Born to be Broken (Alpha's Claim #2)(19)

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.