The Sister I Raised Became My Husband’s Mate

POV of Seraphina

Cassian kissed me as if the bond could be drowned in heat.

For a few desperate minutes, I let him try.

His hands knew every scar, every place grief had changed my body, every sound I made when fear gave way to need. Nothing about us was new, yet the familiarity felt precious now—a language the Moon had not taught him and could not give to anyone else.

When we finally lay still, his forehead rested between my shoulder blades.

"Fifteen years," he murmured. "I still want you more after every fight."

"That may say something unhealthy about us."

His laugh shook against my skin.

The door burst open.

Thalia stood in the threshold, pale and breathless. "Luna, you need to come to the medical wing."

I reached for my robe. Cassian rose with me.

"Stay here," I said.

"No."

"Your wolf is calm because you are with me. I need it to remain calm while I examine whatever she found."

His jaw tightened, but he nodded. "Call if you need me."

The medical wing smelled of antiseptic, silver, and fear.

Liora lay on an examination table with her face turned toward the wall. Thalia handed me a chart.

Moon-womb hormone: twelve times normal.

Uterine lining: thickened and vascular.

Fertility cycle: forcibly activated.

"Explain," I said.

"Her body is preparing for pregnancy," Thalia answered. "Not naturally. Her wolf is behaving as if conception is imminent."

Liora curled tighter. "There is no baby."

"No embryo," Thalia confirmed. "But if Cassian completed the mating bond, conception would likely occur within the first cycle."

The words made the room feel airless.

I sat beside Liora and touched her shoulder. She flinched before forcing herself still.

"What's wrong with me?" she whispered.

"Nothing that you chose."

Thalia placed a second record in my hand. The parchment was six months old, pulled from the border clinic archives.

At the bottom, beneath a forged physician's signature, were three words.

Alpha blood infusion.

"Whose blood?"

"The signature has degraded, but the injection was administered three days before Liora's first dream."

I read it again.

Someone had injected my sister with Alpha blood. Someone had forced her fertility to align with Cassian before the Moon's silver thread ever appeared.

This was not fate.

It was design.

The medical doors slammed open.

Cassian stood there barefoot and shirtless, gold burning through his eyes.

"Something is wrong with the bond."

Liora screamed.

Silver light tore from her skin, forming the outline of her wolf above the table. The spectral animal bared its teeth at Thalia, then saw Cassian and rolled onto its back, exposing throat and belly in submission.

Cassian's wolf surged.

Protect the mate. Protect the pup.

The command flooded our bond so violently that my knees nearly gave.

I stepped between them and pressed my palm to his chest.

"Look at me. She is not pregnant."

"I know," he rasped.

"Your wolf does not."

His eyes dragged toward mine. The gold flickered.

"I almost marked her in my head," he said. "For one second, I wanted to protect what was never there."

"Go back to our room. Lock the door."

"Seraphina—"

"That is an order from your Luna."

He went because I had asked, and because some part of him still obeyed me before instinct.

Thalia sedated Liora. Then we descended to the medical archives beneath the eastern tower.

Dust coated shelves of sealed treatment records. Thalia spread the border clinic files across a worktable.

"The prescription was signed by Galen," she said.

"Galen died eight months ago."

"Two months before this treatment was ordered. Someone used his seal."

The listed drug was L-Bond, a black-market fertility enhancer outlawed across the northern packs. It used Alpha blood to prime a female wolf for conception with one specific male.

"Who has access to Cassian's blood stores?"

"The chief physician, the Alpha, and the Elder Council."

A cold certainty settled over me.

"Find the injection kit. Any remaining vials. Every inventory record from the blood vault."

Thalia moved toward the storage shelves.

I studied the formula. Cassian's blood signature had been woven into the catalyst, but another line of symbols appeared beneath it—older, written in a dialect used before Black Ridge was founded.

"This is not standard L-Bond."

Thalia leaned closer. "No. Something was added."

"What?"

"I cannot tell yet. But it was designed to do more than prepare a womb. It was designed to wake something dormant."

Thalia opened the blood-vault ledger to the week of the infusion. Three pages had been cut out with a blade, but the binding thread retained a smear of sealing wax. Black, not the red used by physicians. Council wax.

"Malric changed the council seals last winter," I said. "The older stamp carried a crescent split by a spear."

Thalia angled the ledger toward the candle. A faint crescent appeared in the residue.

"Then whoever altered this record has held council authority for at least six months."

I took the page containing Galen's forged signature. The pressure marks beneath it showed another name had first been written and scraped away. We dusted the paper with ash. Four letters emerged.

M-A-L-R.

Not proof. Not yet. But enough to turn suspicion into a direction.

"Lock the vault," I ordered. "No one enters without my blood seal. Send two guards for every attendant who treated Liora at the border clinic. Quietly. If Malric knows we found this, he will destroy the rest."

Thalia closed the ledger. "And Cassian?"

"He hears it from me before any elder can shape the story."

Before we could leave, Thalia found one more entry hidden in the binding: twenty-seven doses distributed to six packs under different names. Black Ridge was not the first test. It was the largest.

I copied the destinations and sealed the list inside my dress. If Malric controlled the castle, the evidence had to survive outside it.

A crash sounded above us.

Then the warning bells began to toll.

A guard shouted from the stairwell.

"Luna! The Alpha is in the east wing. Liora attacked him."

I was already running when he added the words that turned my blood to ice.

"She bit his throat."