The Queen's Forbidden Mate

A Crown Worth Stealing

Long ago in Rogue Land, the world of Crystal Orb Series

***** Trigger Alert... This chapter contains a description of assault. If this content may disturb you, please skip ahead to the section marked with the bold asterisks (*****). If you need help, please reach out to your friends or qualified professionals. If you wish to speak with me, you can always connect with me on F*B or I*G. Assault is a deplorable crime and a punishable offence. Take care and stay safe. *****

Monike stood frozen beside the cracked wash basins of Li’l Bushman’s ladies’ toilet. The ladies’ toilets had been closed for renovation. Earlier that evening, Monike had skilfully convinced Jack and Alex to swap the warning signs, ensuring only one woman would walk through that doorway… All is fair in love and war; and for Monike, it was war. She had mapped out every single detail with cold, clinical precision, ensuring the location was perfectly isolated from the rest of the bustling establishment.

But she reached the space expecting her rival to be dead. She had visualised a swift, bloodless conclusion to the annoying obstacle that the curly-haired girl presented.

Instead, the scene before her brought her to an abrupt halt.

She couldn’t move, her breath catching painfully in her throat as the reality of the situation completely derailed. She had expected shouting or perhaps a slap, or a quiet peaceful, dead body. She only needed the librarian girl to disappear from Liam’s life forever. A clean tactical removal… That’s it!

She had never imagined this.

Jack laughed as Ira struggled violently against him, the sound echoing grotesquely around the cramped, tiled room.

“I love a good hunt! And you are better than anything that I have recently had!” Jack murmured loud enough for Monike to hear.

He held Ira’s hair and rolled over so she was under him. Picking himself up on one arm, he slapped her again. It would have been painful, had to be. The sharp, sickening crack of flesh meeting flesh reverberated off the damp walls. She should have been satisfied that the woman was going to be taken care of. But she hated it. A clean murder is all she wanted, a peaceful death for Ira. There was no logic in the gratuitous cruelty, no strategic purpose to the suffering unfolding on the floor.

“Don’t try to run, my pet! You will get nowhere!” He got up and got rid of his shirt in seconds, still holding the flintstone in his hand. Monike had handed it over to him. Miriam, Ira’s enemy, had helped Monike procure it. The stone felt like a heavy curse right now, a physical manifestation of a deal that had spun entirely out of her hands.

His voice sent a cold shiver crawling over Monike’s skin. She shuddered. Men like Jack didn’t stop once they started. They were driven by a chaotic, volatile darkness that no amount of human reasoning could ever hope to predict or contain.

He pulled Ira’s leg roughly not paying heed to the rough surface of the floor.

“Let me go… Let me go!” She cried repeatedly. Her hoarse voice fell on deaf ears. She pulled at his hair and clawed at his face with surprising ferocity, her fingernails digging deep. Her screams bounced sharply off the walls, laced with pure panic.

Jack only laughed harder, easily pinning her down.

Monike’s fingers curled into trembling fists. This was completely wrong. This wasn’t the arrangement she had made. She had hired Jack to eliminate a political rival, to secure her own position as Liam’s mate and Luna. She had calculated the angles, but she had not accounted for this level of brutality and never for a s****l assault.

She hadn’t expected it to remind her of herself. She had spent years in therapy convincing herself she was nothing like the man who had stolen her childhood, trying to build an armour of absolute control so she would never feel small again.

Her stomach lurched violently. For one impossible second, another face flashed through her mind… her mother’s. Then another memory resurfaced, sharp and suffocating: a tiny girl clawing desperately at a locked utility-room door while the heavy darkness swallowed every single scream. The ghost of that old terror wrapped tightly around her chest, choking the breath right out of her.

Monike blinked the vision away, forcing her jaw to tighten. No. This wasn’t the same. This couldn’t be the same. She was in control here. She was an adult, a strategist, not a helpless child trapped in the dark.

Jack shoved Ira flat onto the cold tiles again, his expression darkening with a predatory hunger. Jack had succeeded in forcing Ira’s legs apart, wedging himself between them while her frantic kicks achieved nothing. In fact, it looked like the kicking only turned the monster on.

His eyes full of lust scanned Ira’s nearly naked body, “you look good under me! It's a shame I did not get to enjoy your v*rgin p*ssy that night! See what you have done?” he said in a condescending tone, pointing to the scratches on his face that had started to bleed a little. His filthy grin widened.

“I will need to teach you a lesson!” He ran his free hand over the inner side of Ira’s thigh, his nails digging into her skin, rubbing the hard and rough stone against her, breaking her skin which made her scream blindly in pain. The raw agony in that sound sliced straight through Monike’s remaining composure.

He laughed maniacally. “Oooh! I fr*cking I love this!”

Something inside Monike snapped, overriding her usual calculating logic. ‘Let her go! I had asked you to kill her. Stop this!’ she shouted, launching herself forward.

Jack barely looked at her. With one lazy, backhanded shove, he sent her stumbling sideways. She crashed heavily into one of the porcelain sinks, her hip exploding with a sharp burst of pain.

He tore Ira’s blouse apart, exposing her bosom and bent down, bringing his mouth closer to her boob.

Monike couldn’t watch this anymore. The sight turned her blood to ice, completely shattering the detached mask she wore so proudly. Pressing a hand to her throbbing hip, Monike jumped on him, pulled the flintstone out of his hand in one fluid motion and threw it outside the window, shattering its pane. Now that the stone controlling the witch's power was gone, she wanted Ira to save herself. She no longer thought about Liam.

She no longer cared about the Rogue Queen’s crown.

For the first time that night, the crown stopped mattering. What mattered was one woman refusing to watch another be destroyed. The political alliances and the thirst for security vanished, replaced by a desperate necessity to stop the horror.

‘Use your magic!’ Monike screamed at Ira, desperation cracking her voice. ‘Save yourself!’

Ira squeezed her eyes shut, but nothing happened. The air remained dead.

*** Trigger ends ***

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