Reborn (Alpha's Claim 3)

The armed soldiers at the portal kept their heads forward once they realized who’d come. Claire went to step out, to pass through the tunnel to see where the breeze was coming from.

Shepherd did not allow her move. “I cannot guarantee your safety outside right now, little one. Breath your air, feel the cold, enjoy what you can before I must return you to our nest.”

She had not expected him to even partially concede to her request, not after feeling the swell of unease that rolled through the male when she’d told him she needed to go outside. Shepherd was too determined to keep her quarantined underground.

Leaning as far forward as his great arm would allow, Claire had a slender glimpse of a city blown away on the wind, all of her ideals made into some mockery with the stink of dead bodies, of smoke wafting her way. Thólos had grown so much harder to comprehend. A part of her had begun to resent it, and at moments like those—moments when Shepherd’s feelings somehow mingled with hers—Claire struggled to remind herself that she loved the city she could barely glimpse down the passageway.

Abiding disgust for what she’d seen, run from, feared... not all of it was Shepherd’s influence. It came from her.

It shamed her.

Her memories of happier times were growing tarnished. She was finding flaws in them—almost as if Shepherd were whispering in her ear the darker things she’d endured and refused to acknowledge. Thólos had been dangerous her whole life. She’d hardly felt safe walking the street alone, even in broad daylight... because the city had teeth and claws.

No one had talked about it, but Omegas out in the open had always been snatched up by predators. Thólos’s rich and powerful... the ones who made the rules… taking without permission, pretending it was all civilized, all acceptable. After all, who on earth had the power to stand up to the Senators, the Enforcers, the Judges?

Shepherd was right. She had never once been free.

Even in civilized Thólos, her life had been one of perpetually hiding what she was. And what of the Betas? Had they felt the pinch? Had they been tired of proletarian toil? Had they suffered oppression?

Alphas too had fallen victim. Claire’s own father had lost all social standing with the suicide of his wife. Before the body was even cold in the ground, the government had ordered them to leave her childhood home and move to a neighborhood just above the Lower Reaches—Claire’s father publically condemned as failure undeserving of midlevel life.

That new home had been damp and cramped. On the rare warm days, the air outside had stunk of garbage. Her father had weathered it with a smile and constant jokes. He had done everything for her, as if he’d suspected she was Omega long before puberty confirmed it—and was trying to atone.

Never once had he told her not to use the soaps that made his daughter smell like a Beta. He’d paid for her pills without asking her what they were for, made sure she had all the time she wanted with Nona.

Based on his personal experience, her father had known the world was unsafe for her, and he had done his best.

He’d known Thólos was miserable and bad, and shielded her from all of it long before Shepherd’s targeted campaign had turned the city against itself.

Her mate said what no other Alpha would dare. He’d called the leadership deceivers, the citizens swallowing every word…

It made them worse still. Thólosens chose to bow and cede to his will out of fear, not because they took his words as gospel. It was because they were bad. Why else would they use the new paradigm to riot, rape, murder, indulging in the darkest parts of the human experience?

Shepherd had once said that it was not his Followers responsible for the violence. If Claire was willing to admit the truth, even she had never seen them do evil on the streets. No, their evil had been openly conducted at the Citadel. It had been her neighbors —like Mr. Nelson who she’d seen stealing from her apartment. It had been her mentors like Senator Kantor, in charge of the resistance but doing nothing.

It had been Premier Callas throwing women into the Undercroft.

Claire’s free hand absently slipped to rest atop her belly, a poor shield over her son as if to protect him from her personal agenda, the wasteland, and her darker thoughts.

Everything was going to get worse.

“You’re just one man.” Troubled, Claire looked up and met Shepherd’s eyes. “There are millions under the Dome. Desperate people transform. Soon they won’t be afraid of your virus. It’s only a matter of time before they come for you.”

Shepherd took in her hand on their child, the blankness of her expression, and knew what she was thinking.