The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

Dexmon Drakenfell had spent thirty minutes convinced his father, best friend, and his mate were all dead.

So when his mate was delivered to him and his best friend came in a moment after, relief hit him like a goddamn brick. Both were in rough shape, but they were alive.

The question remaining was how bad of shape his father was in.

Because Dexmon had been in the infirmary, his father most definitely stepped in for him. No question. The old man got dumped through a portal onto a volcanic lake crawling with dark-magic squids and vampires, and the guilt was currently using Dexmon’s stomach as a chew toy.

He wasn’t exactly a spring chicken. Bad knees. Bad back. A morning stretch routine that took eleven minutes and sounded like someone stepping on bubble wrap.

The door opened.

The King of Drakenfell strode into the infirmary private chamber without a scratch. His expression suggested the experience was just a normal day. He was, by every visible metric, in the best shape of anyone who had gone through that portal today.

Dexmon stared.

His father, who made Alaric check his shoulder every winter, who had just been in a goddamn volcanic combat zone, didn’t even look winded.

The old man looked normal.

Dexmon blinked. Once. Twice. Unexpected.

Then he turned back to Serena. He leaned over and pressed his lips to her forehead.

The kiss was soft. Lingering. The pressure of a man whose composure had been maintaining itself through fury and fear and the absence of her, and was now releasing one degree of tension through the only point of contact he could manage.

He stayed there with his eyes closed, breathing her in until his stab wounds were staging a coordinated bitch-fit while his ribs were in a full-blown mutiny.

He straightened with a hiss. "Shit."

His eyes dropped to her hands. Her left fist was clenched around something, knuckles white, fingers locked with the rigor of a grip that had been maintained through drowning, portal travel, and unconsciousness.

He pried her fingers open gently, one by one, careful, the way you disarm something fragile.

A key sat in her palm.

Golden. Covered in runes so dense they overlapped. Glowing faintly, pulsing in a rhythm that matched her heartbeat.

Dexmon looked at it.

He turned it over once. Held it up to the light. The runes shimmered, ancient and complex, carrying the weight of civilizations and bloodlines and a history so vast it made every political crisis in Drakenfell look like a schoolyard argument.

"All of that for a glowing key."

Dexmon held it up to the light, squinted, then held it out to Hyran with the energy of an Alpha who had found something shiny and determined he had a better toy on the bed named Serena.

Hyran took the Ascendant Key from Dexmon’s outstretched hand.

His eye twitched as an entire thesis loaded behind his tongue. A thesis Dexmon Drakenfell would not appreciate so he held it.

He turned it over in his fingers slowly, his eyes tracking the rune patterns with the rapid, systematic scan of a man whose entire career had been building toward holding exactly this kind of object.

His mouth opened, then shut. He had seventeen questions and realized every single one of them needed to be asked behind a locked door with whiskey and the King of Drakenfell and absolutely no one else.

He looked at Tiberon.

Tiberon looked at Hyran.

Something passed between them that required zero words. Their silences were more efficient than most people’s meetings. It was their routine.

Both men walked out of the infirmary without a syllable exchanged, moving in lockstep, the mage clutching the relic and the king carrying the context. They were headed for Tiberon’s study with the urgent efficiency of two men who had tea to spill.

The room thinned.

Alaric directed a junior healer toward Gavriel, who was guided onto a treatment chair in the corner. Fresh wraps replaced the volcano casualties. Gavriel winced through the process with the stoic acceptance of a man who had been bandaged enough times today to qualify for a loyalty card.

A second healer approached Serena’s bed.

"I’ll remove her suit, Your Highness. Standard protocol for—"

"I’ll do it." Dexmon’s voice left no room for negotiation, debate, or the continuation of the healer’s sentence.

The healer, who was young and valued the structural integrity of his hands, took one look at the Alpha’s face and backed away with the survival instincts of a man who understood that ’I’ll do it’ from Dexmon Drakenfell was less an offer and more a territorial threat.

Dexmon reached for the zipper at the back of her thermal weave suit.

His own wounds protested the angle. The reaching pulled his bandages taut across his ribs, the wraps compressing against wounds that had been healing for hours and were nowhere near finished. Pain flared hot and immediate, a sharp reminder from his body that bending and reaching and caring for someone else were activities his injuries had specifically flagged as "do later, you stubborn bastard."

He ignored it the way he ignored everything that stood between him and her. The ignoring was comprehensive.

He pulled the zipper down between her shoulder blades. The thermal weave separated from her skin with the wet, clinging resistance of fabric that had been soaked in volcanic water, lake water, blood, and the accumulated misery of forty-eight hours of continuous combat. Steam still rose faintly from the material, residual heat from the volcano baked into the fibers.

He eased her arms free, one at a time, gentle, his calloused fingers working the sleeve over her wrists with a care that would have surprised anyone who knew Dexmon Drakenfell exclusively by reputation. The thermal weave peeled away from her torso, revealing the black sports bra beneath and the damage underneath.

His jaw tightened.

Bruises. Wounds. She had gone through it.

Then he saw the spike.

His blood ran cold because he knew exactly how fucking awful those things were. The spike was pulsing faintly, the dark energy still active, still feeding, still doing whatever the fuck it was designed to do.

Gavriel’s voice came from the corner, quiet and tight. "There’s definitely something in her leg too."

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