The Sister I Raised Became My Husband’s Mate

POV of Seraphina

Liora's scream tore through the east wing before the ceremony bells stopped ringing.

"I can't stop wanting him!"

Cassian stood behind me in the corridor, every muscle rigid. His breathing had gone ragged, his wolf answering the call from her room.

"Stay here," I said.

"Seraphina—"

"Let me see her first."

Servants flattened themselves against the walls as I entered Liora's chamber. Thalia and two medics were holding her on the bed. Her nightgown had torn at the collar. She had clawed bloody furrows around the new mark on her throat.

Her pupils were solid gold.

"Please," she gasped when she saw me. "I can feel him inside my head. I hate it. I hate that my body doesn't care who he is to you."

Her back arched. Her wolf howled beneath her skin.

Thalia looked at me. "We need the Alpha. Her wolf is destabilizing."

Liora seized my wrist. Her fingers were ice.

"I would rather die than hurt you."

"No one dies tonight."

"But he feels like air. Like if he leaves, I stop breathing."

I knew that sensation. Fifteen years ago, bleeding in smoke and ash, Cassian's bond had struck me like drowning and rescue at once.

Now my sister was drowning, and my husband was the air.

"Bring him in," I ordered.

Cassian filled the doorway seconds later. His ceremonial shirt hung open, exposing my flickering mark. He looked at Liora, and gold swallowed his eyes.

"Mine is hurting," his wolf said.

He crossed the room in three strides and dropped beside the bed. His hand closed around Liora's wrist, over my own.

The effect was immediate.

Her body went still. Her breathing slowed. Grey returned to her eyes. Cassian's wolf settled with a wave of relief so powerful I felt it through our original bond.

My husband's soul had calmed because he was touching another woman.

Cassian realized it at the same moment. He released her as if burned.

"I didn't choose that."

"I know," I said, though the words felt hollow.

Thalia checked Liora's pulse. "The second bond is unstable. She will need brief contact every day until we find another treatment."

"No," Cassian said.

"Without it, her wolf may tear itself apart. Distance could kill her within hours."

I forced myself to think like a Luna instead of a wife.

"How much contact?"

"A wrist. A shoulder. A few minutes at most. Longer contact will strengthen the bond."

"Holding her?"

"Too intimate."

"Lying beside her?"

Thalia's expression tightened. "Absolutely not. Brief, clinical contact only."

Liora began to cry. "Send me north. Lock me in a silver cell. Do anything except make her watch this."

"You would die before reaching the gate," Thalia said.

"Then let me."

"No." The word cracked through the room. "I did not spend twelve years keeping you alive so you could sacrifice yourself for my dignity. We will manage this."

Cassian watched me with the same helpless fury he had worn after our miscarriage. He wanted me to scream at him, to accuse him, to do anything except turn pain into policy.

I asked everyone to leave except him.

The door closed. The silver thread pulsed faintly between his chest and Liora's sleeping body.

Cassian crossed the room and reached for my hips.

"Look at me."

I did.

"Nothing has changed."

"Everything has changed. Your wolf called her mine in front of the pack. Her body will fail without your touch. You just calmed her the way you have calmed me for fifteen years."

"I love you."

"Love is not the problem. Biology is."

His hands tightened. "Then I won't touch her."

"She will die."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Touch her exactly as long as necessary. Never alone. Never in your bedroom. Never at night unless Thalia confirms an emergency. You sleep beside me. You tell me the moment your thoughts stop feeling like your own."

"I will not fall in love with her."

"Gareth said that too."

Cassian recoiled.

I hated myself for using Evelyn's husband against him, but fear had sharpened every word.

"The bond will begin with duty," I said. "Her wrist, then her shoulder, then comfort when she cries. One day you will hold her because it is medically necessary, and the next day you may not remember when necessity became tenderness."

"Stop."

"Pretending you are immune will not protect me. It only means I will not see the change coming."

His eyes shone. "I carried you through a burning forest. I killed men who suggested replacing you after we lost our child. I have loved you with every breath for fifteen years."

"I know."

"Do you?"

"Yes. That is why this terrifies me. If I believed you were faithless, this would be simple."

The anger went out of him.

From the bed, Liora whimpered. The half-formed thread brightened, and Cassian's body turned toward her before his mind stopped it.

He looked sick.

"Tell me what you need," he said.

"I need a public statement before dawn. The elders must hear that I remain Luna and that no second ceremony will happen without my consent. I need guards on this wing and Thalia present for every contact. I need the archives opened."

"And from me?"

I swallowed.

"Tonight, I need you in our bed. I need your hands to remember me."

His eyes darkened, but I held up a hand.

"After we stabilize her. After we secure the pack. After we survive the politics. Then I fall apart, and you hold me together."

A broken laugh escaped him. "Fifteen years, and you still turn disaster into battle plans."

"Someone has to."

His thumb brushed my jaw. "I will break this bond. Whatever it costs."

Before we left the room, I wrote the rules myself on a sheet from Thalia's case. No closed doors. No contact longer than sixty heartbeats. No visits without a witness. Every symptom recorded. Every vial tested by two physicians. Cassian signed beneath my name without asking to soften a single condition.

Liora signed last. Her hand shook so badly the ink blotted.

"If I break one of these rules?" she asked.

"We treat it as a medical emergency, not a moral failure," I said. "But we do not hide it."

Cassian looked at me then, understanding the other promise buried in the page. No more secret mercy. No private decisions made to spare someone pain. Whatever came next, we would all have to see it.

Liora cried out again.

Cassian did not move, but his hand trembled against my face.

He was fighting.

I believed him.

I only did not know how long a man could fight his own soul before something inside him surrendered.