Broken Kingdom
Chapter 1

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 b***d, 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 f*****g 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.

Before the war he and Jean-Paul started here today gets completely out of hand.

They don’t have many allies now, but the more success they have, the more vulnerable, poorly defended packs will feel they have no choice but to join them.

This is an inflection point, not just for my life, but for all shifters. Do we let the nastiest, most aggressive wolves gain and hold onto power, the way we always have, or do we prove that we can build a better world for ourselves and our families?

I know which I choose.

And I’m going to choose it no matter what.

Even if it’s the last choice I ever make.

On the way down the stairs from the wall to the beach, I wish I could reach out to Catherine with my thoughts, but she’s too far away, held captive in the Variant dorm with all the other Variants and wolves Hammer considers traitors. Even if she were closer, I couldn’t risk it. I can’t direct my internal thoughts to just one person and most of the shifters here can communicate telepathically. They’d hear me telling Catherine how much I love her and how proud I am to have had twenty-one years as her brother and know something’s up.

I’ll just have to hope that if I never see her again, she’ll know I died trying to make things right.

I’m prepared to die, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. I’m terrified. As my unit lines up in formation on the beach, awaiting the rowboats pulling toward shore from the anchored ship, sweat beads on my upper l*p and my heart races.

The figures in the boats almost all have the hoods of their jackets pulled up over their heads, and Cyrus looks awfully stiff seated there at the back of the farthest boat. My gut is screaming that something’s up, but none of the men around me seem to suspect a thing—not even the commander, a man in his early forties named Wes who has clearly earned Hammer’s trust.

If he hadn’t, Hammer wouldn’t have put him in charge of securing the prisoners while Hammer and his friends tap the keg.

Wes’s chill would be enough to make me doubt my own instincts if it weren’t for the figure with his back to us in the first boat.

It’s the broad-shouldered silhouette I spotted. He’s wearing a dark gray coat at least a size too small with the hood pulled tight over his head and part of his face. His shoulders are hunched, but his entire body vibrates with potential energy. He’s a loaded gun about to fire and Goddess help anyone in his path when he does.

I know it’s Ford, even though I can’t see his face. I’ve spent enough time with him to recognize the way he braces his balled fists on the wooden seat beside him as the boat nears the shore.

Those are the same fists he clenched in my direction when we first met out in the woods, back when he had no idea what he was getting into here at Lost Moon.

I’m so sure I’m right that I take a step back and then another, slowly shifting to the back of the formation under the pretense of needing to check my gun. “It’s jammed,” I mutter to Wes as he lifts an eyebrow my way.

“Stay to the rear then and be prepared to draw your sidearm if you need it,” he says with a subtle roll of his eyes that makes it clear he has no idea who I am.

I’m not one of the green kids shoved into military service for the first time yesterday when the New Lupine Brotherhood took over. I spent most of my teens helping my father defend our pack lands from insurgents. I have experience with a wide range of battle techniques and styles and know my way around an automatic weapon.

I also know that with me behind this troop and Ford and his allies in front, these fifteen men will have two choices—surrender or die.

Is it wrong that I kind of hope they choose the latter?

Probably, but nothing is right at the moment, and it won’t be until Lost Moon is back in the proper hands.

I keep my head down, pretending to fuss with my firing mechanism until two men jump out of the rowboat to drag it the rest of the way onto the sand. I wait until I can tell Ford’s coiled form is about to burst from his seat to shout, “I’m on your side, Ford, and I’ve got them covered from behind!”

The men in my troop turn their weapons on me, but I’m already firing, taking out Wes and two members of the New Lupine Brotherhood before I’m punched in the chest by a bullet at close range. The impact lifts me off my feet, sending me flying through the air as shots fire from the boat.

As I sail through the air, I don’t know if I’ll live or die, but I know I made the right choice.

I’m sorry, Catherine, I love you, I call out just in case she’s close enough to hear, and then I close my eyes and let go, knowing the rest of the fight is in Ford’s hands.