The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

Fin Shadowclaw’s face was doing something that, on a less dangerous son of a bitch, might have been called an expression. His mood had a blast radius. You could feel the radiation from twelve feet. Gavriel was inside the red line at eleven and considering retreat.

The portal deposited them into the underground chamber beneath the library, and Serena was already gone.

Between the ancestor’s long-ass monologue and the portal, her body dipped and consciousness didn’t stick around to say goodbye.

Her head was tucked against Fin’s collarbone, her breathing shallow but steady, her white hair matted with ash and blood and the accumulated debris of a woman who had survived a volcano, a squid, and vampires.

If someone had told Gavriel forty-eight hours ago that he’d crawl out of a volcano smelling like grilled ass and squid piss, he’d have asked what drugs they were on.

Fin carried her up the stairs without a word. His jaw was granite. His eyes were forward. His silence had graduated from "angry" to "geological," the kind of quiet that belonged to tectonic plates deciding whether to shift and level a city or hold for another century. Every step was measured, controlled, the footfalls of an Alpha whose fury and whose love were occupying the same body and neither was willing to vacate.

Tiberon walked behind him without saying a word. It didn’t take a mage-librarian to figure out why the hell Finnick Shadowclaw was throwing a silent tantrum and Tiberon was going to continue playing his role as a golden retriever until further notice.

Gavriel was walking behind the King of Drakenfell like a duckling with a chest wound, one hand pressed to the wraps on his chest that had given up structural integrity three catastrophes ago and were now horseshit. Medically, structurally, aesthetically. Triple-threat horseshit. Lake Fun did a great job.

They made their way through a tunnel that led them directly into Drakenfell’s infirmary, which Gavriel had seen more times in the last few days than in his entire life combined.

Hyran, Maelor, and Aeron formed a loose semicircle in the hallway with the coordinated positioning of mages who absolutely had not been waiting for this exact moment.

Fin didn’t stop. He walked through the center of the formation without acknowledging any of them, carrying Serena into the infirmary’s private chambers with the single-minded focus of a man whose only objective was a bed and a healer. The door closed behind him with a soft click that contained zero invitation.

TRANSLATION: Fuck off.

The hallway went quiet.

Then all three mages snapped their heads toward Gavriel like a flock of possessed, synchronized Satan-owned geese. Six eyes zeroed in on him with a focus so choreographed it deserved a standing ovation from the underworld.

Gavriel had been stared at by commanding officers, disappointed healers, one very sexually aggressive seagull, and his own mother. This was worse than all of them.

He stopped walking.

"Why are you all looking at me like that?"

Nobody answered, which was not scary at all. This was fine. Instead, all three of them smiled in the same creepy second, something Gavriel had never seen Hyran or Maelor do, let alone in unison.

Then all three of them said his name at the same time.

"Gavriel."

"Gavriel."

"Gavriel."

Three grown-ass mages were using different tonal strategies aimed at the same Gamma with the competitive energy of fishermen casting into the same goddamn pond.

Gavriel was the pond. Gavriel was the fish. Gavriel did not enjoy this metaphor.

Some scary shit.

He blinked. His eyes bounced between them like a man watching a tennis match played by lunatics.

"What the fuck is happening right now?"

Maelor moved first.

Somewhere in the tattered mess of his obliterated robes, the Master Mage of Nightspire found a small gold keychain charm. Shiny as fuck. Catching the sconce light. He held it between two fingers and wiggled it, the charm swinging in a slow, hypnotic arc.

"Gavriel." He whistled. "Come here. I have something for you."

Rook was ecstatic, the wolf equivalent of pressing his face against a pet store window, while Gavriel’s eyes tracked the keychain unable to look away.

His feet moved on their own. One full step towards Maelor, drawn by the shiny thing like a moth to a very expensive, judgemental flame.

"You brought a lure. Not fair," Aeron snapped as gold magic flared in his hands. A rotating orb formed, hovering just above his open palm like a miniature sun.

Shinier than the keychain. It also hummed.

"Here, Gavriel." His voice was warm, encouraging, pitched at a frequency that belonged in a meadow. "Here, Gamma. Come on. Over here."

Gavriel’s body pivoted. One step towards Aeron. Yes, he had changed allegiance because that was shinier than Maelor’s keychain. His brow furrowed, confused by his own legs, confused by Aeron’s tone, confused by the general atmosphere because two of the three mages in front of him were usually dicks.

"Did you just say ’here, Gamma’ to me? Like a, what, like a..."

He didn’t finish the thought because Hyran started clapping his hands.

It was, by every measurable standard, the most un-Hyran thing Hyran had ever done. Hyran did not clap for performances, for victories, for graduations, for the successful completion of decade-long research. His hands existed to cast spells, hold scrolls, and point at things he disapproved of, and the approved list of hand activities had never, in recorded history, included recreational clapping.

Gavriel’s entire worldview recalibrated as the sound ricocheted off the stone walls.

"Over here, Gavriel!" Hyran called, voice bright like a preschool teacher calling snack time.

Gavriel’s fight-or-flight response didn’t know what to do with a smiling Hyran, so it split the difference and froze.

Three mages. One keychain. Clapping. A tone of voice that belonged to livestock handlers. And Gavriel Sterling, standing in a hallway, genuinely unsure which direction his legs would choose next.

What did the best Gamma in Skardos do?

He ping-ponged to Hyran.

One step.

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