The Warrior’s Broken Mate novel Chapter 118

**ELIAS POV**

For the first time in what felt like days, she slept. Truly slept–not the restless half–doze she’d been plagued with since the sorcerer’s attack, but a deep, steady breathing that signaled exhaustion had finally dragged her under. I sat beside the door of the hut, watching the faint rise and fall of her chest in the dim light.

Relief washed through me, though it carried its own weight. It meant the watch was mine alone, and I welcomed it. I had no intention of letting anything slip past while she was finally getting a bit of rest. The night outside was unnervingly quiet, the forest holding its breath as if aware of her fragile peace, and I found myself straining at every rustle, every whisper of wind, determined that nothing would disturb her sleep again.

The forest outside pressed in like a wall of shadows, the night still humming with unseen movement. Every sound pricked at my ears–the crack of a twig, the shuffle of wind through dead leaves. But more than sound, I felt something. A pull. A vibration beneath my skin. At first, I thought it was only the adrenaline that hadn’t burned out yet, the echo of fear still rattling through my body. But when I turned my fist into a ball across my knees, sparks of faint light threaded through my hands. My breath caught. I blinked hard, but they didn’t vanish. Instead, they grew brighter, tracing faint lines across the veins and muscles of my arms, as though some ancient pattern had been waiting there all along, hidden beneath flesh and bone, just waiting for me to notice.

I jerked my hand back. The glow winked out instantly, leaving my hand instantly. My pulse hammered, not with fear, but confusion. She had powers–that much was clear. I had seen her flames, flames hot enough to turn the air to fire. But me? I was no sorcerer. No heir to ancient gifts. Not of royal blood. Just Elias, the one who stood and tried to protect the ones that couldn’t protect themselves. Well, that’s what I used to do before I met Lyra.

And yet… the air still hummed in my blood, restless, insistent.

I forced myself to steady, to breathe, to focus on the rhythm of her sleeping. I would not wake her for this–not yet.

When dawn broke, pale gray light filtered through the slats in the hut’s walls. She stirred, slow at first, then with a sharp breath that told me her mind was already alert even before her body could follow. I offered her the small skin of water we’d saved, and she drank greedily.

“We need food.” She muttered, her voice still hoarse.

I nodded. The hollowness in my own stomach had long since turned into a gnawing ache.

Stay close.” I said, though I knew she would insist on coming. Her eyes flicked toward the trees in the distance. Another forest that had been spared from whatever happened to his realm, already scanning, already hunting.

We didn’t find much. The forest had grown quiet, too quiet, as if the curse of this land had taken every animal away. Not just the dangerous ones. Still, we managed to trap two scrawny creatures–barely enough to call a meal, but enough to keep us moving another day. The silence lingered with us, heavy, unsettling, as though the trees themselves watched.

Back at the hut, I gathered what dry branches I could and set them in a pile. Lyra knelt across from me, her hands outstretched. A spark of orange light shimmered between her palms, then leapt to the wood. The fire caught instantly, roaring with heat far stronger than it should have, chasing back shadows that had clung to us since morning.

I leaned back slightly from the intensity of it. Even her smallest flames carried the searing bite of dragonfire. She grimaced, frustration flickering across her face.

“I can make fireballs strong enough to burn stone.” She said quietly, “but I can’t control these new… gifts. They come and go like storms.”

I reached for the spit we’d rigged and set the rabbits over the blaze, careful not to meet her eyes just yet. My hand brushed the edge of my own bow that she made me, and this time, the glow returned, shining the wood on the bow–brighter, steadier, a faint heat running up my arm, pulsing with a rhythm that felt alive. Sparks of light flickered along the string, and for a moment, the air around me seemed to hum with a quiet, potent energy I could almost hear.

I let it slip from the bow, and the air seemed to split. Not with fire, not with shadow, but with a force that rang like struck steel. The stump shuddered as if hit by a hammer.

A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. Rough, disbelieving. “I think I did something.”

“You did.” She said, pride flashing in her eyes. “Do it again.”

We trained until sweat soaked through our clothes and the sun rose higher, burning away the mist. She wrestled with her new powers, frustrated when they slipped from her grasp, but I saw the strength in her, the way each failure only made her more determined.

And when my arrows lit with that strange golden fire, I felt–for the first time–that I was not just her shield. Not just the one who stood beside her.

I was something more.

And together, we would learn what that meant.