The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

Petra set the oil down and wiped her hands on a cloth. "Your Grace, may I suggest something?"

"You may."

"Your wolf is beautiful."

The sentence landed in the parlor with the precision of a woman who had spent years learning exactly which compliments opened which doors in Bellatrix Drakenfell’s decision-making architecture.

Bellatrix paused. The pause was the pause of a woman hearing a truth she already knew being stated by someone else, and the stating was producing a warmth that she would never acknowledge aloud but was currently heating the center of her chest.

"She is," Bellatrix agreed. The agreement was immediate and carried zero humility. "The purple is rare. The purple is exquisite. I have been told my wolf is one of the most striking in Drakenfell’s history, and I have been told this by people who were afraid of me, which means it was true because frightened people do not waste lies on compliments."

"A pack run, Your Grace."

Bellatrix’s face collapsed into the specific configuration of a woman who had been offered a plate of something she found categorically repulsive.

"A pack run."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"Running. In a forest. With the pack. In wolf form. On purpose."

Each word was delivered as its own sentence, each sentence more horrified than the last, as though Petra had suggested she swim in a public lake or eat standing up.

"Yes, Your Grace."

"Petra, I have avoided pack runs for thirty years. I have avoided them with the dedication of a woman whose wolf is too beautiful for mud and whose dignity is too valuable for group activities. Pack runs involve dirt, communal howling, and the company of people I tolerate better from a distance. The answer is absolutely—"

She stopped.

Petra watched the calculation happen in real time.

Bellatrix’s mouth stayed open. Her eyes narrowed. The narrowing was the narrowing of a woman whose disgust was being ambushed by her own strategy, and the strategy was winning.

Serena had her wolf now.

Bellatrix had been in the underground chamber when the girl’s wolf was revealed. She had watched Tiberon coaching her through the shift, seen the white fur and the golden eyes, witnessed her husband treating the girl with a tenderness he reserved for things he valued and the valuing had been so obvious it was practically a public announcement.

She didn’t care about any of that. Obviously.

But a pack run for the new princess. A pack run hosted by the queen. Organized by the woman who was embracing her son’s mate, welcoming her into the family, providing her with her first official pack experience. Favorite parent point. Divorce insurance. Social calendar dominance.

"Actually," Bellatrix said slowly, the word unfolding like a strategy document being declassified, "that is a wonderful idea."

Petra’s face betrayed nothing. Petra’s face was a professional surface that had learned to betray nothing the way walls learn to hold paint.

"The pack run will be for Serena. Her first as a member of the royal family. Hosted by me. Planned by me. The court will see a queen welcoming her son’s mate into the pack with open arms and open forests, and the opening will be so goddamn warm that divorcing me afterward will feel like kicking a woman who just threw a party for someone else’s happiness."

She paused. Corrected herself.

"Obviously, I am doing this strategically. This is a chess move. The girl getting a nice evening is incidental. The incidental is irrelevant. I am not doing this for her. I am doing this for my marriage. The marriage is the priority. The girl is the excuse for planning the pack run which serves my objective and my objective is survival."

Bellatrix had spent too many sentences explaining how little she cared and was exhausted by that.

She picked up her wine. Drank.

"The fact that she has never had a proper pack run and this would be her first is coincidental. Entirely coincidental. I do not care about her feelings on the matter. She could run in a circle by herself for all I care. The pack run is a tool, and the tool is shaped like a gift, and the gift is wrapped in my generosity, and the generosity is fake."

The speech was three paragraphs longer than it needed to be, which was the specific length of a woman trying to convince herself of something she was already failing to believe.

Petra nodded. The nod was the nod. The one she gave when Bellatrix was lying to herself and the lying was transparent and the transparent was going to become genuine within seventy-two hours and the genuine was going to be something Bellatrix would deny until her dying breath.

"Write it down, Petra. Pack run. I will need a route that shows my wolf to best advantage. The lighting must be flattering. I want moonlight, Petra. Direct moonlight. If the clouds interfere, I will have words with the gods."

"Your Grace, if I may." Petra paused, hesitating.

"Out with it."

"Yes, Your Majesty. Your wolf under direct moonlight, leading the pack run. The purple against the silver light." She hesitated. "The Alpha King will not be able to take his eyes off you."

The sentence left her mouth and immediately Petra recognized it had traveled further than intended. The professional distance she maintained with surgical discipline had, for exactly one sentence, slipped. She resumed buffing Avalon with renewed intensity, her eyes fixed on the dragon’s scales as though the cure for overstepping lived somewhere in his left flank.

Bellatrix said nothing for three seconds. The three seconds were long enough for Petra to consider a career change, a relocation, and a surname adjustment.

Then the queen shrugged one shoulder. "Well. Obviously."

Her nonchalance was flawless. Certainly not the nonchalance of a queen mentally rehearsing the moment her wolf emerged under direct moonlight three feet from Tiberon’s eyeline.

She picked up her wine. Drank. Set it down. The indifference was so too indifferent to actually be indifferent.

"The man has functioning eyes, Petra. I would be concerned if he could look away. The purple is rare. The moonlight is physics. The combination is not something you look away from. That is not vanity. That is optics."

Petra exhaled through her nose. The exhale was relief dressed as breathing.

"Of course, Your Grace. Optics."

"Write down ’route with eastern clearing.’ The moon hits the eastern clearing at an angle that does something to the purple. I noticed it once, years ago, and I have never forgotten it because I do not forget things that work in my favor."

Onyx lifted his head from her knee. His gold eyes blinked at her once, slow and steady, the blink of a creature who had been listening to every word and had arrived at a conclusion about the woman saying them.

He climbed fully into her lap. Turned in a circle. Settled.

Then he pressed his head against her chest, right over her heart, and purred.

Emotional support dragon mode: activated.

Bellatrix looked down at him. Her hand found his back. The tuxedo satin was warm from his scales.

"I don’t need comforting, Onyx. I am executing a strategy."

Onyx purred louder.

"Stop that."

Louder still.

Her hand moved in slow circles across his back, the motion involuntary, the involuntary so practiced it had become a reflex, and the reflex was the reflex of a woman who was holding something small and warm and alive and pretending it meant less than it did.

"Fine," she muttered to the dragon. "Fine."

Petra picked up Avalon, who had finished his buff and was gleaming like a blue gemstone, and carried him to the second cushion. She poured Bellatrix a fresh glass of wine, set it on the side table, and returned to her chair with the parchment.

THE LIST:

Wedding invitations: Complete. (Bride named under duress.)

Ball: Maybe.

Pack run: Scheduled. Pray for the moon.

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