Betrayed by my Sister With my Mate

Lyra’s voice was the first thing that cut through the night, sharp and desperate, pulling her out of sleep like a blade through fabric.

Her eyes snapped open in the darkness as her communicator vibrated violently in her hand. For a moment, she couldn’t even draw a full breath. The sound on the other end of the line dragged her backward through ten long years of silence, through everything her family had refused to give her since the day she was cast aside.

It was her mother.

Not a letter. Not a message. Not a warning sent in advance.

A call.

And that alone was enough to make dread coil tightly in her chest.

“Mother?” Lyra’s voice came out rough, still heavy with sleep. “What’s wrong?”

At first, there was only broken sobbing on the other end, unsteady and suffocating. Then her mother’s voice finally came through, fractured and trembling as if each word cost her strength.

“Your father… he’s been attacked.”

The words didn’t just land. They sank in slowly, like ice spreading through her veins.

Lyra sat upright so fast the blanket tangled around her legs. “What did you say?”

“They brought him back to the northern gates,” her mother continued through tears. “The healers are trying, but the bleeding won’t stop. Lyra… he’s dying.”

For a second, the room seemed to tilt sideways.

Her father.

Alpha Regulus Vale.

A man whose name alone made entire territories go silent.

The man who had ruled her childhood like a storm she could never escape. The same man whose disappointment had shaped every breath she had ever taken.

Dying?

Her lips parted, but no sound came at first. When she finally spoke, it was barely a whisper.

“No… that’s not possible.”

“Please,” her mother begged, her voice breaking completely now. “Just come back before it’s too late.”

The line went dead.

Silence swallowed everything.

Lyra remained frozen, staring into the dark as if the walls themselves might explain what she had just heard. Then reality crashed into her all at once.

She moved.

Fast.

Clothes were pulled on with shaking hands, buttons misaligned, fabric half-wrapped around her arms as she stumbled through the room. Her boots barely fit properly before she was already rushing toward the door, her mind refusing to accept a truth she wasn’t ready to face.

Her father could not die.

Not him.

Not the man who once made even the strongest warriors bow their heads.

Not the same man who had looked at her like she was something broken from the moment she failed to awaken a wolf.

As she reached the hallway, a faint sound made her stop abruptly.

The door beside hers.

Her son’s room.

Little Elias was asleep inside, safe and unaware of the storm unraveling his world. Lyra stood still for a moment, forcing herself to breathe again, quieter this time. The last thing she needed was for him to wake up frightened.

Only when she heard his steady breathing did she continue downstairs.

Golden light spilled from beneath the study doors as she passed.

Her husband was still awake.

Of course he was.

Darius Blackthorne rarely slept anymore.

Not since he became Alpha of the Shadowcrest Dominion.

Not since he married her.

Voices drifted faintly from inside the study—low, controlled, filled with the weight of leadership. War reports, border disputes, patrol updates. The endless responsibilities of an Alpha who never stopped working.

For a brief moment, Lyra hesitated in front of the door.

She could tell him.

She could ask him to come with her.

But the thought dissolved almost immediately.

Darius barely spoke to her unless necessary. Their marriage had never been something warm or shared. It had been built from obligation, scandal, and the ruins of a night neither of them ever truly escaped.

Even after ten years, distance lived between them like an unspoken law.

So Lyra lowered her gaze and walked past the study without knocking.

She left alone.

By the time she reached the city roads, rain had already begun to fall.

The sky split with distant thunder as streetlights blurred against the wet glass of her windshield. Her grip tightened on the steering wheel until her knuckles ached.

Memories rose without mercy.

Her father’s cold expression.

The endless disappointment in his eyes.

The way his voice had always carried something sharper than anger whenever he spoke to her.

And yet, despite everything, something inside her twisted painfully at the thought of losing him.

Why did it hurt like this?

Why did the idea of his absence feel like something tearing through her chest?

Ahead, the medical fortress rose through the storm like a pale ghost, its lights cutting through the rain.

Lyra parked without thinking and ran.

Inside, everything smelled of antiseptic and blood.

Elevators carried her upward in suffocating silence until the doors opened onto the emergency floor.

And there they were.

Her mother sat slumped in a chair outside the surgical ward, her face drained of color, her body trembling with exhaustion. Beside her stood Cassian—her older brother—rigid as a blade, blood staining the sleeve of his coat.

Lyra stopped walking.

The air itself felt heavier.

Cassian turned first.

The moment his eyes landed on her, something cold and cutting flashed through them.

Nothing had changed.

Not after ten years.

“You actually came,” he said flatly.

Lyra swallowed. “How bad is he?”

A bitter laugh escaped Cassian’s throat as he stepped closer.

“How bad?” he repeated, voice sharp with anger. “Our father is dying, and Selene is halfway across the continent because of you.”

Her chest tightened at the name.

Selene.

Even after everything, it still hurt to hear it spoken aloud.

“I didn’t ask about Selene,” Lyra said quietly.

Cassian’s gaze hardened. “You never stop ruining things for her.”

The words struck harder than they should have.

Before Lyra could respond, the surgical doors opened.

A healer stepped out, removing his gloves slowly, his expression already carrying the weight of what he was about to say.

Everyone moved at once.

“How is Alpha Regulus?” Cassian demanded.

The healer hesitated.

And that hesitation said everything before he even spoke.

“We stabilized him briefly,” the healer said carefully. “But the silver poisoning spread too deeply. His organs are failing.”

A sound broke from Lyra’s mother as she collapsed further into her seat.