Born to Be Bound (7 page)

"He won't find you here. Do you understand? It was just a bad dream. Whoever he was cannot force you anymore. You're free, you get to choose."

I get to choose?

The words resonated, and she began to calm. Leaning back, wiping the snot and tears from her face, Claire fought to pull it together.

Illuminated by the small light, Corday asked, "Would you like me to sit up with you?"

Shaking her head, she answered in an unsteady voice, "No... I feel better now. Thank you."

She was lying, of course.

There was no more sleep that night; she simply sat on the couch and started at shadows. It was only when the sun came up, when she could feel the light, that Claire found the courage to shut her eyes.

#

Corday left a note on the coffee table notifying the sleeping girl that he'd gone to garner provisions. With so many dead, it did not take long to find forgotten shoes for feminine feet in a closet where neighbors dwelled no longer.

On the causeways, Shepherd's Followers marched, hyper-vigilant. Corday made sure to keep his head down, to bypass all screening. Several people were pulled aside at random. That was nothing new, but that day Shepherd's men seemed only to target women; pulling off scarves, exposing covered hair, sniffing them up close. A few Alpha females grew riled; as it continued, even Betas began to show their teeth.

Messing with women was a sure way to start another round of riots. The females alone, Alphas especially, would react instinctively. If their children were near, they might be even more aggressive. Then there were their mates; Alpha or Beta, no one liked to see their woman harassed.

The air was tense as he passed by mob after mob; Corday eager to return to the skittish Omega with his freshly gathered supplies.

She was awake, her head turning toward the door the instant she heard his key in the lock. When it was only the Enforcer offering a calming smile, Claire let out a breath and shook her head, as if she felt her reaction had been foolish.

Showing his worn catch, Corday said, "I found some shoes that might fit you."

"Those aren't very pretty," she tried to banter, but her voice came out flat, and what should have been funny was unnerving. Claire tried again, forcing inflection and a smile. "Thank you."

"It's Thursday. The power will be on in this zone tonight." He locked the door and set the shoes on the floor near the woman. "Rather than just watching the paint peel, I have a collection of old films. If you like, we can watch one."

"Okay."

While Claire pulled the
new
shoes over borrowed, stinking socks, Corday took a seat at the far end of the couch, the pair of them like mismatched bookends. He lifted the remote. When the screen came to life, all that played was the Thólos Interdome Broadcast. Unfamiliar correspondents looped every five minutes, detailing which sectors would receive fresh rations the following day, locations of supply pick up points, faces of wanted
criminals
.

Claire heard nothing, the entirety of her attention was on the date stamped at the corner of the screen. "Five weeks..."

Corday didn't need to be a genius to grasp what the woman had muttered. Five weeks, that was how long she'd been trapped.

She was trying to hide her horror, so Corday inserted the stick that held his precious films and chose something lighthearted most people would recognize. It worked. Thirty minutes in and Claire's shoulders lost their rigidness.

"I used to watch this with my dad when I was a kid," she offered, glancing at him with a small, half-felt smirk. "He loved this movie."

Corday gave her a crooked grin. "Your dad sounds like he has excellent taste."

"He did," Claire agreed, her face less tragic. "He was a really funny guy. Sooo Alpha, though."

They both snickered, knowing exactly what that meant. Alpha parents were fanatical about their children. Over-involved, bragging constantly... generally an embarrassing pain in the ass.

"What about your mom?"

"An uptight Omega with no sense of humor... she left when I was twelve."

That was very unusual; children typically made Omegas incredibly dedicated parents. Besides, the pair-bond would have compelled her to return to her Alpha. Corday wanted to ask, it was all over his face, so Claire just spit it out—it was old news, after all. "She found a quiet place near the Gallery Gardens and took a bottle of pills—overdosed. She couldn't stand a life tied to someone she didn't like."

"I'm sorry."

Shaking her head, her dark hair swaying, Claire said, "Don't be. In the end, she got her choice. I respect that." Looking back to the screen she asked, "What about you? What are your parents like?"

"Both Betas. Dad was sent to the Undercroft when I was a kid. He, uh, stole things. Mom raised me. She died the day Thólos was breached."

Green eyes looked back at the man on the couch, at the one who had been kind to her. The lines between his brows spoke of grief. "I'm sorry."

There seemed to be an understanding between them. "Me too."

Both looked back to the projection, laughing at all the right parts, neither one-hundred percent sure if the other was faking. When the credits rolled, Corday made them dinner, surprised to find the kitchen had been scrubbed clean in his absence. He watched the back of her head, saw her nervously play with her hair, and wondered how on earth the world had become what it was.

#

If Claire sat on the floor
just right
and angled her head, there was a thin patch of sky the surrounding structures did not block. Direct, delicious sun warmed her skin, but something in all of it was hollow. Corday had not told her to leave, and she had to admit she was terrified of even stepping outside. It seemed so ironic that all she had wanted was to breathe fresh air, and now that she could... she could not. But she could look out that window, crouched down low so not a soul but the birds flying overhead could see her.

Eyes on the clouds, Claire felt her mind slowly grow quiet, sighed deeply, and enjoyed the warm rumble of ambient noise. It took almost an hour before she was startled out of her daydream, to panic at a sound that shouldn't be there.

Shepherd's purr was all around her.

Certain that the behemoth was standing behind her, her head flew around, her eyes frantically searching the small studio apartment. No one was there.

But he
was
...

Claire knew—logically—she was alone, but she could practically smell him in the air. Heart racing, she pulled her knees under her chin and went back to her view, determined to control
her
mind. The harder she fought, the warmer the worm in her chest grew. Over and over, a soft little tug came to the thread. It was the strangest sensation, as if the beast was utterly calm now, calling to her almost gently.

Claire didn't trust it for a second.

Shepherd was an aggressive man; in conversation, in behavior, in bed. There was no 'gentle' unless it served him. And the kindness she'd received was always calculating. He had no feelings—or if he did, they were so twisted up in megalomania they didn't really count. Whatever he thought he might gain by trying to lure her with something as elusive as a soft invitation through the bond, she was not going to comply. Claire was going to keep that window and that little slice of sky, rejecting darkness and isolation.

A few hours later she was back on the couch, reading a book she had pulled from Corday's small collection. It was the first time her eyes had met paper in ages. Underground, she had never once touched Shepherd's books—as if his forbidden texts might infect her with his warped view and evil.

It felt good to do something normal.

At dusk, Corday returned. They exchanged customary pleasantries, Claire waiting for him to show her the door. Once again, he seemed unconcerned that an interloper was sitting quietly in his apartment's only room. Corday attended to his own things, she went back to the book, and before she knew it the lights were out and she was lying back on the couch, prepared to face a night awake in the terrifying dark.

Should she sleep, vivid dreams plagued and tormented; the same scene over and over. In every nightmare, Shepherd lurked in the dark, violent strangers' hands reaching to grasp and hurt her if she didn't run toward him, if she didn't climb higher up the wrecked tower.

The viaduct that could carry her to a better zone, the thing she had raced toward—it was always broken. There was no escape. To her left stood her great nightmare, to her right, blurred faces of the ones eager to watch her bleed. She could feel it in that towering damaged causeway; the icy air rushing up from the lower reaches, the sweat on her face from the run. Then there were the mercurial eyes. Steady eyes. Determined eyes.

From the shadows, Shepherd would reach out a hand to her, silent in the din of wrathful screams, and crook his fingers. To Claire's horror, each night her feet moved one step closer to the thing she feared most.

She would wake in a cold sweat, surging from the couch just to make sure Corday was there. Fortunately, the Beta slept like the dead, snoring just a little. It was a sound that brought her great comfort. Whispering so she would not wake him, she talked to herself, explaining her fear wasn't real. Dreams were nothing more than the influence of the pair bond.

She was free. She got to choose.

When the urge to vomit passed and the fevered trembling ended, Claire would lie back and try to think of nice things. Every night, as she stared at Corday's ceiling, the boy's snores eventually turned into the sound of far more masculine breaths the moment sleep came upon her again. The sensation of a warm hand stroking her hair to soothe her, her unconscious desire to hear only a moment of purrs... One small slip and the dream would invade again; a dozen times a night, a hundred? It felt like a never-ending loop.

The sun would rise and so would Claire, more tired than the day before. Corday noticed it too, she could tell by the way he darted subtle glances at her, how he skirted the walls and made sure not to get too close. Neither of them spoke of her degradation; after all, what was the point? It was not until the fifth day—when Corday told her that he would not be back until morning—that the Beta reached into his pocket and pulled out a circular, white pill.

"This will help you sleep, if you want it."

With a conciliatory smile, he left it on the counter and wished her a good day. Claire didn't touch it, found herself far too mesmerized by the round pharmaceutical and how much trouble they had turned out to be in her life. The temptation to drop it down the sink was as strong as the temptation to swallow it immediately.

All day that little pill stared at her. Her fingers curled at the edge of the counter, Claire crouched down to be at eye-level with the little white temptation. What if she took it and sleep did come? What if the dream came with it, and she could not wake up to save herself from taking those final steps towards a man the manipulative pair-bond was twisting into a savior? What if she took a whole bottle of pills?

In the end, when the dark came, she did not take the little white pill; she hid it instead. Lying in the darkness, buried under heaps of blankets, Claire closed her eyes and the same movie played on repeat in her mind. Silver eyes, an outreached hand, villains and smoke... only that night, each time she woke there was no snoring anchor in the corner of the room for her to pace her heartbeats to. Curled up and delirious from days without rest, she felt she was going mad, hearing things, confused. As the hours stretched by, Claire realized with a creeping apprehension that it was Shepherd's raspy breath she kept imagining in the corner, not the Beta's snores; Shepherd's hand she almost believed was stroking her hair.

She felt in her bones that if she could only hear a few moments of that purr, untroubled sleep would come at last.

Chapter 5

"Shepherd's genetic markers do not match any prisoner on record. I am telling you," Brigadier Dane was adamant, "he was not incarcerated in the Undercroft."

Corday had heard a thousand explanations; not one of them was possible. Outside the Dome spread one hundred kilometers of frozen tundra in every direction, the location of Thólos chosen specifically so any potential diseased wanderers could never survive approach. Everything inside was self-sustaining, and only twice in his lifetime had shuttles been permitted to land. All on board had been female, citizens from other biospheres invited to Thólos Dome to keep the gene pool fresh.

Those who came never left, just as those who had left to serve the same duty on foreign soil would never return.

Scans for all new arrivals were vigorous; there was no way any unexpected life-form could have passed the gates. Even so, the last exchange had been nearly a decade ago.

Voicing his opinion to the few Enforcer stragglers gathered in secret, Corday disagreed. "The man is covered in Da'rin markings. He was branded by the gangs in the Undercroft and labored down there long enough to organize outcasts into an army, to have constructed numerous tunnels that had gone unnoticed all throughout Thólos."

Brigadier Dane was not exactly a fan of Recruit Corday; her patience with the young man was slender. "Then explain why he doesn't exist on record."

Corruption was a disease even the Dome could not filter out. Jaw rigid, Corday said, "Because someone threw him down there
off record
."

"If that was the case, others would have known. You can't just march down those tunnels dragging a man behind you; the security protocols alone would have been logged. If a soul had gone missing, people would have noticed. What you suggest would require a conspiracy of epic proportions."

There was one man in the room who had the power and the clearance to know. Several sets of eyes turned to Senator Kantor, all of them demanding he confirm that no such atrocity was possible.

The old man raised a hand to silence petty arguments. "I'd like to say it isn't possible, but I can't. Just as it should not have been possible for those trapped in the Undercroft to emerge, for our government to fall, or for our people to have gone mad. There is much about the insurgency we don't know. At this point, the identity of the Followers' fanatical leader is less important than discovering where he has stored the contagion."