Reborn (Alpha's Claim Book 3)

by Addison Cain

  Claire’s mask cracked; it was impossible to keep the revulsion from her face. Feeling Svana chip away at the little courage she could manage, the Omega knew in that moment the exact type of wickedness Shepherd spoke of when he spoke of the true evil that had been cast in the Undercroft. It was all there, a conglomeration of vileness in the woman running her nail up and down the slit where Claire was still slippery from Shepherd’s last ejaculation.

  “It has been unpleasant, the way things have gone,” Svana pouted, her mouth heading towards a cold tightened nipple. “But I have done Shepherd a favor in this. You are a whore, desecrated and as disgusting as this city—unworthy of a man like him. But like all men, he is weak.” That single finger slipped easily inside Claire, no matter how her muscles clenched to deny her entry. “They all bow to this. Premier Callas, Shepherd, even my dead uncle. It’s a pity I was not born Omega, I would have ruled the world ages ago.”

  Once the initial penetration had passed, Claire did not fight; she lay passive knowing Svana desired her resistance. Drugged as she was, she had no energy to fight, had extreme difficulty even focusing her eyes, and embraced the wave of chemical euphoria over the terror of what was taking place.

  Swallowing back a shriek, unwilling to cringe when the hated woman lapped at her nipple, Claire lay still and fixated instead on her son’s fluttering movement deep inside her. Everything else was shut off.

  “Now,” Stroking Claire’s black hair affectionately, Svana smiled as if they were old friends, still pumping in and out of the Omega’s body, “I won’t be able to stay and watch. Far more important things than you require my attention.”

  With a lingering kiss on Claire’s mouth, a little flick of the tongue forced between her lips, Svana pulled her fingers from Claire’s body, licked them clean, and made her goodbye.

  “I want you to know,” Claire called to Svana’s back before the woman exited the cell.

  Svana turned, eager to hear the Omega beg, “Yes, dear?”

  It was not even difficult to say, “I want you to know that I love him. That even after everything, I learned how to do it. And that is something you could never achieve.”

  Svana laughed as if the very concept were absurd. She stood a moment, taking in the view of her enemy bound and at her mercy, the tip of Svana’s tongue licking over the edges of her teeth. One more chuckle, and she opened the barred door, leaving Claire naked and bound on a musty bed, while three men covered in Da’rin markings entered, smiling and eager.

  Claire knew what was coming; a monster like Svana would require degradation and horror before death was achieved. Claire could smell the two putrefying corpses piled up in the cramped cell’s corner, could see from the withered limbs and small frames that the poor woman had been Omega.

  Death was coming for her. Death was coming for her baby. And it was all there in the smiles of the Alpha outcasts who circled like sharks.

  The instant the first one touched her, Claire knew she would not be able to hold back her screams for long.

  Brigadier Dane had to fight her way through the mob clogging the tunnels. The streets were chaos, having made it hard enough to get close to nearest underground access point, but navigating underground through the confused throngs was almost impossible. Some of the city was wise; a portion of citizens chose not to engage in the war, but to retreat to the Undercroft, away from the bitter cold already leaching the life from the city.

  Or they were just plain cowards.

  The farther Dane moved underground, the more she believed the latter. From all directions, a cacophony of voices, of screams, wails, and outright shouting was so loud, was amplified so greatly by the tunnels, that Dane could palpably feel the tremors of their fear

  She’d only stomached it for less than an hour. This place had once been crammed full of tens of thousands of castoffs. What would five years trapped in the Undercroft do to a mind? It would unhinge a person, that’s what it would do.

  She wanted out, but the only way out was up. Even with a COMscreen projecting the data cube’s maps, often she’d have to guess when she found a newly carved out juncture. The ant farm Shepherd’s men had carved was a maddening circle designed to trap the unwelcome. The paths made no sense; every direction led her back to the same place.

  That had to be why so many were screaming; they were lost.

  Behind the heavily barred door she’d strained to force open, Brigadier Dane saw the first one. A man little more than bones, his body covered in the repulsive, telling marks of Da’rin. He rushed at her from the dark. Reaching for her weapon, she’d fired without thinking. It was not until after he’d collapse, she realized her hand was shaking.

  The Undercroft was getting to her.

  The corpse lay crumpled, gripping a shiv, hardly a rag covering his body.

  There were more of his kind, she found them around almost every turn. Most shrank from her, from the light of her screen. They cowered against the walls and wept, as if she had come only to cause them pain. Some tried to stalk her through the twists and turns. Fortunately for Dane, she had more bullets than they had life to spend.

  These men were never supposed to be set free. Shepherd had left them here for a reason.

  Saturated in the stink of human waste, of things far more rotten than any corpse aboveground, Dane plodded forward. She went North, always North. It took an hour to reach the gate she assumed must block this sector from the city center.

  All that metal, all those gears and locks, someone had thrown them open.

  Sniffing the air, Brigadier Dane hesitated. Something was not right. The citadel was on the other side of that door, of that she was certain, but the smell of Omega was here.

  The sound of screams, the very horrible music she had been subjected to. Dane began to listen.

  She heard a sobbed name buried in the noise. Someone was screaming for Shepherd.

  Corday could hardly believe what he was a party to. The rebels had done enough damage that outcome of the battle aside, millions would die from exposure. Subsequently, just by coming to this place, he had betrayed the resistance. Everyone was doing harm to everyone else.

  There was no right path. Not in Thólos.

  It was so cold his fingers were losing feeling, the rebels around him buried under layers for warmth—because, unlike him, they had known what to prepare for.

  It was as Brigadier Dane had said: Leslie had purposefully concealed the details of her battle plans from the pair of puppets she used to distract Shepherd’s men.

  What else had she hidden? Was it as Shepherd’s second-in-command claimed? Was she Svana?

  Had she been the one who’d assaulted Claire all those months ago?

  The seed of doubt had burst and blossomed. It was hard to admit, but Corday believed the Beta who’d invaded his house, and he hated himself for it.

  He had helped the woman seize power. He had helped her plan, gathered items used to craft the very bombs that had shattered two segments of the Dome. She had used him, and he had come to where the rebels mustered, knowing Shepherd’s second-in-command was still out there somewhere, watching him.

  “Where is Leslie?” The words came in a rush, Corday pulling his body up the last segment of the ladder. The roof before them held ten men, Leslie’s men, all standing atop their perch, watching the city devour itself.

  “We were told to hold position.” A man grizzled in appearance and unruffled by the situation said, “Lady Kantor will arrive once her mission is complete.”

  “What mission?”

  Jaw covered with a red, bristled beard, the man turned his eyes to Corday, and said nothing.

  His reply, it was something Dane would have barked. Mouth in a firm line, Corday chastised a man who’d only recently been recruited, “I will remind you of your rank in our forces. While you were warm and fed, protected in the Premier’s Sector, I was running missions, risking my life so this day might come.”

  There was a brief instant the man’s composure
slipped. He stood abashed. “Her mission was classified. We don’t know where she is. All communications went down twenty minutes ago, so we wait. Chances are, she moved to another position.”

  As if it were his place to command, Corday pointed to the youngest in the group. “You, climb down and run to the team at sector G. If she is there, update us immediately.”

  “I am afraid that man already has his orders, Corday.”

  Corday rounded, looking for the source of Leslie Kantor’s voice. She had snuck up right in the midst of their collective, not one of them having heard her crest the roof. “Leslie?”

  She smiled to see him, remaining at a distance. “Our plan is advancing exactly as expected. Every rebel was prepped and knows their duty. The disruption of the communications network changes nothing.”

  His fingers were so close to the gun holstered at his hip. “Leslie, why didn’t you tell me our men were going to blast holes in the Dome?”

  From the absolute steadiness of her expression, it was obvious Leslie had been prepared for and unconcerned by the question. “The airstream surrounding the Citadel is a countermeasure in case Shepherd unleashes the virus before our bombs might cleanse it from existence.”

  The virus was airborne, heavy winds would only spread it faster. Her excuse was so lacking in substance, that Corday could not contain his feelings of despair. “Without protection from the elements, it will grow uninhabitable in the city. You’ve condemned our people to the Undercroft.”

  “Really, Corday... you can be so dramatic.” Waving him off, Leslie marched to the edge of the roof, assuring the only way Corday might hear her continued explanation was to follow at her heels like a dog. “Yes it will be difficult at first. Given the state of manufacturing and resources, projections show it will take four years to repair the damage. In the meantime, citizens unnecessary to the immediate reconstruction of the Dome will be safe underground. Those key to the effort of restoring our city will find sanctuary in the Premier’s Sector.”

  Some would live in grandeur and luxury while others wasted away in the dark. “I see.”

  She hesitated, looked him in the eye. “This was the only way to ensure change. Sacrifice must come from all of us.”

  And what was she going to sacrifice?

  He hated her in that moment. Even so, he nodded as if he understood. Staring down at the madness, Corday found that the number of angry citizens circling the Citadel had increased, compacting into a single waving mass working to reach the steps.

  Followers were shooting at them like fish in a barrel.

  They were dying for nothing, in fact they would all die should Leslie’s bombs detonate. Cutting a glance back to the smirking woman at his side, he knew she saw his distrust. It seemed pointless to continue his charade. After all, he’d already condemned them all.

  Corday’s lip almost shook when he asked. “He told me your name is Svana. Is it true?”

  The corners of her mouth curved up from smirk to smile. Impudent, she asked, the question coming out as absolute confirmation, “Who?”

  Behind them a rough edged voice rang out. “It’s time, Svana. Shepherd has sent me. He wishes to negotiate the terms of his surrender.”

  Like Leslie, he’d appeared with no sound.

  No longer was Shepherd’s minion dressed in the blacks of Followers. He looked like any other civilian. Or he would have, if he didn’t have such a massive firearm resting in slack arms.

  Turning her back to the carnage below, Leslie held up her hand, signaling to her men all was well. Once they had lowered their weapons, she offered a twisted greeting. “Jules, I expected you sooner. Hasn’t this gone on long enough?”

  Seeing him in the daylight, Corday found the Beta to be only a ghost of a person. There was something wrong with the way his eyes tracked their movement, a lifelessness to his face. When he spoke his voice was not only disinterested, it was dead. “It has.”

  “Fine.” Leslie nodded, crossing her arms over her chest. “Kill these men, and let’s make our way.”

  Before the word kill had crossed Svana’s lips, the Beta acted. In a blur he’d shouldered his rifle and showered a spray of bullets on Leslie Kantor’s bodyguards. As the untried rebels fell, only two had squeezed off return fire before their death—a single bullet embedding in the concrete at Jules’s feet.

  Lowering his weapon, he scowled at the woman, disgusted by the men’s utter lack of skill when it came to actual combat. “You did not train them well.”

  Leslie ignored the taunt. Instead, her focus was on where Corday lay. The impact of a bullet had knocked him down, a growing bloodstain marking his thigh. Rattled breath twisted his groans. One hand to his wound, he scrambled to lift his weapon.

  All it took was Leslie’s foot atop his wrist to stop the pathetic attempted attack.

  Reaching down to take Corday’s gun for her own, she complained. “He’s still alive.”

  Jules’s answer was dry. “Shepherd desires that this one suffer.”

  “Poetic.” Pointing his gun at his skull, the woman seemed to debate the benefits of letting Corday meet a cold, lonely death on the roof. Maybe it was the way he cursed her name over and over. Maybe it was because he had been her plaything for so long. Either way, she took a step back. “Fine. I will give Shepherd this one last concession.”

  On the edge of the roof, standing confident and free, she cut a glance at the Follower and explained her deeper thinking. “He forced my hand, you know. This wasn’t how I wanted it to be. Shepherd made me do this. You understand that, Jules.”

  Jules stared down at the panting man, took a long look at his handiwork, and curled his lip. “I gave you your chance to shoot her. You hesitated.”

  The smile Svana wore, the self-assured cocky smirk, diminished to the point where her face was blank, chilling. “You would dare insult me now? Not one of you—”

  Jules didn’t acknowledge a word out of her mouth. Before she could make any grand speeches, he unloaded ten bullets into her chest.

  Eyes bugging out of his head, Corday struggled to scoot out from under Svana’s collapsing body. “What the fuck?”

  Jules ignored the inconsequential Beta, choosing instead to tower over Svana’s pretty bleeding corpse. “After some recent thought on the subject, I disagree with Shepherd. I don’t believe we need you alive to take Greth Dome. We only need parts of you to bypass scans—a hand, some blood, maybe an eye. The rest of you is garbage that we will harvest at need. Enjoy your legacy.”

  Reaching down, he hoisted the woman across his shoulders, hesitated when her body brushed his face. He crinkled his nose in a deep sniff, and growled once the trace of fading scent registered. His face contorted and he looked as if an ocean of profanities were rising up to his tongue.

  As quickly as the rage began, he shut it off.

  Jules swallowed, and once again became an empty, hollow thing. Svana bleeding all over him, he glanced once to where Corday grew pale, slumped against the roof’s retaining wall. The Enforcer was dismissed with one derisive glare before Jules climbed down from the roof with his prize.

  He left Corday alive.

  Chapter 12

  The grand doors of the Citadel wide open at his back, the city in shambles at his feet, Shepherd looked over his dying kingdom. Sun sinking over a broken wasteland, aging light stretched shadows atop the sea of Thólosen men and women desperately trying to reach their tormentor. His men had done well disrupting pathways by destroying bridges and hastily constructing barricades. The unwise that approached, had only one plausible path to his doorstep.

  To his loyal Followers armed on the overlooking fragmented causeways, he ordered, “Fire at will.”

  A wave of gunfire erupted, an upsurge of enraged citizens falling under the stampede of their rabid neighbors. More protestors climbed over the growing hill of the dead—like locusts they kept swarming, hour after hour.

  All Shepherd could do was clog the path, and keep the masses, and Svana’s bombs
as far from the Citadel as he could.

  He had broken down the odds, added up all known variables. Soon those desperately trying to climb over the dead would be hungry and thirsty. If he were lucky, they would make it until nightfall, where violent winds barreling through the Dome might drive Thólosens to seek shelter in the Undercroft, as every COMscreen under the broken Dome suggested. But the colder it grew, the more arrived in mass to shout and throw things across the divide separating the Citadel from the city.

  There was a greater unresolved issue beyond the insects gathering at his doorstep: Svana

  She was yet unaccounted for. The ships that had already launched would be stuck hovering out of range of their intended target until they had their key to Greth Dome in hand. His men, his mate, would be trapped out there just as he was trapped in here, if Jules failed to find her.

  Until she was delivered, those same ships would not be able to return and gather the army waiting for freedom. Unless the transport ships returned soon, a second round of evacuations would be impossible.

  There was no hope left for those deserted in Thólos. His men knew it.

  Should Shepherd have the opportunity to lay eyes on Svana again, he would be hard pressed not to reach out and tear her limb from limb.

  Claire had been right; he had created a monster in Svana just as she had harnessed the violence in him. As a team, they had been unstoppable. As adversaries... they knew one another so well, it was like fighting against one’s shadow.

  Moves and countermoves, and they were still at an impasse. She knew he would not unleash the virus so long as there was even a chance his men might survive. That’s why she’d given it to him, a final taunt he’d been too foolish to recognize.