"I didn't fall, I jumped." Claire lifted her chin higher, exposing the bruises blotched across her pale throat for every last Follower to see.
Only with some great effort was Shepherd able to speak levelly. "You have made your point. I will even admit I am impressed with your little coup. But it's over now."
"I don't give a fuck what you think!"
A stifled bark came from the Alpha, his mouth curved into a snarl. "I know you are angry—"
Her voice dropped low, coarse as she hissed through clenched teeth, "Angry does not even begin to describe what I am. I have been defiled, manipulated, betrayed, and broken. I am way past angry."
"Everything that was done was necessary," Shepherd countered, taking another intimidating step closer.
"You may have had me for a moment there, but your woman opened my eyes to what you really are." Fierce, Claire's lip curled in threat. "I should be thanking you, Shepherd. Your horrible lesson of insurrection was an inspiration. You taught me that even the weakest can rise up against tyranny with the right encouragement. Well, I'm rising up against you and the perversion of your ideals."
She had stood there long enough.
Trembling so hard she was certain every last man there could see her fear, ready to do what she did best, Claire took a backwards step into the smoke.
Shepherd countered, struggling to rein in his rage. "Do not make me come and collect you, little one. You may get injured, and I would prefer that not be the case."
"What are a few broken bones and a potential gunshot or two?" She pressed her free hand to her heart, Claire's face the image of anguish. "They wouldn't matter. I feel nothing. Nothing at all."
Even Shepherd could not deny the echoing truth in the fractured bond; it was like she wasn't even there—the greater fragment of her spirit simply gone. But she was more at that moment than she had been when her every hour was spent in a stupor underground.
She would recover.
Looking deep into such pain-filled eyes, Shepherd spoke in a voice of certainty, of authority. "Your place is with me. You will return to your mate."
"You are no mate to me." Claire spat on the ground between them. "I will stand with my people on my terms! If Thólos is to suffer, your child and I will suffer with it."
Shepherd was going to reach for her, she knew it. Claire spun, black hair flaring as she darted into the smoke. Shepherd was so very fast for a man of his size, and Claire could feel him and his Followers bearing down on her. But out of the dark, thin arms reached for her.
The embrace of an old friend was followed by a sudden loss of gravity.
Maryanne Cauley had come back, a cable propelling them high above the Lower Reaches before the raging giant or his men had even seen where Claire had gone.The amount of security protocols that had been overwritten during the Omegas' escape was extraordinary. All the surveillance footage had been wiped, many of the mechanized doors manipulated to trap his soldiers still malfunctioning. Purgatory's grounds had been turned into a maze that took Shepherd's most skilled Followers over an hour to penetrate, only to find there was not even one Omega inside.
The females had vanished as if teleported by the smoke.
Seven Followers dead, twenty-four trapped, and one man barely breathing. Claire's plan had been either extremely well-coordinated, or she was gifted with sheer dumb luck.
Deceitfully complacent, Shepherd turned to his second-in-command. "Explain to me, Jules, how an Omega female who paints pictures for children's stories accomplished this feat with only four days to plan?"
"I can't. Not yet, sir." The Beta stood at attention, unsmiling and severe. "We tracked the Omegas to the sewer access and know they went north, but the scent…"
"Was lost in the waste they rubbed all over themselves," Shepherd finished, knowing exactly what they would do. His lip curled. "And they are armed with weapons taken off our fallen men."
"Weapons they do not know how to use," Jules offered.
"Those women went on a rampage and killed five Alphas with their bare hands. I am fairly certain they will learn how to fire assault rifles in no time." A strange feeling came to the pit of Shepherd's gut, the sensation quickly ignored in favor of the satisfaction of clenching his fists until joints popped.
"We have profiles and photographs of all known surviving Omegas. The odds that one will be seen are exponentially higher with so many. They will be found."
"The situation with Claire takes precedence over retrieving the Omegas. Her escape route was divergent. She must be moving through Thólos as we speak. Assign our best trackers, and when she is found, no one approaches but me."
Jules knew the female had been serious about ending her life; it had been the only reason he'd not disarmed the quaking woman at first glance. "Cornering her would not end well. Her mental state is unbalanced. Miss O'Donnell is a danger to herself until her desperation recedes."