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.EpilogueIt 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?