The Warlord Alpha's Scarred Sacrificial Mate

Seraphina POV:

The Finch family cast me into the royal catacombs to be entombed alive beside a fallen Alpha warlord-all because they believed I was a motherless half-wit, incapable of feeling or fighting back. They had no idea that the instant the heavy granite slab slid shut, my dormant soul tore through the veil of worlds and reclaimed this broken body.

When my eyes cracked open in the suffocating blackness, coarse hemp rope was already biting into the raw flesh of my wrists. I didn't scream. I didn't flinch.

A low, dry laugh scraped past my parched throat.

"Locked in freezing kennels, whipped with silver crops for sport, and fed to a tomb just to keep Corda's hands clean?" I whispered, tasting the dry salt of old blood on my lips. "Enjoy your master suite while you can, little sister. Every drop of blood you bled out of this body... I am coming to collect it in bone and ash."

Ten years ago, my soul had fragmented after diving into a frozen lake to drag a dying boy to safety. In that brush with death, my mother's heirloom had awakened, flinging my conscious mind across the dimensional divide into a modern dynasty of trauma surgeons and neurotoxicologists. I lived an entire lifetime there-mastering surgical blades, bio-alchemy, and lethal close-quarters combat-before passing away peacefully in old age.

The very second my modern heart stopped, my soul snapped back to its native vessel.

Right on cue, a faint pulse of silver fire flared against the skin of my right hand. From deep within my flesh, a slender band of liquid starmetal condensed upon my ring finger, glowing with an ethereal luminescence.

I touched the cool metal with my thumb. Tethered directly to my spiritual core was an entire acre of sacred domain-the Lunar Space. Inside lay the bubbling White Jade Spring, sterile surgical bays, rows of diagnostic monitors, and an endless cache of refined modern pharmaceuticals.

"You came with me," I murmured, my pulse steadying.

Looking up at the vaulted granite above, my expression turned to ice. "Less than two hours before dawn. The moment sunlight hits the peaks, the pack elders will ignite the subterranean pyres and roast this tomb into an oven. I didn't survive a lifetime of medicine just to turn to cinder at eighteen."

I dragged my left wrist against the sharp granite edge, aligned my thumb joint with the stone, and shoved with one fluid, ruthless pop.

The joint displaced cleanly. I slipped my limp hand through the hemp binding, caught the bone, and snapped it back into the socket with a quiet hiss.

I dropped onto the freezing flagstones, sprinted up the steps, and gripped the heavy iron grate. I threw my weight against it.

The bars didn't budge. An exterior deadbolt held fast.

"Reinforced iron," I muttered, touching the cold metal. "No breaching this without siege gear."

My gaze shifted back toward the raised basalt bier in the center of the chamber.

"Looks like my only way out is you, dead warlord."

I crossed the floor and stepped up to the stone platform. Kerr Montgomery lay encased in blackened steel armor-a dormant mountain of lethal, predatory power. I pressed two fingers firmly against his carotid artery.

A faint, erratic flutter thrummed against my fingertips.

He was barely hanging on. An ancient northern battle curse had flared in his chest, locking his diaphragm into violent spasms and collapsing his airway.

I grabbed the neckline of his heavy tunic, braced my foot against the bier, and yanked.

The thick linen tore straight down the middle, baring his broad chest to the frigid air.

He was carved from brutal, predatory perfection. Broad shoulders tapered into dense slabs of scarred muscle; his chest was a map of old silver war-wounds, dropping down into tight valleys of iron-hard abs that disappeared beneath heavy leather trousers. Even in a comatose state, a wave of heat rolled off his skin-the rich, dark scent of charred cedarwood, ozone, and dominant Alpha musk.

Across his left breast, directly over his heart, an ink-black curse rune writhed beneath his skin like an angry viper.

I twisted the silver band on my finger. A micro-fine needle and an ampoule of concentrated neuro-antispasmodic materialized in my palm.

Without hesitation, I drove the needle straight into the intercostal space beside the writhing rune, flooding his neural junctions with the compound.

The rune recoiled with a violent sizzle. The rigid paralysis in his chest snapped, but his starved lungs remained locked.

I mounted the stone bier, straddling his waist.

Leaning down until my chest pressed flat against the burning, scarred terrain of his torso, I pinched his nose, sealed my mouth over his cold lips, and forced air straight down his airway.

Once. Twice.

On the third breath, his massive frame bucked upward.

His heart slammed back to life with a deafening thump. Air ripped into his lungs in a ragged, animalistic gasp.

Before I could pull away, an iron hand shot up, wrapping around the back of my neck with bone-crushing force.

He yanked me down. Long, lethal fangs tore through the curve of my shoulder, sinking mercilessly into the sensitive meat of my neck.

A raw, electric shockwave detonated straight through my spinal cord. Primal mate-heat flooded my bloodstream, roaring through our newly tethered souls like wildfire.

Ker's golden eyes widened in shock as he sensed the white wolf bloodline awakening within me.