Page 1 of Broken Kingdom

One

Alexander

As Hammer and his men celebrate down on the quad, toasting their success around the bonfire they lit early this morning, I remind myself that I did this for love.

Lying to my sister.

Betraying my friends.

Ruining Juliet and Ford’s lives.

I did it all for love.

And you aided and abetted a murder. Don’t forget that part. Ford’s most likely dead. Juliet, too, if she decides to fight Jean-Paul.

He’s even more unhinged than Hammer, and he already killed his last fiancée. What’s one more?

I swallow the bile rising in my throat and turn to gaze out over the water, where Maxim’s ship is drawing closer to shore. Cyrus, one of Hammer’s generals, is now at the helm. The call came in about twenty minutes ago. Cyrus has captured Maxim and his ship and is sailing back to the harbor with several high-value prisoners. My team will be in charge of locking them away in the cells Lost Moon University hasn’t used in nearly a century.

The school is a gentler place than it was in the late 1800s.

Or it was, before I helped terrorists take over and destroy everything I loved about the university. But I didn’t have a choice. Beck was going to kill Catherine. I couldn’t be everywhere, all of the time. Beck was right. Sooner or later, he would have gotten my sister alone and done all the terrible things he promised he would.

He wasn’t just going to kill her. He was going to torture her first. And the entire time he was hurting her, he planned to tell her it was my fault. I’d chosen other people before my twin. I’d put the well-being of two pack rejects before my own flesh and blood, and that was why she was being mutilated, piece by bloody piece.

Now, instead, she gets to live the rest of her life as a Variant slave. Great job, brother.

I flinch and the Alpha-hole beside me on the parapet snaps, “Man up, soldier. It’s better if they throw the bodies overboard. Fewer corpses for us to burn.”

“Right,” I agree, swallowing past the lump in my throat.

I hadn’t even noticed the corpses. But sure enough, as my gaze fixes on the boat once more, I make out two silhouettes dark against the glowing horizon, tossing limp bodies over the side and into the sea.

The sun will rise in just a few minutes. Maybe then we’ll be able to see the corpses floating in the bay, the place where we used to swim and play and enjoy our fucking lives before the New Lupine Brotherhood took over and ruined everything.

If only I could go back in time and figure out another way to stop Beck.

I could have killed him, but another brother would have simply taken his place. Beck promised he had a list as long as his arm of men willing to “rape my sister into the ground” on his behalf, should he mysteriously disappear.

I couldn’t fight all of them. I’m just one man.

By the time I realized Ford was an ally I could trust, it was too late. I was in too deep, up to my ears in lies and betrayal with no way out.

Or maybe not…

Maybe it’s not too late, after all.

That silhouette, the one still standing at the boat railing, staring up at the wall as the ship draws closer, looks awfully familiar. There aren’t many men as big as Ford in the world. He’s not only tall, but so broad through the shoulders that he looks more like a cartoon superhero than a college kid.

What are the chances Jean-Paul had a fighter as massive as Ford planted on Maxim’s boat?

Slim, I decide.

Slim enough for suspicion to take root.

What if Cyrus didn’t take over the ship? What if this is a trick, one that—thanks to the rising sun shining straight into his enemies’ eyes—Maxim thinks he can use to gain the upper hand in this fight?

Immediately, I decide if it is, I’m going to help him. This might be my last chance to turn the tide before Catherine’s sold at auction with the rest of the Variants. Before the school is lost for decades to the ignorant, violent “leadership” of a man like Hammer.

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