CLAIMED BY THE CURSED WOLF KING

Chapter 1: Careful, Doc FREYJA A sharp blade cut into Freyja’s forearm, sending a cold, burning agony through her and making her vision blur at the edges. One, two, three, she counted silently in her head, focusing her gaze on the blinding white light from the fluorescent panels in the ceiling. The light was harsh, but its burn was a welcome distraction from the pain crippling her from head to toe. She could feel her skin stubbornly clinging to a life it shouldn't still have, pushing against the metal, trying to knit itself back together. But Dr. Macklin was faster. He twisted the blade, forcing the wound to stay open long enough to guide a heavy, hollow needle coated with wolfsbane directly into the vein, humming “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” as he worked. A sharp, ragged gasp left her throat, but she quickly forced her chapped lips into a tight, bloody smile. No one would hear her if she screamed anyway. Not with the assistant turning the small black Bluetooth speaker on their working table on. "My body is a cage" by Arcade fire quickly drowned out Dr. Macklin's horrid voice. The mad doc had suggested to her father, Alpha Ferguson, that music would help calm her nerves and provide a faster working environment and he'd obliged, buying the noisy speaker. Mad doc wasn't entirely wrong, especially since she got to choose the songs sometimes. This particular one was fast becoming her favorite. It sometimes lured her to sleep. But not today. Even if the outside world did hear her scream, they wouldn’t come to her rescue. Two years in the underground lab of the pack had taught her that much. Nobody cared about the daughter of a dead woman—especially when that woman had been forced upon their Alpha. “Careful, Doc,” Freyja croaked, her voice dry as ash. “If you drain me too fast, I won’t be able to haunt you properly when I die. I’ve already mapped out your bedroom for the poltergeist routine.” Dr. Macklin didn’t even look up from his vials as he demanded a pair of scissors from the female assistant behind him. He was used to Freyja’s sick jokes. To him, she wasn’t a daughter of the Alpha. She was simply a freak on normal days. But during his experiments he preferred to see her as a log of wood that would eventually bleed gold when he uncovered the miracle in her blood. That way, he didn’t need to be too careful when he sliced her skin or punctured a vein. To survive the crippling pain that throbbed through her malnourished body, Freyja did the one thing that always helped when the music failed: she checked out of the boxed room. Her mind drifted through archives of memories, searching for the one that would keep her company for the next hour. Each session with the barbaric doctor—whose medical license had been revoked four years ago, when Freyja still had the privilege to breathe free air and feel the warmth of the sun on her skin—usually lasted between thirty minutes and an hour. Two hours if he was in a foul mood. On those days she prayed harder for death, but it never came. She replayed the summers when she was between seven and thirteen, visiting the pack’s lake and playing hide-and-seek in the high grass behind the pack house with other children her age. Back when she still thought her father might one day look at her with love. A smile almost warmed her lips before the pleasant memories shattered. Her mind violently crossed over to the ugly side of her past, dragging her eight years back, when she was fourteen. ~~~~~~~~ Freyja was a teenage girl again, hidden in the west wing corridors. It had been a very good hiding spot, until her oldest stepbrother, Gideon, found her. He hadn’t been part of the game, but she still thought he was playing with her when he first hoisted her onto his shoulders. He played with her like that sometimes. That was until he took her into his room, threw her roughly on his bed, and pinned her down to tear her favorite yellow dress. Horror overtook her and she tried to push him away. He had turned eighteen and just gotten his wolf two days after Freyja's fourteenth birthday. He was really strong and big. Her wolfless self was no match. “Bring the cuffs. Hold her tight. Hurry!” Dr. Macklin barked at his assistant as he tried to stabilize Freyja’s jerking form. Pain exploded through her as Gideon thrust into her with force. She thrashed and clawed at his back, wailing for him to stop as she fought to kick the memory out. She shook her head and rattled her teeth, her eyes blinking uncontrollably. “What in the goddess’s name is wrong with her? Bring the sedative,” Dr. Macklin’s voice echoed in her foggy mind, heavy with a mix of panic and anger. After Gideon was done, she limped to her room and scrubbed off some of the disgust, then ran to Luna Morgana, crying and sore. Her stepmother simply slapped her across the face, accusing her of trying to soil her son’s immaculate image. After that, the punishments from Morgana came almost daily out of spite. She went from being a princess to working twice as hard as the omegas, cleaning the kitchen and doing the laundry of every member of the family with her bare hands. For days after the assault, Gideon stayed away. Then, when he finally approached her again, he came with an apology—and an offer. He swore he hadn’t known what took over his body, claimed it was because he was still learning to control his wolf. That he genuinely liked her and wanted her. It was sick, considering they were halfsiblings. But desperate for a crumb of safety, Freyja had believed him, even though he’d turned down her pleas to tell their parents the truth. It was the past and confessing wouldn’t change much, he’d said. He wasn’t completely wrong. Luna Morgana might even harm her and blame her for seducing her pure-blood son. Things would have taken a turn for the worse—or so she thought then, because she couldn’t see this future. What began as an apology slowly became a twisted bargain. Freyja willingly started giving in to Gideon in exchange for his protection from the Luna and her father, who sought every opportunity to teach her a lesson. Even Nadia, her youngest half-sister, who had once been close to her besides Gideon, started keeping her distance, too. But with Gideon on her side and the twins—Caspian and Roman—mostly ignoring her like they did everyone else, things started to look brighter again. Until the day she burned Luna Morgana’s dress... ~~~~~~~ A sharp, involuntary scream tore from Freyja’s lips as Dr. Macklin plunged a specialized, silver-coated syringe deep into her veins, forcing her mind back to the present. Her bloodied eyes flew open to catch the ghost of relief flooding the faces of the two people who were her greatest nightmares. Her chest heaved, her cells screaming for oxygen that her starved blood volume couldn’t provide. These days, her body took longer to heal from silver. She attempted to move her hands and legs but instead received the harsh bite of cuffs. The bastards had chained her to the iron frame of the bed. The song had changed to "control" by Halsey. She could hear the world bawling with laughter at the irony. “What happened to you?” the bald-headed old fool of a doctor fired at her like she was the problem. Before she could tell him to f**k off, the heavy metal door of the lab opened. Through her hazy, sweat-blurred vision, Freyja saw Gideon step into the room, his tall, broad-shouldered Alpha frame dominating the space. Her body stiffened as she remembered exactly why he was there.