Reborn (Alpha's Claim Book 3)

by Addison Cain

  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.

  Epilogue

  It 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?

  People were disgusting.

  On the dank walls underground, pictures of her were pasted everywhere Corday turned.

  The Premier even called a day of mourning, and Thólos had a fucking ten minute moment of silence.

  Corday had gone through her loss once when she’d disappeared from the Omega sanctuary. It was nothing to the pain he was in now. Everything had gone wrong; furthermore, the guilt was killing him.

  Why had they not given him the body? Was the fall really so bad she was totally unrecognizable? Thinking back over the last year, obsessing over every last detail, Corday searched for the thread that would explain away his building feeling of foreboding.

  How many times had he sat in the softly colored blue room with her when she had hardly been lucid enough to speak? Why were they constantly sedating her?

  Claire had never complained about it... and he wondered if she’d had the mental capacity to understand the extent to which they controlled her. She was just one small Omega the Premier kept sequestered like a pampered pet.

  Why had they not pulled the plug when she refused to breathe for weeks after she had been found in the Citadel?

  And the doctors had been so possessive of not only her, but of the things Claire kept in her room... like she was some specimen, or experiment, and everyone wanted to see what she would do.

  Corday began to have a sinking feeling whatever they had been pumping into her was not for her benefit, but for theirs. That was why they would not release her body—they wanted to poke around inside first, to take her apart.

  Did they think she knew where the virus was? Had they been using pharmaceuticals to try and pry it out of her?

  Corday had slunk around the building that imprisoned her enough times to know, the North Wing was exactly what it claimed to be: a refuge for Omegas who could not protect themselves had they been forced to live with the masses in the Undercroft. So why had they kept him away? And then why had they suddenly given him carte blanche to visit her? The doctors were aware he was gently courting her. In hindsight it seemed almost as if they encouraged it, even the less than congenial Premier Dane.

  He’d always assumed it had been beneficial to her recovery.

  But that went back to the original question. If she was recovering, then why was she constantly sedated?

  After the funeral, he returned underground. Sitting on a worn chair, tucked into the small stone grotto where he slept, Corday stared into space, distracted by the injustice of the situation.

  Something was very wrong. Why did he feel like everyone, including Dane, was lying to him?

  He waited until nightfall before sneaking into the Premier’s Sector.

  He cornered Dane alone in her office, and put a knife to her throat. “What did you do to her?”

  Even as he threatened her life, the Alpha had looked somewhat impressed. “You saw for yourself, we were only trying to help Claire.”

  In the months he’d had access to the Omega, he’d been blinded by his own joy, had stopped asking questions and stirring up the people underground. He could see it now—that’s why Dane had let him near her.

  He let the blade dig in until a line of blood dripped along the sharp edge. “You’ve lied to me enough.”

  “You were the one who unleashed Svana on us, who pointed Shepherd’s men at our resistance.” Hissing, trying to pull her neck away from the blade, Premier Dane growled, “You cannot be trusted, Corday. Be glad that I let you live, allowed you to continue work as an Enforcer, and that no one knows what your part really was in the suffering of our people.”

  The words cut him deeper than his knife pricked her throat. “You know the circumstance, the reasons, for why I did what I did.”

  “Yes.” Dane did not say more.

  “I want to see pictures of Claire’s body. I want proof she’s dead.”

  Continuing to appear unperturbed by Corday’s threat, Dane gestured to her desk’s COMscreen. “Patient file 142.”

  Withdrawing the knife, Corday typed in the file name. There was a year’s worth of gathered data on Claire: physician notes, photographs of her paintings, a log of her treatment. At the end of it all was a series of disturbing images. The face of the dark-hair corpse had been crushed on impact. It was just gone. Something had darkened her skin to grey, left it blotchy in the places where bone stuck out.”

  “It took us three days to find where she’d landed in the Lower Reaches. We don’t even know how she got out of the North Wing. The only video we have is of her walking down the hallway, alone.”

  “Why does her skin look like that?”

  “The heat of her body melted the sludge just enough that it encapsulated the corpse. Sewage leeched into her, there was some kind of chemical reaction.”

  Corday cut her a hateful look. “I know you Dane.”

  A frown defined the wrinkles on her cheek. “I know you do.”

  It’s what she wasn’t saying, what she’d never say... because unlike him, Premier Dane knew how to keep her mouth shut.

  Since the breech, it had been a hard two years for everyone under the Dome, perhaps even hardest for Dane. Now that she was Premier, she had the responsibility of every person above ground and below. Day in and day out she toiled with her cabinet, organizing repair crews, trying to figure out how to keep livestock and crops alive without sun. Her people were starving, several had gone mad.

  It didn’t matter that she was warm in the Premier’s Dome. The weight of the world was grinding her down. Corday knew it, he didn’t judge her for it, but he did hold her accountable for everything concerning Claire.

  Dane offered him one small hint. “If I could have unhooked Claire from the ventilator, I would have done it. But, so long as the virus is still unaccounted for, it was not a safe risk to take for the people of Th�
�los.”

  Eyes narrowed, Corday stood totally confused. “What?”

  “I did everything in my power to keep the Omega safe, well fed, and happy.” She wasn’t defensive, she wasn’t explaining herself to Corday, Dane was merely stating facts.

  As if the reason was suddenly obvious, Corday’s eyes grew wide. Horrified, the man felt the yet unseen nightmare sink in.

  There was only one reason a pragmatic woman like Dane would have done such a thing.

  The reports were a lie. Shepherd had never died.

  That’s why Claire had heard him; that’s why they sedated her... and every purr she had imagined had been real, sent from his side of the link to comfort his distressed mate as she recovered.

  “Did she kill herself?”

  Dane shook her head because the truth was not quite so easy. “She left her room and wandered out into the storm... we found a body.”

  Heart in his throat, Corday demanded, “WAS IT HERS?”

  The greying, exhausted woman only offered a whisper. “All tests were inconclusive. We don’t know.”

  The End

  Addison Cain

  Addison L. Cain was born in sunny California, but found herself drawn to dwell in older, history-rich places. Japan, Ireland, Qatar, and now Washington DC, Addison is always on the move, always eager to immerse herself in new cultures and people. Her stories reflect the antiquities she loves: deep and sometimes very dark. Driven to push her characters beyond the pale, Addison’s books are not for the faint of heart.

  An alumni of California State University Fullerton, she earned a degree in Japanese and spent years in Asia studying indigenous Japanese religion. Primeval forests and worn pathways have led to her obsession with gardening. Her Great Dane approves, loping around the yard and getting into mischief. Unfortunately the cat has to watch from a window, and because Addison is a total sucker for his sad golden eyes, he gets hours of belly rubs and too many treats.

  Visit her website here:

  http://www.addisonlcain.com

  Don’t miss these exciting titles by Addison Cain and Blushing Books!

  Born to be Bound: Alpha's Claim Book One

  Born To Be Broken: Alpha's Claim Book Two

  A Trick of the Light

  Available Summer 2016:

  Reborn: Alpha's Claim Book Three

  Alpha Control Book One

  ~ Coming Soon~

  Chapter 1

  Mid-morning sun reflected off the glass so sharply, even squinting, my eyes began to water. Gloved hands to the East Sector solar plate, I twisted in my rigging, searching out the perfect angle until light might distort and show me what I needed to see.

  Right there... refraction.

  Helmut flush with the damaged pane, I traced over the almost imperceptible feather-like cracks marring the clear amorphous metal.

  Routine maintenance scans had misclassified why K73-2554’s solar collection was malfunctioning. It was not a wiring issue, the pane was about to shatter. Damage of this sort led to serious ruptures, evacuations of sectors, and the potential death of everyone inside.

  Speaking evenly, I catalogued all I’d found to the tech team supporting my climb from safe behind the Dome’s glass. “Unit 17C to terminal. Pane K73-2554 is damaged beyond original assessment. The structure is badly cracked and will need replacing once fabrication is complete.”

  There was a hiss of white noise before my tech’s radio communication came through. “Copy, unit 17C. An urgent status notation has been logged into the repair queue. You are granted clearance to patch while we wait for fabrication. Manufacture posts a three hour timeline.”

  According to my oxygen reserves, that would give me just under an hour to complete install. It would be a close call, I would have to regulate my breathing, but it could be done. “Roger that. Commencing emergency repair.”

  A patch on fissures like these might postpone catastrophic failure... then again it might not. Though I could not see them, someone on the inside of that reflective glass was scrambling to install metal sheet reinforcement even as I reached for the tools at my belt.

  The human race had learned long ago, that risks were no longer an option. In order to survive, there had to be layers of safeguards and regulation.

  Swaying from my rigging, high above the ground, I tiptoed around the damaged section’s frame. With the aid of a heat gun and strong epoxy, I did what I could to reinforce what would ultimately be a fatal crack. It was delicate work that required patience and a light touch. Too much heat, and the whole panel might shatter, too little, and the epoxy would not set. I had to account for the sun, the changing outside temperature. I had to account for that blinding glare I was trained never to turn my head from.

  Grunts tasked with the dangerous job of outer Dome repair were never to let their eyes wander. The verdant, creeping wilderness could not be a distraction. Staring at the open skyline, the distant tips of a dead, crumbling city’s tallest structures were said to encourage mental instability. It endangered all those who relied on us inside to maintain absolute focus.

  Those caught looking were grounded and banned from making the descent again.

  Failure of so grave a nature led to social ostracizing from the very corps one had been raised with, the family one worked with. Peers would find you suspicious; friends would ask you to submit to reassignment.

  Never would I risk it.

  Being selected for the external repair program had already placed me in a less than favorable light amongst my peers – even if the work I did kept us all alive.

  We had all heard the stories of engineering grunts who grew obsessed with what languished outside the Dome. Some even had tried to leave, or purposefully harmed the structure that protected us all. If rumors were true, there was even a growing faction of citizens who quietly questioned if the virus was really a threat.

  In the five years I’d routinely made the descent, I’d seen things outside the Dome people inside would never lay their eyes upon. I was privy to what my colleagues considered temptation. Once a butterfly alit beside a ventilation duct I was reconstructing piece by piece. The insect had been orange, and spotted, and lightly fluttered its wings as it rested so near, my fingers could almost brush it. I wanted to watch the insect, to marvel at nature as my ancestors must have done before the plague. But it was forbidden.

  Before the increase in my heart rate signaled to my tech that I might be breaking protocol, I’d shooed it away. As far as I knew, no soul in the Dome had ever known that for a matter of seconds I understood why some grunts grew obsessed with all that lay outside.

  “Unit 17C, weather forecasting warns an 18 knot gust will arrive from the east in twenty seconds.”

  “Roger.”

  With trained movement, I reached to the magnetic handholds stored in the utility belt around my bio-suite. Swinging my rigging to the left, they were locked into place on an undamaged panel. By the time the wind rushed past me, I was secure, pressed to the side of the Dome, and safe.

  It was the second, undeclared gust five minutes later that was my ruin.

  Dangling upside-down from my harness in order to get the best angle on the last portion of my repair, I was slammed into the metal glass so hard I lost my breath. It shattered just like I reported it would, right before I felt a sudden loss of gravity.

  My rigging had failed, the snake-like hiss of a cable slipping through my belay loop attachment pulley.

  I didn’t have time to scream.

  Plummeting head first toward the ever encroaching vegetation, my backup catch failed.

  I was going to die.

  Twisting in the cables as I fell, my bio-suit grew too tight. A sudden force left me in screaming pain; jerked to stillness, my arm was caught, my shoulder joint popped from its socket.

  Sounds of misery gurgled in my throat, the smallest of breaths was almost impossible. My vision began to clear and I found the world was still upside down. I had fallen so far, hundreds of meters, that my
dangling arm could almost touch the ivy scaling the concrete foundation of my city.

  Blood rushed to my head, vision going to a pinpoint.

  Amidst the crackling call of my tech for a status update, I found myself distracted. I could see them, diminutive simple flowers, my arm reaching towards their vines as if they were a rope and I might pull myself to safety.

  I could smell them...

  Tears gathered in the corner of my eyes, hot drips running into my hairline.

  “Unit 17C, your vitals register as erratic and your bio-suit is broadcasting damage to your helmet’s visor.”

  I wanted to answer, but I couldn’t move my lips. I could not do anything but stare at the nine-petaled flower and try to breathe.

  “Report, Brenya!”

  Hearing my name, the break in protocol, startled me out of waning consciousness.

  One croak, the sound of labored breath, that’s all I could offer.

  It was as my tech had claimed. More than my body had been damaged, a massive chunk had been knocked from my visor. I had been exposed to open air. I could smell the world, the dirt, my sweat. I could even smell my blood where it trickled from my cheek and into my eye.

  “Brenya... you know procedure.” There was a hedging desperation my tech tried and failed to keep out of his voice. “Without a status report, you’ll be cut from the rigging. I need you to talk to me.”

  I’d miss you too, George...

  My stomach rolled and unconsciousness won out.

  #

  It was dark by the time my swollen eyelids blinked apart. Body rocking in the breeze as if I were a spider at the bottom of its silk, I hung limp. I couldn’t see from my right eye, it was too gooey with blood, but if I squinted, I could just make out shapes in the moonlight.

  Warm air brushed my cheek.

  For the first time in my life I recognized what real weather felt like. It was humid, and soft, and I could even taste it when I swallowed around a fat tongue.