“You are wrong,” Corday spat the words. He had spoken to Claire only three days prior. The Omega had given him her ring… she’d made a vow. “Did those women run her off?”

“No, but they would have in a matter of days. She knew that.”

The agitated Beta looked at the old woman as if she was stupid. “So she went somewhere else for shelter.”

“Perhaps,” Nona admitted, debating if it would be best for the young man to have something to hold on to.

“When did she leave, precisely?”

“The morning of your last visit.”

Corday threw up his hands, growling at the ceiling. “Goddamn it, Claire!”

Nona took his shoulder again, squeezed his coat, and pulled him away from the gathering Omega crowd. “Sit!” The Beta male obeyed out of decorum, Nona glaring. “Claire did not want me to tell you who I really am. But I am going to anyway, because you are a Beta and I know you care for her, but you do not understand.”

Nona made him be still, composing herself beside him. “When I was sixteen, I was abducted from my home, kept under lock and key for days until I was sold like cattle—bought by a man named David Aller, and forced into a pair-bond at my next estrous by a stranger twice my age.

“Once bonded, he revealed me to the public again, and my family accepted what could not be changed, even though I begged them to help me. I had no advocate; I was just a bonded Omega with no rights. When I ran the first time, I made it less than two weeks before I began to lose touch with reality. I was found wandering, confused, through the streets. The Enforcer that picked me up took me back to David as if I were a stray pet.

He beat me, a common practice for correcting renegade Omegas. The beatings grew worse, and I ran again a few months later. It was always the same, that unwavering pair-bond to a man I hated persisted and controlled me. I tried everything, every hinted course, but it was the same nightmare. It was ten years before I poisoned him and acquired a new identity. I still dream of him, sometimes I think I hear him… and David has been dead almost forty years.”

Jaw loose, Corday looked at the gentle, old woman and knew she spoke the truth.

“There is no way out of a pair-bond, no recourse for Claire. One of them has to die for her to be even marginally free. Killing Shepherd might have saved her, but her time was running out and she knew it. She just did not want to worry you… because she knew you had affection for her.”

“Claire is stronger than you.”

Nona agreed. “That is absolutely true.”