Page 6 of Forgotten Queen

Xander wasn’t bad company, but what I needed was time to figure out how to get to Daphne.

When everyone fell asleep, I’d hoped to sneak out, but I had no way to do that with my side being the way it was.

And if I didn’t manage that, I would have to sleep as well.

I dreaded what—or who—I’d find there.

Chapter IV

Idreadedfallingasleepthat night.

For years, my dreams had been my only true respite from the unending bullying I faced in the pack. There was a voice, a male one I’d dismissed as my subconsciousness’s cure to my crippling loneliness.

All too late, I’d realized the voice belonged to Cole.

I’d seen the face of the voice once as a pup, but somehow he’d hidden himself since. Of course, I’d assumed it was my imagination, a fictitious friend and my only companion besides Daphne.

Yet, when I’d died and wound up in Hell, I hadn’t connected the impossible fact. It had been more than a decade since the glimpse of his face I’d long since dismissed as a dream. How was I to know the arrogant, demanding Alpha was the same soothing voice that had comforted me through broken bones and other humiliations?

But he was more than a simple voice, much more. Our connection made no sense.

He’d told me I was once his queen.

And right now, he was furious with me for escaping.

I mean, it didn’t help I’d kissed him, dosing him with poison and knocking him out. It had been the hottest kiss of my life (or undeath) until he’d slumped in my arms.

He said there’d be consequences. No doubt he would make me pay for the betrayal.

I dreaded finding him in my dreams, but my body could no longer stand to stay awake. My body might be numb to pain, but I was beyond exhausted from the blood loss. Though I hadn’t tracked the hours, I’d had precious little rest since escaping his castle in Hell.

Sleep was inevitable, no matter how I fought it. So I let myself give in.

But my dreams were silent.

When I woke, I was almost disappointed. I might not be able to trust Cole, but my wolf had found a companion in him.

The darkness outside the window told me I’d woken up far sooner than I’d planned. Likely, I’d only dozed for a few hours. I twisted my head as far as I could, not seeing any other shapes in the darkness. Xander must’ve figured I wasn’t going anywhere overnight.

A week, the healer had told me.

The image of Daphne rose from my memory unbidden, bile in my throat following it. My best friend crouched in a filthy cell with a threadbare blanket barely covering her as she shivered. What crime could she have possibly committed to warrant such treatment? Her father was the pack Beta, so if his daughter was treated like that despite his influence, there was no telling how much worse it might get. My chest tightened.

I didn’t have a week.

The sleep had restored enough of my mental faculties to plan at least. In life, I’d been a scrawny, below-average wolf. The pack Omega who couldn’t shift right.

Yet, since returning from Hell, something in me was fixed. I could shift as well as, if not better than, the average wolf. My training had stayed with me.

But it wasn’t only shifter training I’d done in the underworld.

No, there was also witchcraft.

I hadn’t been exactly gifted despite what Hecate claimed, and I’d never tried anything like this.

But ithadto work. I refused to even contemplate failure.

I shut my eyes and focused. I needed my body to fix itself. I needed that with a desperation I’d never felt before. Because it wasn’t my life on the line, it was Daphne’s.

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