body. She gave me to three monsters, Shepherd.”

One large hand twitched, Claire knew he wanted to hold her, but could not. So she lifted it to rest on her hip, splayed over him, pressed to his side where his armor was black and burnt.

She sought comfort from a dying man who could hardly bend his fingers to grip her hip.

Whatever had damaged him, she did not have the power to see. Claire’s fading attention found only the wet, silver eyes pleading with her as they grew dim, heard the wrongness of Shepherd’s far too spaced apart breaths.

The last of her life drained from between her legs in a pool of red, Claire sagged, her ear above where his heart should have been beating.

Thólos earned its freedom, Shepherd’s tyranny ended, and Brigadier Dane wrestled control of the resistance from the few surviving members of Leslie Kantor’s rebel contingent.

With no one willing to share the true story behind the uprising, unfitting as it was, it was Dane who was lauded by the public as the hero who’d saved them all.

When a hasty election placed her in the lifetime appointed position as Premier, Corday kept his silence.

What Thólos needed was solidarity, focus. They also needed to come to terms with the fact that despite round the clock cleanup crews picking through the Citadel’s rubble, the virus was still unaccounted for.

To survive the cold, the population moved underground, daylight hours barely warm enough to conduct repairs to the Dome’s infrastructure and search for necessities.

What happened in the Undercroft, the life of the people forced down there, was not worth speaking of. It was no life at all.

Until the Dome was repaired, there was no other option.

In the months of toil underground, Corday wore the ring, never once slipping the golden band off. He’d developed a nervous habit where he twisted it so hard it bit into the webbing between his fingers. He wanted it to hurt; he would never let himself forget what she’d given, how she’d suffered... how he’d failed her.

Not after the way the masses portrayed Claire O’Donnell as a traitor, not after the government inquest and the amount of times he’d given testimony for the girl on the flyer.

To the public, verbally crucifying a dead Leslie Kantor as a traitor was not enough, confirmation Shepherd had been killed, insufficient. They wanted the culpability of the living. Who better than the dead terrorist’s mate, the one found half-dead and draped lovingly over his body.

The Alpha’s corpse had been confiscated, she’d been taken away, and each time Corday had fought his way into her sickroom to see her, Claire had been in a coma, surrounded by armed guards, savaged and only breathing by ventilator.

Standing as Premier, Dane extolled Claire’s vital role in the resistance, advocating for the woman as much as she reasonably could without inviting riots. As the weeks carried on and survivors began to slowly recover, more stepped forward to speak for her. Strangers holding her flyer testified that she’d been their inspiration, claimed the Omega had offered her strength for the entire city.

That did not stop Premier Dane’s soldiers from taking her away.

Dane refused to speak with him on the matter. It took Corday six months to find what they had done with her, petitioning any member of the hastily scraped together government who would listen, demanding to see his friend. He stirred up trouble until the Premier had to assure the torn public that Claire O’Donnell, war criminal, was not being mistreated.

But Corday was about to judge that with his own eyes.

The location of her imprisonment was classified, yet there Corday waited, Dane at his side in the only place under the Dome that was still warm. There were manicured lawns and stunning architecture, a quiet corner of the only functioning region above ground crafted into Claire’s new prison.

It was a location Corday knew.

All this time, Dane had kept Claire in the Premier’s Sector, out of the grime of the Undercroft, and hidden away where no one could touch her. And not only her, but many Omegas who would never survive the close, dirty quarters trapped with the masses underground.

The North Wing’s barred doors were pulled open, and inside Corday saw a place of beauty. There were so many windows that light drenched everything, and though there were armed guards, they seemed employed to keep people out, not force them to stay. Everything was clean, the furniture rich, an Alpha doctor stood waiting to escort the Premier and her guest to the Omega.

The man in the white coat glanced suspiciously at the unwanted visitor.

To Corday, the entire thing was awkward, backward.

Her door was a heavy oak thing, carved and weighty on its hinges, the last barrier Corday would have to cross to get to her. Premier Dane unlocked the panel and pushed it in, the robust Alpha female moving before them to announce her arrival in a jovial voice, nothing at all like the tone in which she’d greeted Corday.

“Good afternoon, Miss O’Donnell. An old friend has come to see you.”

And then there she was. Sitting in an upholstered chair, her face turned towards the nearest window, looking out at the surrounding greenery and nearby trees. But she did not move, not even a tick, when Corday stepped nearer.

He knelt at her side, looking over her body for some sign of mistreatment or damage. There was no bruising or sign of neglect, but it was clear from the glassy faraway stare in her eyes she was highly sedated, and that alone was very telling.

Taking her hand, Corday called to her. Green eyes shifted so slowly it seemed unnatural.

“What have you done to her?” Corday growled to Dane, refusing to look away before Claire might recognize him.

“Miss O’Donnell is recovering from severe trauma under the best possible care,” Premier Dane replied, tone irritated.

Turning his head towards his old comrade, Corday leveled her with a disbelieving snarl, “She is drugged out of her mind. Afraid she was going to tell me something? What is going on here?”

The Beta’s voice had risen louder and Claire seemed to wake, if only for a moment. Her little fingers toyed with his ring and she whispered, “This was my mother’s.”

Corday forced the anger from his face and gave her an encouraging purr. “Yes, Claire, it was.”

“I gave it to Corday.”

“You did.” The Enforcer nodded.

It was as if she could not register the Beta in question was speaking, continuing as if talking to herself. “So he would not forget me. He saved Thólos.”

Lightly taking her chin between his forefinger and thumb, Corday lifted her face so she might find his eyes. “I am Corday, Claire. I am here. I came to visit you.”

The woman seemed as if she had no idea what was going on, leaning closer as if to share a secret. “I still hear him you know, purring in the room with me. Sometimes I feel him stroke my hair.”

Corday fought not to draw back in disgust, not to let his eyes widen even fractionally. In a gentle voice he explained, squeezing her hand as he smiled, “Shepherd is dead, Claire. You don’t have to be afraid of him anymore.”

“I want to go outside.”

It was the doctor lingering back by the door who spoke. “That can be arranged at once, Miss O’Donnell.”

It seemed a small army of nurses appeared from nowhere, and the woman, the inmate, was granted exactly what she asked for. The French doors overlooking the private lawn were unlocked, a small patio table and chairs exposed. Yet the strangeness of the prison was apparent to Corday, the thickness of the glass, the fact the exterior doors were made of dense metal and not wood, that they had been painted white to seem inviting and not vault-like, didn’t add up.

Claire was raised from her chair, the soft green of her dress settling around her legs. Her doctor took her into the sun. In the midst of the commotion of white coats and guards, Corday wandered about her room, the natural appearance of it, finding nothing clinical. He would have thought it was all a sham if not for the watercolors littering the blue walls.

Everything was images of Thólos, the horrors she’d seen, the Da’rin marked body of the tyrant in several of them. Between the finished paintings were dozens that were only a study of silver eyes in every possible expression. Corday was amazed they let her keep such things, all those stark images of Shepherd pinned to the wall as if he were lingering in the room. There was even a portrait of the man practically smiling, a thing Corday stood before, intently studying.