They broke my legs so I couldn't run, cut my tongue so I couldn't scream, and shipped me to the Blood Moon Pack as a "defective omega" for their unmated warriors—but the Alpha who opened my cage didn't touch me, he fell to his knees, and the most feared wolf in the continent whispered, "Mate. My mate. Who did this to you? I'll slaughter them all."



I thought I was dreaming.



Or dying. Probably dying.



The cage had been my world for three days—iron bars, dried blood, the stench of fear from the omegas who'd been shipped before me. Most didn't survive the journey. I'd heard the soldiers betting on how long I'd last.



"Crippled and mute," one had laughed. "The warriors will break her in a night."



I couldn't scream. Couldn't beg. Could only lie in my own filth and wait to die.



Then the cage door opened.



And he was there.



Kael Blackwood. The Blood Moon Alpha. The wolf they called the Continent's Butcher, the King Who Walks Alone, the Beast Without a Mate.



I'd heard the stories. Everyone had. Ten years ago, he'd been betrayed by his own family, cursed to lose his wolf, exiled to die in the wastelands. Instead, he'd built an army from rogues and outcasts, conquered the Blood Moon territory, and become the most feared Alpha in five hundred years.



They said he'd killed three hundred wolves with his bare hands.



They said his eyes were red because he'd bathed in so much blood.



They said no omega could survive a night in his bed.



And now he was kneeling in front of my cage, this monster from nightmares, and his hands were shaking.



"Mate."



The word tore from his throat like it hurt.



His wolf—I could see it surfacing, glowing behind his eyes, gold bleeding into crimson. But that was impossible. Everyone knew Kael Blackwood had no wolf. The curse had taken it.



"Who." His voice was barely human. "Who did this to you."



I opened my mouth to answer.



No sound came out.



Just the wet, horrible gurgle of a tongue that wasn't there anymore.



Something in his face shattered.



"Your tongue." He reached through the bars, and I flinched—couldn't help it, three days of soldiers kicking my cage had taught me what hands meant—but he didn't hit me. He touched my face like I was made of glass. "They cut out your tongue."



Tears streamed down my cheeks. I couldn't even nod. The pain in my legs was too much.



"And your legs." His eyes dropped. Saw the unnatural angles. "They broke your legs."



He stood up.



The soldiers behind him had gone very, very quiet.



"Who," Kael said without turning around, "loaded this omega onto my transport?"



Silence.



"I won't ask again."



A soldier stepped forward. Trembling. "Alpha, she was payment from the Silver Moon Pack. Their Alpha said she was a defective—"



The sound his neck made when Kael snapped it was like a branch breaking.



The body hit the ground.



"Anyone else want to call my mate defective?"



No one moved. No one breathed.



Kael reached into the cage and lifted me like I weighed nothing—careful, so careful with my broken legs, cradling me against his chest like I was precious.



Like I mattered.



"I'm going to find out who did this to you." His lips brushed my hair. "And I'm going to tear them apart with my teeth. I'm going to make them scream for years before I let them die. I'm going to—"



I pressed my hand against his chest.



He stopped.



Looked down at me.



And I mouthed the only word I could manage, the word that had been carved into my soul by eighteen years of being told I was nothing:



Why?



Why would he care? Why would anyone?



"Because you're mine." His wolf blazed in his eyes—fully awake now, after ten years of silence, roaring back to life. "You've always been mine. And no one—NO ONE—hurts what belongs to me."



He carried me out of the transport.



Into the blood-red moonlight of his kingdom.



And somewhere deep inside me, in the place where my wolf should have been but never was, something stirred.



\---



The palace was nothing like I expected.



I'd imagined dungeons. Chains. Blood on the walls.



Instead, Kael carried me through halls of black marble and crimson silk, past servants who bowed so low their foreheads touched the floor, into a chamber larger than my father's entire house.



"Get me Lyra." His voice echoed. "NOW."



Servants scattered.



He laid me on a bed softer than clouds—actual softness against my broken body, and I almost sobbed from the relief of it. For three days I'd been lying on iron bars. Before that, the cold stone floor of my father's dungeon.



"Don't cry." Kael's thumb brushed my tears. "I know it hurts. Lyra will help. She's the best healer on the continent."



I wasn't crying from pain.



I was crying because no one had ever been gentle with me. Not once. Not in eighteen years of life.



The door burst open. A small woman with silver hair and sharp eyes rushed in, took one look at me, and her face went pale.



"Moon Goddess."



"Fix her." Kael's voice cracked. "Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs. Fix her."



Lyra approached the bed slowly, her hands already glowing with healing magic. She examined my legs first—I saw her wince—then my mouth.



"Her tongue was cut with a cursed blade." Her voice was grim. "The wound is designed not to heal. Whoever did this wanted her silent forever."



A growl rumbled through the room.



I looked at Kael.



His eyes were fully red now. His claws had extended, gouging marks into his own palms. Blood dripped onto the white sheets.



"Can you fix it?"



"I can try." Lyra hesitated. "Alpha, there's something else. Her wolf—"



"She doesn't have one. I know."



"No." Lyra's hands moved over my chest, my head, glowing brighter. "She DOES have one. It's there—I can feel it. But it's been sealed. Locked away by extremely powerful dark magic." Her eyes widened. "Magic this strong... someone wanted to make absolutely sure her wolf never woke."



"Why would anyone seal an omega's wolf?"



"That's just it, Alpha." Lyra looked up at him with something like fear. "I don't think she IS an omega. The bloodline I'm sensing... it's ancient. It's powerful." She swallowed. "It's older than yours."



Silence.



Kael stared at me.



I stared back, confused. I was an omega. The weakest rank. I'd never shifted, never felt my wolf, never been anything but a disappointment.



That's what my father always said.



Worthless. Wolfless. A waste of blood.



"What are you saying?" Kael asked quietly.



"I'm saying someone went to enormous trouble to make this girl appear to be nothing." Lyra's voice dropped. "And the only reason to do that... is if she's actually something very, very significant."



Kael sat on the edge of the bed.



Took my hand.



"What's your name, little wolf?"



I opened my mouth. Tried to force sound through the ruin of my throat.



A horrible rasp. Nothing more.



"Can you write?"



I nodded.



He grabbed a pad and pen from the nightstand, pressed them into my hands.



I wrote, shaky and slow:



Elara. Elara Vance. Daughter of Alpha Marcus Vance of the Silver Moon Pack.



Kael's jaw tightened.



"Marcus Vance sold his own daughter to me as a 'defective omega toy'?"



I'm not his real daughter. Stepdaughter. He only kept me because my mother was his true mate. After she died... I was nothing.



"Your mother?"



Luna Catherine. She died when I was three. They said she was sick. But—



I stopped writing.



I'd never told anyone this.



But something about Kael's eyes—the rage, the protectiveness, the way he looked at me like I was the most important thing in the world—made me want to tell him everything.



But I always thought my stepmother killed her.



Kael's hand tightened on mine.



"Lyra. How long to break the seal on her wolf?"



"Weeks. Maybe months. Dark magic this deep—"



"Start now." He looked at me. "We're going to find out exactly who you are, little wolf. And then—"



His smile was terrifying.



Beautiful.



"—we're going to make everyone who hurt you wish they'd never been born."



\---



I was six years old the first time my stepsister Serena tried to kill me.



She pushed me down the stairs and told everyone I fell.



My stepmother Helena smiled and said I was "clumsy."



My father didn't even look up from his paperwork.



After that, it became a game to them. How much could they do before someone noticed? Before someone cared?



The answer was: everything.



Serena broke my toys. Tore my clothes. Spread rumors that I was cursed, that anyone who befriended me would suffer. By the time I was ten, I had no friends, no allies, no one who would believe me if I tried to tell the truth.



Helena was worse.



She never hit me where it would show. Never starved me completely—just enough to keep me thin, weak, always hungry. She made me sleep in the basement when guests visited because I "embarrassed the family."



She told everyone I was a late bloomer. That my wolf would come eventually.



But I saw how she smiled when it didn't.



I saw how she looked at me like I was a threat that needed to be contained.



I never understood why.



I was nothing. A wolfless omega in a family of powerful alphas. What could I possibly threaten?



Now, lying in Kael's bed while Lyra's magic worked slowly through my broken body, I started to understand.



They knew.



They knew I wasn't what they said I was.



And they were terrified of what I might become.



\---



On my eighteenth birthday, everything ended.



Serena was being courted by Dominic Blackwood—Kael's younger brother, Alpha of the Northern Alliance. A political match that would make our family the most powerful in five territories.



I was invisible, as always. Serving drinks at my own birthday party because Helena said I "needed to be useful."



Then Dominic looked at me.



Really looked at me.



And something flickered in his eyes.



"Who is this?" he asked Serena.



"No one." Serena's voice was sharp. "Just a servant."



"She has your father's eyes."



"She's nobody. A wolfless embarrassment. Father keeps her out of pity."



But Dominic kept watching me. All night. And when I went to the kitchen to refill a tray, he followed me.



"What's your name?"



"Elara." I didn't look at him. Alphas didn't talk to omegas like me unless they wanted something I wasn't willing to give.



"You're not a servant."



"I am what they say I am."



"No." He caught my arm. "You're not. I can sense—there's something about you—"



"GET AWAY FROM HER!"



Serena's scream shattered the moment.



She stood in the doorway, face twisted with rage—and fear. Real fear.



"She's trying to seduce you! I saw her! She's been planning this for months!"



"Serena, I just asked her name—"



"GUARDS!"



What happened next was a blur.



Serena screaming that I'd tried to steal her mate. Helena backing her up, face smooth with practiced lies. My father looking at me with disgust—always disgust—saying he'd always known I was rotten like my mother.



They dragged me to the dungeon.



They broke my legs so I couldn't run.



They cut out my tongue so I couldn't defend myself.



And Serena leaned close, her breath hot against my ear, and whispered:



"Did you really think anyone would choose you over me? You're nothing, Elara. You've always been nothing. And now you're going to the Blood Moon Pack to be a toy for their warriors. Try not to die too quickly—I want you to suffer."



She kissed my cheek.



Then she walked away.



And they loaded me into a cage like an animal.



\---



I finished writing and dropped the pen.



My hand was cramping. Tears blurred my vision.



Kael had read over my shoulder the entire time. Now he stood by the window, so still he might have been carved from stone.



"Lyra." His voice was deadly calm. "Leave us."



The healer fled.



Silence.



Then Kael turned, and his eyes were glowing so bright the entire room seemed bathed in red.



"The Northern Alliance Alpha." Each word was precise. Controlled. "Dominic Blackwood. That's who Serena is marrying?"



I nodded.



"My brother." A laugh—harsh, broken. "My baby brother is marrying the woman who did this to my mate."



I struggled to sit up. Grabbed the pen.



Your brother?



"The one who betrayed me ten years ago. The one who helped our father curse me and steal my birthright." Kael's claws were out again, shredding the curtains. "He took everything from me. And now he's taking HER?"



I don't understand—



"The wedding is in three weeks." Kael crossed to the bed, cupped my face in his hands. "Three weeks, Elara. Can you walk by then? Can you speak?"



Lyra's voice drifted from outside: "If I work day and night—perhaps. But why—"



"Because my mate and I are going to attend my brother's wedding." Kael's smile was savage. "And Serena Vance is going to learn what happens when you touch something that belongs to the Blood Moon King."



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The Alphas Broken Mate