Blood Sacrifice (The Astral Chronicles #1)

Chapter FourteenSalvator

Chapter Fourteen

Salvator

I had spent my life fighting against injustice, and keeping the members of my pack safe. My finger touched Luna’s back, and I experienced an emotion I had never encountered before—a helplessness that almost brought me to my knees. The only reason I was still standing was Luna needed me. I may not have been there for her in the past when she needed me, but I was here right now, and I could guarantee that no one would ever harm her again.

Luna shivered, her hands shaking as I continued my exploration. Images flowed through my mind as all her protective walls eroded and crumbled. I witnessed what they did to my mate in an attempt to access her magic, cutting her and draining her blood. The history of the immortal races was polluted by tales of the non-mages who craved stealing magical powers to try and infuse into their pathetic bodies.

“These are the scars of a survivor,” I said when I felt her try to shy away, kissing the sensitive area at the top of her spine. There was a mark that had caused her immense pain in the past, a metal collar placed on her so she couldn’t run from her captors while it suppressed her magical powers. “They show that even when evil and bigotry tried to destroy you that you had the strength to reclaim your power.”

I lifted Luna to her feet because she would never cower before these people, even their memories. Fuck them, she was a goddess they should fear.

“You can utter as many denials as you want, but you are my mate,” I said, needing her to understand that she belonged with me. “My wolf recognised you when you arrived to serve at the temple, and he has never once, in all the years you were absent from our life, even looked at another. You are my mate, Luna. The only way we can face the threat surrounding us and survive is to accept that fact, and complete the bond.”

Her body leaned back into me, and my arms curved around her waist to hold her against me. She shivered in my arms, and I tightened my hold until her body stilled. When I was sure her legs were steady, I moved to stand in front of her, raising her head until her eyes met mine. I didn’t want to keep fighting about this. Her unconscious mind sought me out every night, rubbing herself against me, and surrendering to my kisses.

The only way we could move forward was together. Her body was magical, but mine was a creature of transformation. As my mate, she would receive my gifts through our completed bond. My canines slowly descended, Luna’s eyes moving to where they appeared below my bottom lip.

“Do you trust me?” I asked, lifting her long, black hair over her shoulder.

Luna’s eyes fluttered closed but she nodded her head.

I moved behind her, my wolf pacing restlessly inside me, his claws digging into my spine in his need to get to our mate. Once I did this, there was no going back, no way to undo the bond that I was about to create. My fingers grabbed hers even as my other hand gripped the back of her neck to tilt her head. Luna didn’t protest, allowing me to control her body.

She shivered when I kissed the sensitive area where her shoulder met her neck. My teeth scraped against her skin, and she sucked in a breath. Without hesitation, I sank my teeth deep into that delicate strip of flesh, latching on so my venom infused deep. The only scar that should be marring her beautiful body was the mark of my claiming bite.

Luna froze for a moment, her hand squeezing mine in a grip designed to break bones, then she slowly relaxed, her body sinking against mine.

Most wolves claimed their mate during sex since it was supposed to be the most intimate act in the world. The reality was that intimacy was an extension of trust. Luna stood before me baring her soul and the pain that had profoundly changed her.

“I won’t hurt you,” I said, kissing where I had bitten. “I would die before I allowed you to experience any more pain.”

She brought my hand in hers to cover her stomach. “I don’t know if I can have children because of what the witch hunters did to me,” she whispered, and I felt her emotions burning deep in her chest.

“All I ever wanted was you,” I replied, and even as I said the words, I knew they were the truth. It was the reason I had never been overly bothered by other women in my life. Once you found who you belonged with, everything else was inconsequential and sex was nothing more than an itch to scratch.

I spun Luna carefully to face me. Her eyes were huge and round in her face, her cheeks flushed since my venom was currently pumping through her body, healing her as I claimed her. My hands framed her face, and I brought my forehead to hers.

“You are mine, Luna, you always have been. No more misunderstandings, no building barriers to hide behind, and no implying I have women hidden in every town in South America.” Her eyelashes kissed mine as she blinked rapidly.

“I—” Her hands grabbed my waist. “You deserve—”

I cut her off with my lips on hers. I didn’t want to hear Luna try to tell me that I needed to find someone else. My wolf knew she was out there somewhere all these years. It was the only explanation why I had been so disinterested in all the she-wolves who tried to mate with me. He only wanted his one true soulmate.

I would have waited another four hundred years for her. Love wasn’t about passion and desire, it was felt in every fibre of your being, spoken with every beat of your heart, and demonstrated through selfless acts. We had spent enough time trying to save others, it was time we saved ourselves, and Luna was the only person in this entire world and beyond who made me feel the way I felt right now.

The bond between us strengthened as the venom in my bite coursed through her veins, and connected her to me permanently. It was why Balor had forbidden unions between the priestesses and wolves. Once those priestesses were mated, then he couldn’t use them to breed with his priests, and their life was linked to the wolf they had mated.

Luna’s nails trailed down my back in a delicious scratch that made my back arch in pleasured pain. Her lips moulded to mine in a caress that left me breathless, her teeth nipping at my bottom lip.

There were moments when mindless passion took over, and other moments like right now when a deep and powerful healing took place between two injured souls. I should have mated with her that night before I returned to join the war, but I had been terrified that I would be killed, and Luna would die as an extension of our bond.

Fate had given me a second chance, and I had no intention of wasting it this time.

Luna’s fingers scraped the hairs at the back of my neck, her body pressing tighter to mine even as I reluctantly pulled away. She blinked in confusion, her huge brown eyes widening as she stared at me.

“Salvator?” Her voice sounded lost.

My thumb traced over her bottom lip. “We have plenty of time, Luna. My bite will regenerate your skin to remove all traces of those evil men. My mark will be the only scar on your body.”

Her eyes darted to the side. “Is it because I’m damaged? I can repair the spell—”

I shook my head, pressing my forehead to hers. “No. The damage to your body shows the true strength you contain inside. Those scars show what you survived and still had the strength to keep going and try to help others.” My lips hovered over hers in a barely-there kiss that allowed us to exchange breath. “Now, let me take that burden from you.”

“I can suppress the memories and hide the scars,” Luna said, and I felt her warring emotions through our bond.

“Your memories allow you to remember who you were,” I replied. “There is no need for you to hide the scars, my wolf will take them from you.”

I would carry them inside me to lift that burden from her. The great goddess created mates because we were two parts of the one whole, each supporting and guiding the other.

Under my fingers, I felt her skin begin to flatten as her scars were removed and her body returned to its original condition. We couldn’t regenerate limbs, but the transformative abilities of our wolves allowed us to heal back to our original form. It was why tattoos barely lasted on our bodies, and why dire wolves were so coveted by evil magic users like Balor.

Luna’s body collapsed against mine, her pain sinking into me as I physically took it from her to process and transform. I felt every lash on her body, the weight of the collar around her neck, the breaking of her bones, and the cutting of her flesh. It all transferred into me and my wolf healed it. She should never have had to suffer this pain in the first place, because I should have abandoned our cause of liberating the dire wolves, and walked away with my mate.

I held her as the mating bond solidified between us, uniting our souls at the highest spiritual level. My wolf paced restlessly inside me until he felt the bond snap into place, meaning Luna was ours for the rest of our immortal lives.

Sensing Luna drained of emotions and exhausted, I lifted her and moved through the property until I found a room to place her on a bed. When I tried to move away, her hand grabbed mine, tugging me toward her.

“Sleep,” I said against the top of her head. Normally, a mating bite occurred during sex and both parties could fall asleep after. Luna had relived all the trauma from her past, the memories affecting her emotionally and physically.

“I didn’t want to survive that place,” Luna whispered. “Many of the witches who were taken there didn’t survive. They told me I was lucky, I don’t feel lucky.”

I tugged her head onto my chest and stared at the ceiling. “We assume evil has glowing red eyes and horns,” I said. “The most evil beings in this world look just like you and me. They walk past us in the street, and you would never know what lurks under their skin.”

Luna shivered, burrowing deeper into me. “They believed magic was in our blood, flesh, and bones. They had grimoires telling them how to prepare our flesh so they could consume it in the hope of harvesting our powers.”

I’d heard of the non-mages doing this before. It had never worked, and only served to pollute their soul further. They also captured wolves in their quest to acquire magic for them to wield. Our bodies healed wounds, but they could never regenerate the limbs those psychopathic assholes had removed in their experiments. The wolves who escaped volunteered for missions that we all knew they were never coming back from even though they were strategic attacks needed to help us defeat Balor and his assholes.

“Did you ever find any of your family?” Luna asked, her voice sleepy and sluggish.

“No.” My fingers trailed up and down her back, allowing my presence to soothe her. “That village had been eradicated, the people taken. Balor keeps moving his breeding camps, and even if our witches do locate some of his hideaways, he is always one step ahead of us.”

Luna kissed my chest, her hand splayed on my abdomen. “There is no way to detect someone has used a location spell to find you. You have a mole in your organisation.”

I opened my mouth to reply, and realised she was asleep, her body pressed tightly against mine. I lay here, watching her face because I had always felt guilty before today since she kept pushing me away when she was awake. The residue of the pain and suffering I had taken from her still pulsed inside me as my wolf continued to heal the wounds. What Luna would never know was that to heal them, I had to physically take those injuries into me. She had suffered agonies. I knew because I felt every single one of them.

I closed my eyes, and contemplated her last words before she fell asleep. Now that the effects of the spell binding me had lifted, I began to reassess everything and everyone in my organisation. I still trusted those closest to me since they had been at my side most of my life, and I knew they held the same ideologies as me.

The truth was that they had probably been cursed the same as I had, and were aware of the situation.

I assessed every mission with fresh eyes and instincts, evaluating the people on our council and those in high command positions. Then, I turned my attention to Balor, and what he was planning in the background. His main goal had always been to capture all the original priestesses who had served in his temples all those years ago. My understanding was that the mother priestess had scattered an ancient power between all of the women, and only together could they wield that gift. Balor was a magic user who craved increasing his standing in the magical world, it was the reason he stole witches and dire wolves from across the Americas to breed in his terrifying game of life and the collection of souls since they were what contained the magic of the witch.

However, there was an enemy we had been fighting with an agenda that didn’t match Balor’s quest for magical domination. An elder I met two hundred years ago told me that Balor had wanted to join them and had been dismissed since he had descended from a lowly magical family. He’d obviously taken rejection badly, and decided to create his own lineage.

I needed access to our computers, but to achieve that I required the closest members of my team to be brought in, and any enchantments on them broken. Then I fully intended to hunt down every mole in our organisation, and send their heads to Balor as a warning to show him that his demise was imminent.