Broken Queen - Book cover

Broken Queen

Danni D

Breaking Chains

ARIEL

TWO YEARS LATER

The chains tightening around my wrists bring me back to consciousness.

For a moment, I can’t remember where I am. I blink my eyes open to see the cracked concrete ceiling above me.

Then, it all comes back to me like a brick settling in my stomach. I fight back the urge to cry.

The silver shackles bite into my raw wrists. You would think that I would be used to the pain after two years of being treated like a worthless animal, a science experiment, but sometimes it becomes unbearable.

The experiments—injecting microdoses of liquid wolfsbane into my veins and analyzing the effects on my body. And my wolf.

I learned in the beginning that the burning feeling coursing through my veins was the wolfsbane as it weakened and cut off my connection to my wolf.

I’ve been a whole year without her, only feeling her faintly in the far corners of my mind, whimpering in pain and sadness.

Never in my life have I ever felt so overwhelmingly alone.

They took my family…

My friends…

And my wolf.

My eyes start to flutter shut as the pain becomes too much.

I feel a sharp smack across my already bruised cheek.

“Don’t go passing out on me yet, bitch. We’ve only barely started today.” Curt, the leader of the hunters, digs his dirty fingernails into my shoulder.

“Go to hell,” I say, mustering up what little fight I have left.

Curt’s cold, gray eyes—as strange as it sounds—are the only things that have kept me going. The thought of ripping them from his head…

I often think about the first time I saw those eyes. It was the night I’d been accepted into warrior training. The night I’ve been dreaming about.

Sitting by the lake, waiting for Xavier, my body yearned for a union that would never happen. Instead, I was met with the hunter. Those eyes, looking at me from the shadows, glaring at me with absolute malice.

I never saw Xavier after that day.

I never saw anyone I knew.

My past life was slipping away from my memory with every passing day.

Our pack has never done anything violent to humankind, but that doesn’t matter to hunters.

All they want is the complete eradication of werewolves.

But what they want with me—why they’ve kept me alive to experiment on me for two years—I have no idea.

“I think you need to be reminded of your place, mutt,” Curt says as he picks up a syringe filled with silver liquid.

“No… NO!” I scream as he punctures my skin.

My spine begins to stretch and a horrible cracking noise echoes throughout the room as my bones break.

He’s forcing my wolf out somehow, but the silver is keeping my body from healing during the transformation.

The pain is unreal.

I feel my ribs puncture my lungs, and blood spills out of my mouth.

In fact, it’s spilling out of several places in my body as my bones penetrate my skin like a mangled mess.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Curt shouts. “I think I gave her too much! Medic! Get the fuck over here!”

I want to howl so badly from the pain, but all I can muster is a pathetic raspy wheeze.

The room is beginning to blur and close in around me.

“Get her fucking stable!” Curt yells. “We can’t lose our best test subject. She’s almost perfected!”

As the darkness settles in, I hear a soft and ethereal voice…

“Don’t give up, my child.”

***

I’m sitting at the edge of the lake again, just like the night I was taken. But this time, there’s a mysterious woman sitting beside me.

She’s beautiful in every way—pale blue eyes, long silver hair running down her back, and milky smooth skin that almost seems to glow.

Who is this captivating woman?

“Hello, Ariel. I wish we were meeting under better circumstances,” the woman says warmly.

“Who…who are you? And how do you know me?” I ask, confused.

“My name is Selene, though some call me the Moon Goddess,” she replies with a soft laugh.

Oh my Goddess, THE Moon Goddess. Holy…

“Don’t be nervous, my child. I must apologize to you.”

The Moon Goddess apologize to me? I guess I haven’t exactly felt her presence for quite some time.

“You were never supposed to be taken by the hunters,” she says calmly, her warm smile never leaving her face.

“But my sister, Fate, can be quite vengeful, and she had another plan in mind. We don’t often see eye-to-eye.”

“I know the feeling,” I say, thinking of my own sister.

“In order to right these wrongs, I’m bestowing upon you a gift—the gift of healing.”

Selene leans forward and kisses me on the forehead. “May you heal both your own pain…and the pain of others. Be a light unto those who need it most.”

As Selene sits back, she places her palm against my cheek, and her eyes sparkle.

“One more thing, Ariel. This is not the life I had planned for you. You must escape this place—and find your mate.”

“My mate? Who is my mate?”

But I already have an idea who it might be…

Selene reaches out and lays a soft hand on my cheek.

I feel warmth emanating from the contact, and I lean into her touch, sighing at the pleasant sensation.

“It’s Xavier, isn’t it?” I feel excitement coursing through my veins for the first time in two years.

But then the look on her face gives me pause. She’s thoughtful as if trying to decide how to respond.

“My dear, it isn’t that simple,” she answers slowly.

“What do you mean?” I ask, confusion clouding my mind.

I feel Selene’s caress begin to fade against my cheek and realize everything is growing hazy around me.

“Please, who is my mate?” I ask, desperation pulling at me.

“There is another… But I cannot tell you more right now, my child. You must go. Free yourself from these tyrants…”

Warmth surges through my body as the Goddess fades away completely.

“Find him, Ariel. Only you can heal him.”

***

A searing pain wakes me up.

As the haze of the dream begins to wear off, one thing becomes clear.

I should be dead.

Before passing out, my entire body was broken; my bones were jutting out of my body, and I was losing so much blood…

So imagine my surprise when I crane my neck to look at my battered body and find that…

All my wounds had been healed.

I feel a strength inside me that I haven’t felt in a long, long time. Is this what the woman meant by the gift of healing?

She told me that I have to escape…

That I have to find my mate. And that it might not be Xavier…

Find him. Heal him.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking, but he sure as hell isn’t here.

I struggle with my chains, but even though the silver isn’t irritating my skin like before, it still stings.

I hear a door open at the top of the stairs and uneven footsteps as someone stumbles down them.

That will probably be Curt, drunk again. He loves to torment me when he’s wasted.

But he doesn’t know that I’ve regained my strength. I can use this to my advantage.

“You’re finally awake, mutt. Good. We’re gonna play a little game,” he says, slurring his speech.

Curt grabs a silver collar and clamps it around my neck, undoing the chains around my arms.

He yanks the chain attached to the collar on my neck, forcing me to my feet.

Curt stumbles as he starts climbing the stairs, pulling me behind him.

“Get a move on, bitch!” he says, tightening his grip on the chain.

Good. Hold tight, you hateful bastard.

I wait till he’s almost at the top of the stairs. I can hear the voices of other hunters coming from the other side of the door.

He thinks he’s won… Not today!

Growling, my wolf comes to the surface, and I yank the chain as hard as I can muster.

Curt loses his footing and flies backward, tumbling down the staircase like a rag doll.

At the bottom, I hear a loud crack as his back snaps from the impact.

I calmly walk to the bottom of the stairs and stand over his body as he looks up at me, pleading for mercy.

“Pl—please…”

I dig into his pocket and find the key to my collar. I unlock it, letting it fall to the floor.

I stare into his cold, gray eyes. The eyes I’ve seen every day for the past two years as he’s experimented on me.

Tortured me.

The eyes that have kept me going. For that one day when I’d rip them from his head.

My claws lengthen from my fingertips.

“Filthy wolf. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill all of you,” he mutters as blood trickles out of his mouth.

I plunge my claws into his face and rip them back out in one swift motion.

“You won’t be hurting anyone else ever again,” I say, wiping his blood on the thin rag of a dress that I’m wearing.

I feel something inside me, but it’s not the strength of the Goddess. No, this is something different…

Purpose.

I am going to follow Selene’s instructions.

I’m going to find my mate, no matter where he is. And I’m going to heal him.

But first, I’m going to make the rest of these hunters pay for what they’ve done to me.

I turn from Curt’s mangled body and start walking up the stairs.

With each step that I take, I feel more and more unbridled rage.

I don’t just open the door at the top of the stairs…

…I tear it off its hinges.

I walk down an empty, sterile hallway until I get to a closed door.

Party music is blaring on the other side, and I can hear several men—at least five—drunkenly dancing and carrying on.

I kick through the door and snarl, raging and feral, ready to kill.

The men look up at me, stunned, as my eyes flicker from one hunter to the next.

“Who’s first?” I growl, drawing my claws.

One of the hunters pulls a gun from his holster, but he’s too slow, and I knock it out of his hand before I tackle him and start ripping through his flesh with my claws.

I’m double-teamed by two of them as they jump on my back, but I swing around and slice both of their necks open. They grasp their throats as the blood seeps through their fingers, crumpling to the ground.

The fourth hunter grabs a knife from his boot and charges at me, screaming. He stabs at my face and the blade breaks my skin, producing a small cut.

As the blood rolls down my face like a lone teardrop, I touch the spot where he cut me and feel it already closing.

His eyes widen with disbelief. “H-how d-did you?”

I wrench the knife from his hand and plunge it into his chest. He falls to the floor, his eyes still bulging out of his head.

I want to stop and take a breath, but my body won’t let me. I’m running on pure adrenaline…or something else, but I don’t feel in control.

As I turn around to look for the exit, I see a young hunter holding a gun. His hand is shaking as he points it directly at me.

Fuck. Five. I forgot there were five.

BANG!

I feel a silver bullet rip through my thigh, but it doesn’t leave the other side, instead it remains lodged in my leg.

Without a moment of hesitation, I pounce on the young hunter and break his neck, but a searing pain shoots through my body as I stand up.

Shit, how does this healing thing work? This is the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life!

As I look around at the carnage that I’ve caused, I can’t help but wonder what the Goddess would think. She told me to escape, not to murder everyone in the building.

Is that why my healing isn’t working now?

I grab a nearby lantern, limp toward a ladder that leads to a hatch, and climb up it through a dark tunnel. As I emerge, I hold up my lantern to find myself in what looks like an old barn.

So they were hiding in a secret facility underground this whole time. No wonder no one ever found me…

I’m about to push through the massive barn doors and leave this hellhole forever when I spot several kerosene containers in the corner.

I can’t let this place be used for evil again…

I dump the kerosene oil all over the barn and smash the lantern onto it, creating an instantaneous and raging inferno.

As the fire spreads, I feel triumphant, but that feeling immediately turns to dread when I see the fire moving toward something covered by a tarp in the corner—a pickup truck.

Shit.

KA-BLA-AAAM!

My feet lift off the ground, and I fly backward through the splintering wooden barn doors.

I land on my back, and a searing pain shoots through my body. The twinkling stars in the night sky begin to turn into blurry black spots.

As smoke billows into the clearing and the scent of burning oil overwhelms my senses, I see the tall figure of a man approach me from the smoke.

“What should we do with her Alpha Alex?” asks a voice in the background.

Then everything fades to black.

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