The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

DRAKENFELL INFIRMARY - ROYAL PRIVATE CHAMBER 1A

The door opened.

Fin walked in carrying Serena and every other thought in Dexmon’s head evaporated.

Dexmon Drakenfell was off the bed in an instant. He had been losing his mind for the better part of thirty minutes. He should have been in that chamber when she appeared. Instead, he was up HERE, bandaged, ordered to the infirmary by his own father like a cadet who scraped his knee at training, while Serena was fighting for her life on a volcano he couldn’t reach.

His stab wounds were screaming at him with every pivot. He was ignoring them with the practiced ease of a man whose body had filed complaints before and whose complaints had never once been acknowledged by management.

That’s when he noticed she was limp. Completely limp. Her head was tucked against Fin’s collarbone, her white hair hanging in wet, blood-streaked ropes, her arms dangling at her sides with the boneless quality of a body that had stopped participating in consciousness and had no plans to resume. Her thermal weave was soaked through. Her skin was too pale. Her breathing was shallow enough that Dexmon had to watch her chest for three full seconds to confirm it was moving.

His heart cracked down the center.

"Serena."

He moved towards her. His bandages pulled. His stab wounds screamed. He didn’t give a fuck about either because the woman on his bed was unconscious and the unconscious was total and the total was producing a panic that was overriding every pain receptor in his body.

He couldn’t take her. His arms were wrapped, his torso was bound, his body had been stitched and stabilized and was currently operating under strict medical instructions that included "do nothing strenuous" and "do nothing stupid" and taking an unconscious woman from an Alpha’s arms qualified as both.

Fin laid her on the bed, then he straightened, turned, and walked out of the room.

He didn’t look at Dexmon or say a word. His eyes were gold-edged and aimed at the door and the door was the only thing in this building that was going to receive his attention.

He left.

The silence he carved in his wake was razor-sharp, the kind that comes with actual fucking edges.

Aegon: Bye-bye, angry Alpha. She is all ours now.

✦✦✦

DRAKENFELL INFIRMARY - HALLWAY

Gavriel’s internal compass had been screwed six ways to Sunday, and the needle was still spinning. He’d taken three steps in three directions. If he took a fourth, it’d qualify as a dance move.

"I am so confused," he announced to the hallway at large.

None of the mages acknowledged his confusion.

Hyran abandoned clapping, crouched slightly, and began patting both knees with open palms before letting out a two-tone whistle so bright and so clear that Rook almost seized control of Gavriel’s entire body.

Rook:YES. The whistling man. Go to the whistling man.

Aeron started bouncing the gold orb between his palms like a hacky sack, each bounce releasing a small burst of warmth and a faint chime that had no business being that pleasant.

Rook: We go to the ball man. He throws it and we bring it back.

Maelor held the charm out, let Gavriel step closer, then closed his fist around it and put his hand behind his back.

"Where’d it go?" Maelor whispered.

Gavriel’s feet stopped. His brow furrowed. It went behind Maelor’s back. That was the part that confused him. Yet his entire body oriented towards Maelor’s hidden hand with the urgency of someone who wanted the shiny thing right now.

"Here it is!" Maelor called, showing it again.

Rook: IT’S BACK. We go closer in case it disappears again.

Gavriel took another step towards Maelor, his head tilting.

"Gamma," Maelor crooned, wiggling the charm faster so it made a jingle noise. "This is a Fae-forged focus pendant. Extremely rare. I brought it from Nightspire."

Rook: LOOK AT IT JINGLE. We want that one in our mouth too.

Gavriel stood between them, his head turning left-right-left while his expression cycled through confusion, more confusion, and the dawning suspicion that he was missing something key about this interaction, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.

Tiberon watched the entire display from ten feet away. His face was a masterclass in nothing. He had walked through a portal, fought a squid, been confirmed as a reincarnated king, heard his Gamma declared an Alpha by the ancestors of civilization, fired a magical bow at vampires from a golden bubble boat, and was now watching three of the most accomplished mages in Skardos try to lure his Gamma across a hallway.

"Gavriel, come!" the mages called in unison.

A tri-mage name-bomb. Coordinated. Synchronized. The creepiest three-part harmony since whatever hell-choir the vampires were running.

"Should I be worried?" he asked nobody.

Alaric materialized from the infirmary like a sarcastic angel of mercy whose halo had been replaced with a flask and a bottomless well of contempt for everyone’s bullshit.

"Absolutely. You three can sort out custody later. He’s bleeding."

The Master Healer grabbed Gavriel by the good shoulder and steered him towards the chamber Serena was in with the gentle firmness of a physician redirecting a confused patient away from a situation that was going to give him a different kind of headache.

"In here, Gamma. Wraps off. Sit down."

Gavriel went willingly, still looking over his shoulder at the three mages in the hallway, who had resumed their positions the moment he started moving and were now tracking his trajectory. If he had zigzagged, they would have zigzagged. He was sure of it.

"Are they on something?" he asked Alaric as the door closed behind them.

"Definitely," Alaric replied, already unwinding the blood-soaked wraps. He examined the puncture wound with the detached intensity of a healer whose bedside manner had been surgically removed at birth and replaced with competence.

Through the closed door, Gavriel could hear them arguing.

Dexmon looked up to see his best friend looking confused as fuck. His wraps were seeping. His thermal weave was shredded. His eyes held the particular glaze of someone who had experienced something deeply confusing approximately ninety seconds ago and was still buffering.

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