The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

DRAKENFELL — DRAKEN FORCES TRAINING FIELD THE NEXT MORNING

The routine had been established.

Every morning, the Queen of Drakenfell would walk across the castle grounds to the juvenile dragon training field. Right on cue, Onyx would spot her from whatever corner of the field he had been pretending to participate in drills from, say "fuck this" in dragon, and rocket towards her at a velocity that made the senior handler develop a nervous tic.

Today was no different.

Onyx launched himself off a training platform mid-exercise, ignored two verbal commands from Handler Caelum, cleared a juvenile dragon who had the misfortune of being in the flight path, and landed at Bellatrix’s boots with a chirp so loud it echoed off the armory walls.

Bellatrix scooped him up with one arm and settled him against her chest in the practiced cradle of a woman who had been carrying this dragon for days and whose carrying technique had achieved a competence that her actual parenting never reached.

"Good morning, darling. Did they bore you? Of course they did. Look at your scales. Dull. Unacceptable. We will fix that."

Avalon, who had spent the entire morning pressed against the fence nearest the castle path, perked up the instant Petra’s boots hit the grass. The blue-silver dragon scrambled over two training dummies and a very startled cadet to reach her, his tail wagging with the desperate enthusiasm of a creature who had been counting the minutes since yesterday’s bath and had arrived at a number he found personally offensive.

Petra picked him up without breaking stride. "Hello, Avalon. Yes, I missed you too. Your claws need trimming."

Handler Caelum stepped forward. The stepping was brave. The stepping was also futile, and the futility was a lesson Caelum had been learning daily and retaining poorly.

"Your Majesty, Onyx has a scheduled formation drill at—"

"He is excused."

"The drill is mandatory for all juvenile—"

"He is excused, Caelum. His schedule has been revised. By me. Just now. The revision is effective immediately and the effective is permanent until I decide it is temporary, and I have no plans to decide that. Avalon is also excused. Both dragons will be returned when I determine they have been adequately enriched, and adequate enrichment is defined by me and involves oils, lamb, and an environment that does not smell like wet dog and failure."

Caelum’s mouth opened. His mouth closed. His mouth had learned, over the course of several mornings, that the open-close cycle was the only exercise it was going to get in these interactions.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Wonderful. Petra, we are leaving."

They walked back toward the castle with the unhurried pace of two women who owned the grounds and the morning and every blade of grass between the field and the parlor. Onyx’s chin rested on Bellatrix’s shoulder, his gold eyes aimed at the training field with the contentment of a creature leaving a job he hated with a woman who spoiled him rotten. Avalon was already purring in Petra’s arms, his silver eyes half-closed, his entire body communicating the full-body relief of an animal who had been rescued from exercise.

Neither dragon looked back.

Behind a stone column near the armory entrance, Tiberon Drakenfell stood with his arms crossed and watched his wife steal two military assets for the fourth consecutive morning.

He said nothing. His face offered nothing. He was a man whose wife had shifted into a wolf and clawed a dark mage unconscious days ago, visited an orphanage, commissioned a giant mural, and was currently restructuring the Draken Forces juvenile training schedule based on her personal grooming preferences for baby dragons.

He found it interesting.

The interesting was a word that Tiberon used the way other men used "alarming" or "concerning" or "what the fuck." Interesting was the classification he assigned to phenomena that warranted observation before action, and Bellatrix had been reclassified from "predictable" to "interesting" approximately seventy-two hours ago, and the reclassification was holding.

He watched them disappear into the castle. Then he walked toward his study, because a king had things to do and watching his wife kidnap dragons was an indulgence he permitted himself exactly once per morning.

✦✦✦

BELLATRIX’S PARLOR

Onyx was getting a massage.

The massage was administered by Petra, who was using a blend of mineral oil and crushed moonstone that Bellatrix had commissioned from Drakenfell’s apothecary after declaring the standard dragon polish "pedestrian." The blend cost fourteen gold pieces per jar. There were six jars. The apothecary had asked no questions because questions from apothecaries were answered with replacement apothecaries.

Onyx was lying on his back on a velvet cushion, all four legs in the air, wings spread flat against the fabric, eyes closed, tail twitching with the involuntary rhythm of a creature experiencing physical bliss so total it had short-circuited his motor functions. The purring was audible from the hallway. The purring had been audible from the hallway for twenty minutes. A passing chambermaid had asked if the walls were vibrating.

Avalon was on a separate cushion being buffed. Petra had developed a two-dragon system: oil Onyx with the left hand, buff Avalon with the right, switch every three minutes. The system was efficient. The system was insane. The system was her life now.

Avalon’s scales were responding beautifully. The blue-silver had deepened to a luminous steel-blue under the moonstone compound, each scale catching the parlor’s candlelight and throwing it back in soft fractals. He looked like a jewel. He also looked like a dragon who would never voluntarily return to a training field where the enrichment was "fly in a circle" and the reward was "raw meat on dirt."

"His left flank needs another coat," Bellatrix observed from her chair, wine in hand, the Knotty Omega open on the armrest. "The scales near his hip are catching unevenly. We are aiming for a uniform sheen, Petra. Uniform."

"Yes, Your Grace." Petra applied another coat. Avalon chirped once in approval. Onyx cracked one eye open to confirm he was still getting more attention than Avalon, confirmed it, and closed the eye.

"Now then." Bellatrix set her wine down and picked up a stack of cream card stock from the side table. The card stock was thick, embossed with the Drakenfell crest in gold leaf, and smelled faintly of the lavender ink she had selected for the calligraphy. "The invitations."

She held one up. Read it aloud with the ceremonial gravity of a woman unveiling a masterpiece.

"’The Royal House of Drakenfell requests the honor of your presence at the wedding celebration of His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Dexmon Drakenfell, Commander of the Draken Forces.’"

She paused. Took a breath. Continued.

"’And his bride.’"

Petra’s hand stopped mid-buff. "And his bride?"

"What?"

"Her name, Your Grace."

Bellatrix looked at the invitation. Looked at Petra. Looked at the invitation again.

"It is implied."

"Implied is a word that does weddings no favors, Your Grace. The bride traditionally has a name on the invitation. The name is considered standard. The standard has existed for centuries."

"Fine." Bellatrix picked up the quill. In the space beneath Dexmon’s twelve-word title block, she wrote in notably smaller script: & Serena Frostborne.

Somewhere in the infirmary, Dexmon sneezed. He didn’t know why. He wouldn’t know why until he saw the invitations and realized his mother had given him a title block the size of a paragraph and his mate a font size typically reserved for terms and conditions.

"There. Named. Moving on."

"Your Grace, his title block is four lines. Hers is shorter."

"She can earn more lines, Petra. Titles are accumulated. I did not arrive at ’Her Royal Majesty, Luna Queen Bellatrix Drakenfell’ overnight."

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