Page 26 of Broken Forced Mate
The words should feel triumphant. Instead, they feel like a death sentence.
Because now comes the hard part—keeping Raegan alive long enough to explain everything without her discovering the full truth about why I really rejected her three years ago.
Some secrets are too dangerous to share, even with the woman you’ve just married.
Especially with the woman you’ve just married.
Chapter 8 - Raegan
I throw up the moment Wyn parks in his driveway.
My stomach empties itself into the desert scrub beside his mailbox, and I barely manage to stay upright through the retching. The taste of bile and lingering chloroform burns my throat.
“Don’t,” I gasp when he moves to help me. “Just…give me a minute.”
He hovers nearby while I empty what little is left in my stomach. The man who kidnapped me and forced me into marriage is now playing the part of a concerned husband. The irony would be funny if I weren’t living it.
His house sits alone on several acres of desert land; a single-story adobe with a red tile roof that blends into the landscape. It’s exactly what one would expect from a man who values solitude over company, and it’s exactly as I remember it.
“Better?” he asks when I finally straighten up.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Peachy.”
The word comes out more barbed than I intended, but I don’t care. Sarcasm is about the only weapon I have left.
“Come on.” He reaches for my wrist to help steady me. “Let’s get you inside where you can—”
The moment his fingers close around my wrist, the world explodes.
Images flood my mind like a dam bursting—vivid, detailed, and all-consuming. I can see everything with crystal clarity, as if I’m watching a movie projected directly into my brain.
Bastian stands in the desert at night, but he looks different. Harder. More dangerous. He’s talking to men I don’t recognize, whose faces are illuminated by the glow of tablet screens. Maps spread across the hood of a truck show territory boundaries marked in red, resource locations pinpointed with GPS coordinates.
“The Amanzite reserves are here and here,” Bastian states. “Extraction begins at dawn, security changes shift at 0600. We’ll have a twelve-minute window.”
One of the men nods. “And the girl?”
“Leave that to me. Once the marriage is complete, she won’t be a problem.”
The scene changes. I’m wearing a wedding dress, but not at the simple ceremony I just experienced. This is elaborate, with hundreds of guests, formal decorations, and cameras recording every moment.
An officiant I don’t recognize asks if I take Bastian as my husband. The moment I say yes, pain shoots through my chest like lightning. My heart stutters, then stops. I collapse in the aisle while guests scream, and Bastian kneels beside my body with perfectly orchestrated grief.
But his eyes aren’t sad. They’re ecstatic.
The vision changes again, and this time, I see myself in a hospital bed with machines beeping around me while doctors shake their heads. Poisoned slowly, they tell my family. Nothing they can do. The marriage gave her husband legal rights to her inheritance, including mineral claims worth millions.
Oren stands at my bedside, holding my lifeless hand while Bastian signs papers that transfer my share of the Amanzite reserves to his name. My brother is too devastated bygrief to notice the small smile playing at the corners of my new widower’s mouth.
More images flood in—Thornridge forces are moving through our territory while the pack is distracted by my funeral. Quick strikes, overwhelming force, resistance crushed before it can organize. Our prosperity stolen; our people scattered or dead.
All because I said yes to the wrong man.
The visions fade as suddenly as they came, leaving me gasping and shaking in Wyn’s arms. He caught me when I started to fall, and now he’s holding me against his chest while I try to convince myself that what I just saw isn’t real.
“What happened?” His voice sounds distant, muffled. “Raegan, what did you see?”
I struggle to separate reality from vision, to remember where I am and what’s real. Wyn’s house. His driveway. The marriage certificate in my purse that binds us together legally.
