The Warrior’s Broken Mate novel Chapter 17

ALPHA Elias POV

Everyone in the pack understood that Lyra had only just been freed from the abuse she’d endured. They didn’t judge her for staying quiet, for keeping her distance. They gave her space because they remembered what it was like to survive cruelty. Every single one of them -including Lenore–had once needed time to heal.

Looking back, I realize now that I gave Lenore too much attention when she first arrived at the pack. I treated her with kindness and gave her trust too easily. That was my mistake. I didn’t see how it fed into her obsession. She started pushing away every female who got close to me, always trying to stake some invisible claim. But this time, she crossed a line she couldn’t come back from. This–this was unforgivable kept staring at her tear–streaked face, but all I saw was manipulation. Those weren’t tears of guilt. They were tears of frustration–because she had failed.

Disgusted, I struck her again–this time across the face with my full strength. She went down hard, slamming onto the cold concrete. She clutched her cheek in shock, her lip split and blood dripping freely from her nose.

“Elias…” she whimpered.

“That’s Alpha to you,” I corrected her coldly, my voice devoid of anything resembling mercy or feeling.

Outside the cell, Alpha Alaric and Luke stood watching. Lenore glanced at them in a desperate bid for help, but they didn’t move. Luke leaned casually against the bars across the room, expression unreadable. None of this mattered to them. And I knew Alaric–he would’ve done the exact same thing if someone tried to harm his Luna. Hell, he wouldn’t have waited.

Lenore would be dead already.

Honestly, I was surprised at how much restraint I was showing.

“Alpha, please, I’m begging you. Don’t kill me,” Lenore sobbed, voice trembling with fear. “I wasn’t thinking–I lost control. I thought you brought her here to punish me… I didn’t know…”

“She’s my mate. Your Luna,” I snarled, stepping closer. “How the hell is that punishment? That’s the bond we live by. That’s what it means to be a werewolf. She’s the only one who matters to me now, and she’s lying in a damn hospital bed–because of you.”

My fury surged and I grabbed her by the collar, yanking her upright. While she was still on the ground, I slammed my fist into her face–once, twice, again–until she was reeling.

By the time I let her go, her face was a mess of swelling bruises and bleeding cuts, but she was still breathing–barely.

“I didn’t have a choice!” she cried out suddenly, trying to stop me from continuing.

“What the hell does that mean?” I growled, releasing my grip on her shirt. She collapsed, her body hitting the floor like a rag doll.

She lay sprawled on the ground, her face pressed into the dirt as she sobbed uncontrollably. Her words had turned nearly unintelligible, just fragmented cries of distress–but that last thing she said struck me. It didn’t add up. Why in the world would she ever think she had to kill her own Luna? I’d always known Lenore wasn’t stable, but this… this was on a completely different level than anything I’d imagined.

“You had a choice!” I shouted down at her, my voice filled with rage. “You didn’t have to try and kill Lyra!”

“Yes, I did!” she screamed back at me, desperation twisting her face. “I didn’t have a choice! He was going to come for me–he said he’d find me if I didn’t do exactly what he told me to!”

I narrowed my eyes, taking a cautious step back. “What the hell are you talking about?”

She struggled to pull herself together, her breathing shallow and fast, but after a moment, she sat up against the wall. Her face was bruised, streaked with blood and tears, but her eyes locked onto each of ours–mine, Alaric’s, and Luke’s–with a fearful kind of determination. We were all watching her now, listening closely. It was clear there was more to this mess than we originally thought. I just needed her to spit it out.

“Start talking, Lenore,” I warned, my voice low and threatening. “Because I can drag this out for as long as it takes, and I promise you won’t like how I do it.”

She inhaled deeply, her shoulders shaking, and leaned her back against the cold brick wall behind her.

“I went to the Crystal River Pack,” she began, voice trembling but audible. “I was trying to surprise you. I didn’t know you’d already left. And that’s when I met Alpha Thorne. He was the one who told me everything–that you’d taken his daughter away.”

I clenched my jaw, but said nothing.

“He ordered me to bring her back to him,” Lenore continued. “And if I couldn’t manage that… then I had to kill her. I had to make sure she didn’t make it past tomorrow.”

“Why tomorrow?” I demanded, frowning. The timing didn’t make sense.

“Because tomorrow is her sixteenth birthday,” Lenore explained, her voice barely above a whisper now. “That’s when she’ll come into her wolf… and her royal powers. If Alpha Thorne can’t control that kind of power, then he doesn’t want anyone else to have it either.”

I turned to look at Alpha Alaric and Luke, hoping for some reaction–shock, confusion, anything. But both of them just stared back at me, their expressions unreadable, cold. No surprise.

No outrage. Just silent understanding.

I looked back at Lenore, and something in me snapped. In one swift, fluid motion, I reached down, grabbed her by the throat, and with a burst of rage, I ripped it out clean. Blood sprayed across the floor as I let go, dropping the torn flesh onto the stone at the same moment her lifeless body crumpled beside it.

“I’ll get someone down here to clean that up,” Alpha Alaric said calmly from behind me, like it was just another Tuesday.

Without a word, I turned and walked out of the dungeon, the blood still fresh on my hands. I was halfway down the corridor when Luke’s phone started ringing. I caught the name Dr. Eris from the screen before he even answered. Something about that made me freeze.

I pivoted and strode back toward him, snatching the phone from his hand.

“What happened?” I barked into the receiver, my stomach already twisting with unease.

“Alpha…” Dr. Eris’s voice came through, tight and unsure. “I’m not entirely sure how to explain it. But… Lyra’s gone.”

The air left my lungs. “What do you mean she’s gone?”

“I mean she’s not here anymore,” Dr. Eris said. “She’s missing. Her hospital room is empty- she’s just… vanished.”

Luke and I tore through the pack grounds on foot, running as fast as our legs could carry us, our only goal being the hospital. My heart was racing, panic flooding every inch of me as I stormed into Lyra’s hospital room. The place was swarming with people–warriors standing at alert, nurses rushing around with nervous energy, and Dr. Eris at the center of it all, her expression tight with stress. Everyone who’d been involved in Lyra’s care was there, but none of them seemed to have any answers.

“What the hell happened here?” I snapped, shoving the door open with a loud bang that echoed through the room. A nurse stepped forward quickly, trembling slightly under my glare.

“Alpha… I don’t know exactly what happened,” she stammered. “I went in at around 12:20 to check her vitals, like usual, but when I walked in… she was gone.”

I whipped my head toward the wall clock–12:30 AM. It had just crossed midnight. That meant today was officially Lyra’s sixteenth birthday.

“It’s her birthday,” I said through gritted teeth. “I need access to the security footage. Everything you’ve got. I need to see if any of Alpha Thorne’s people showed up.” My voice. was clipped, urgent, and the head warrior nodded, motioning for me to follow.

We made our way swiftly to the surveillance room, where they had screens showing live and archived footage of every hallway in the hospital. There weren’t any cameras inside the rooms for privacy reasons, just in the corridors, so we started scrubbing through the footage right outside Lyra’s door, minute by minute.

We kept watching. We went back further in time, triple–checked every second. But there was nothing. Not a damn thing. The recordings didn’t show anyone walking into Lyra’s room or out of it. Not even Lyra herself. It was as if she had vanished from existence–completely and without a trace.

How was that even possible?

Security was thick right now. Warriors had been posted at every major entrance and hallway since Lenore’s incident. No way would anyone be stupid enough to try something here. But Lyra’s room was on the first floor. It wouldn’t take much effort to climb in or out through the window

I bolted back to her room, shoving the door open again and going straight for the window. I inspected it thoroughly–it looked completely shut, no obvious tampering–but there was no lock. It was the kind of window that could easily be pushed closed from the outside.

“This has to be how they got in,” I told the room firmly, turning to face the others. “No one came or went through the door, that much is clear. The footage proves it. So someone used the damn window.”