QUICK LINKS: Broken Dove Recap by Chapter P–11 | 12–22 | 37–52 | 53–62 // Silver Elite Book 1 Summary
Broken Dove Chapters 23–36 Summary
This chapter-by-chapter summary of Broken Dove by Dani Francis contains spoilers.
Broken Dove Chapter 23
Wren and Xavier find Poppy cornered by a ridgehowler, a huge mountain wolf. Wren wounds the beast, but it turns back toward Poppy before Xavier throws himself in the way and takes a bite to the forearm. Then Wren finishes it off.
As they leave, the three discover the dead wolf’s pup hiding nearby. Poppy wants to keep it, but Wren and Xavier talk her out of it.
Back at the Dagger, Fiona heals Xavier’s arm. She’s the healer who voted against releasing him, so gratitude doesn’t come easily. She makes it clear she still doesn’t trust him, but she thanks him for saving her daughter.
Broken Dove Chapter 24
The morning after Xavier saves Poppy, she asks him to play cards, and he agrees.
Cross reaches Wren with intel. Modified prisoners at Ice Canyon are about to be relocated, but those the Command deems not worth keeping will be executed. Wren passes the information to Gray without revealing her source. Adrienne later confirms through their mental link that it checks out.
That night, Gray and Teriq call every field operative to the mess hall and lay out a rescue mission. When Saint reads off his team, Wren’s name is included. The room falls silent.
The plan is to split into two teams. Teriq leads extraction, pulling prisoners out of the barracks. Saint leads the diversion to draw the guards’ attention from the breakout. Wren is on the decoy squad, tasked with planting explosives at a supply tunnel while Saint’s group stages a false assault on the mine.
Minutes into the flight, Teriq comes through on comms. Cross Redden has been spotted on-site.
Broken Dove Chapter 25
Wren holds off on warning Cross until the diversion is underway. He’s angry when she reaches out, but he promises his support.
The decoy team takes out two guards before reaching the tunnel. Declan and Neema set the charges while Wren keeps watch. One of Neema’s charges fails to activate, and Declan doubles back to fix it.
Then the force field at the tunnel’s exit, which was supposed to be down, isn’t. Neema rides into it and dies. Wren seizes control of Declan’s mind and forces him off his bike before it hits the field. Shaken, he can’t drive, so Wren takes the bike and gets them out.
At the rendezvous, Teriq reports that the extraction worked, but Tana Archer didn’t make it.
Broken Dove Chapter 26
Wren refuses to leave without Tana. Luisa offers to circle back within ten minutes, and Saint reluctantly signs off. Declan refuses to let Wren go alone despite his condition.
Cross pulls the guards off their posts so Wren can reach Tana’s cell. Once Tana is free, Wren sends her ahead to Declan and stays back with Cross for a moment before reinforcements arrive, and she runs. She makes the pickup with seconds to spare.
On the flight home, Tana asks who gave Wren the cell code. Wren dodges the question, and Tana says she isn’t sure she can trust her anymore.
Back at the Dagger, Evlynne blames Wren for Neema’s death until Saint pulls her away. The Authority calls Wren in and warns her to follow orders next time.
Gray takes Wren aside. He accuses her of colluding with Cross and refuses to let the override code go. The conversation turns personal before Wren cuts it off and walks out.
Broken Dove Chapter 27
At breakfast, Xavier works out why the force field was active at Ice Canyon. Cross was on-site, which was reason enough for the Command to switch it on, and that rules out the worry that someone fed them bad intel.
A Company broadcast interrupts. Travis claims sixteen Copper Block soldiers died in the rescue and has sixteen Modified prisoners executed live on air. Wren learns that Cross has been detained and can do nothing.
Cross reaches Wren that afternoon. He’s been released for now but has a meeting with Travis the next morning that leaves him on edge. He asks her to meet him that night in Ward E. Gray flies her there, dropping Declan at a nearby base along the way.
Wren and Cross meet at an abandoned rock quarry. Cross tells her he has been digging into Travis and uncovered things their father kept hidden from both of them. He brings up the hospital room filled with fragmented Mods from an earlier mission, then says that isn’t what worries him. What worries him is the corrupted.
Broken Dove Chapter 28
Cross tells Wren that at least half the patients in that ward were Primes, not Mods, and that corrupted Primes—including children—have been turning up across the Continent for years. Wren admits she’s been keeping the fact that Adrienne corrupted his mother’s mind from him. Cross says he no longer trusts the people she’s fighting alongside.
Then Cross asks Wren to run away with him. She turns him down, unwilling to give up the fight. She tells him she can’t leave, and he tells her he doesn’t think he’ll ever fit in with the Uprising. When she asks if they’re over, he says he doesn’t know.
Wren and Cross part in the rain with nothing resolved.
Broken Dove Chapter 29
On the flight back, Wren falls apart, and Gray holds her until she settles down. She confirms things are over with Cross, and he tells her it’s probably for the best.
Back at the Dagger, Wren drinks alone in her quarters. Xavier wakes and asks what’s wrong, so she tells him everything. He challenges her decision to turn Cross down, and she insists her responsibilities to the war outweigh her feelings. They end up drinking together.
A personnel file for Jakob Hess, a Tin Block captain who died at twenty-nine in the Sun Post bombing, reveals that his first wife disappeared two years into their marriage and was eventually declared dead.
Broken Dove Chapter 30
Two months pass with no word from Cross. Wren throws herself into training with Hawkins and makes progress with incitement, getting him to pick up a knife and hold it briefly before losing her grip.
In the gym, Xavier and Henley spar until Evlynne storms in and calls out the group for letting a Prime fight freely on the base. Henley doesn’t back down, and Evlynne leaves. Once she’s gone, Henley tells Xavier the real issue isn’t that he’s a Prime but that he served the Command.
The next day, Evlynne offers to fly Wren to a lagoon on the mountain. Wren is wary but agrees. When she climbs down toward the water, she turns to find Evlynne and the helicopter gone. She’s stranded on the ridge.
Broken Dove Chapter 31
Wren tries to mentally order Evlynne to turn the helicopter around, but the distance breaks the connection. She finds a backpack of supplies and decides to trek back alone rather than call for help.
A few hours in, Wren runs into the same ridgehowler pup she saw before. They warily size each other up, reach an uneasy truce, and the wolf—whom she names Prince—tags along for the rest of the way.
When the light fades too much to continue, Wren trips and scrapes herself up badly. She sets up camp, feeds Adrienne a cover story about why she’s stranded, and reaches out to Cross one more time. He still doesn’t answer. The wolf curls up beside her until morning.
At first light, Wren and the ridgehowler head back. The wolf walks with her almost all the way to the Dagger before turning around and disappearing into the tree line.
Back at base, Wren drops the backpack on Evlynne’s breakfast tray and gives her a syrupy smile instead of calling her out directly.
An excerpt on the Theta-3 biotoxin shows that it triggered psychic mutations in about one in three survivors of the Last War, though scientists never identified the genetic mechanism behind them.
Broken Dove Chapter 32
Wren visits Tana in the valley and finds her withdrawn. Tana confirms that Anson raped her and admits she hasn’t felt anything since. Wren tells her she’s not giving up on her.
Back at the Dagger, Wren learns from Kallister that her father had a first wife who vanished without explanation. She raises the possibility that Adrienne is corrupting people on a larger scale than anyone admits. Kallister insists the Authority never sanctioned anything like that, though he hesitates just enough to leave some doubt. He also mentions the Authority has picked up chatter about the De Velde family, but he refuses to say more.
Then Wren catches a conversation between Cross and Travis as if she’s eavesdropping inside her own head. Cross has returned to the Command and is arguing against the executions, while Travis refuses to stop. The connection cuts out just as quickly, and Cross still doesn’t answer when she tries to reach him.
Broken Dove Chapter 33
Gray drops off intel on the De Velde family. The Authority has noticed Travis meeting with Biotech and wants Wren to review the file, since she knew Lyddie in the Program and might catch something others would miss.
At the Temple, Wren manages to compel Gray to cut his own palm. It works but leaves her drained.
That night, Wren reads through the file and finds nothing alarming, though it puts Lyddie into perspective. Her exceptionally accomplished parents explain a lot about Lyddie’s insecurity.
A few days later, the Authority calls a base-wide briefing. The Uprising plans to reopen talks with the Faithful through Jasper Reed, with a meeting set at Sanctum Point in two days.
Gray picks Wren for his sniper team. Xavier demands a spot to protect her, and it turns into a full argument. Evlynne resists, then takes a spot herself.
That night, Wren hears Cross’s voice in her head, then Lyddie’s. The strange ability she’d nearly forgotten hasn’t gone away.
Broken Dove Chapter 34
Wren picks up a conversation between Cross and Lyddie where her name comes up. Lyddie tells him he has nothing to be ashamed of for trusting Wren and mentions that Travis wants to root out Mods entirely. The connection cuts off before Wren can hear more.
Then, Wren tries reaching out to Cross but gets no response.
That night, Wren tells Xavier what’s going on and shares her theory that the ability lets her tune in to whatever Cross is hearing. She decides to look into it herself before reporting to the Authority.
Broken Dove Chapter 35
The team arrives for the meeting, but Gray swaps Wren and Xavier for Evlynne on his security detail because Jasper asked to see the lieutenant directly.
Gray pitches Jasper a council seat and full immunity in exchange for connecting the Uprising with the Faithful. Jasper isn’t interested.
Then Evlynne warns over comms that a Command convoy is closing in. Jasper moves everyone to an armored van, Gray pulls Xavier’s tracker off, and Shamus blows the warehouse as Command moves in.
Jasper shakes the convoy through the industrial sector, then heads into the woods and through a hidden tunnel. On the other side lies an entire community tucked into the trees. Jasper tells them they’ve arrived at the Hollow.
Broken Dove Chapter 36
Gray pitches Kitty on joining the Uprising, and she turns him down flat. Jasper mentions that Travis has been cozying up to Wexton Jones, a wealthy capitalist, and may be angling to expand into Tierra Fe.
It also comes out that Jasper spiked everyone’s drinks with seraphis, an aphrodisiac, without warning. Wren isn’t happy, but the drug is already working on her.
By the fire, Gray tells Wren his Mod power is grounding. He can’t feel others’ emotions, but he can dull or suppress them.
With the seraphis affecting them both, whatever has been simmering between Wren and Gray threatens to boil over when he leans in to kiss her.