The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

Three. Three fucking matebonds.

The ancestors had looked at Serena Frostborne and said, "You know what this girl needs? More bullshit. Pile it on. Really stack the deck until the whole damn table collapses."

Finnick Shadowclaw slept like dog shit, and when he woke up that morning, he immediately wished he hadn’t.

The ceiling was the same ceiling. The pain was the same pain. The existential confusion had settled in like a tenant who’d already changed the locks.

The stab wounds and his ribs made themselves known immediately. His body was still healing which meant he could not shift, and shifting was the thing he needed because shifting was running and running was the thing Finnick Shadowclaw did when his chest was full of things he didn’t like. Some cultures called those things ’feelings,’ but he didn’t have those because he was a man among men.

The objective to solve this was unclear and that was the problem. He was the kind of man who had an objective for brushing his teeth. But this was fog.

His mate collected matebonds like a goddamn rewards program, and he wasn’t sure if he was the premium tier or the free trial. Every thought boomeranged back harder than the last, and Fin was running out of walls to duck behind.

Tonight was his night according to their custody arrangement. She was due at Shadowclaw at 4:00 PM.

He didn’t know if he wanted to see her, and he didn’t know what he would do when he did.

He didn’t know if the anger in his chest was aimed at her, or at the ancestors, or at the Moon Goddess for handing three matebonds to one woman like a fucking buy-two-get-one-free promotion on something that was supposed to be sacred and singular.

The anger wasn’t clean. That was the thing. Clean anger he could work with. Clean anger had a target and a trajectory, and you could throw it at something and feel empty after, which was almost the same as feeling better.

This anger had roots and he didn’t know if he even wanted the details from her.

The details were a door, and behind the door was either an explanation that made things better or an explanation that made things worse, and Finnick Shadowclaw was standing in front of that door with his hand on the knob and his feet pointed in the opposite direction.

Because Finnick Shadowclaw could face down skeleton wolves, volcanic hellfire, and a kraken with an attitude problem, but asking his mate a direct question about her feelings and if she had been lying to him this whole time? Fuck that. Horseshit.

His wolf had been mercifully quiet all morning. Xeon understood that some silences were strategic and some silences were survival, and this one was both. Sometimes it was best to just shut the hell up.

By midday, Fin had delegated every responsibility that required his presence and cleared his schedule.

He packed his feelings into a tight, furious ball of dick-deep denial and stepped through a portal to Darkhowler like a man with somewhere to be that wasn’t inside his own skull.

✦✦✦

DARKHOWLER — CASTLE GROUNDS

The air in Darkhowler was different. Northern. Cold in a way that had opinions about your lungs and expressed them on the first inhale. Forest and stone and the particular mineral quality of a kingdom built into mountains.

Fin found Garrett on the grounds, walking the eastern perimeter path with his hands locked behind his back at a speed that said "casual stroll" while his eyes conducted a full property audit.

Garrett clocked the damage before Fin reached him. The assessment took one second. Stiff as hell. Right shoulder babied. Gait full of that uneven hitch that screamed his ribs were still healing and that they fucking hated stairs, breathing, and the entire concept of existing.

"You look like shit, Shadowclaw."

"Just a few stab wounds."

"A few."

"Three. Maybe four. Depends on how we’re counting the one that went through and came back."

"Through and came back. That’s a new category."

"The whole damn volcano was a new category."

Garrett’s brow lifted. "Volcano."

"Long story."

Understatement. The volcano had been a clusterfuck carnival from the first tremor to the final collapse, and every act had been worse than the last.

Garrett fell into step beside him. Their pace was slower than normal, Fin’s body setting the speed, and neither of them acknowledged the accommodation because admitting weakness was horseshit. Acknowledging horseshit was a slippery slope that ended with hugging and talking about feelings and other catastrophic crap neither of them was built for.

They rounded the eastern wall. The training field opened up to their left, cadets running drills, the rhythmic thud of wooden practice swords hitting shields producing a percussion that was the soundtrack of every military castle on the continent.

Beyond the training field, the grounds sloped toward a secondary courtyard that had been converted into something Fin had never seen in Darkhowler before. A play area. Informal. Grass and open space and a collection of children who ranged from toddler to early teens, scattered across the yard in the organized chaos of youth given freedom and a lack of adult supervision.

Except there was adult supervision. One adult. Standing in the center of the chaos like a silk-dressed tornado that had opinions about playground politics.

Agnes Viremont.

She had found the one arena more brutal than court politics: recess.

She was holding a ball. The ball had clearly been confiscated because a boy approximately nine years old was reaching for it with the desperate body language of a child whose property had been seized by a woman who outranked him in every conceivable hierarchy.

But the ball was Agnes’s ball now. The ball had always been Agnes’s ball. And the ball had been temporarily on loan to children who had failed to meet the terms of the agreement.

"Give it BACK!" the boy yelled, jumping.

Agnes held the ball higher. Which was unnecessary, because Agnes was already taller than every child present, but the holding-higher was a power move and Agnes did not do anything without making it a power move.

"You threw it at his head," Agnes said, her voice carrying across the courtyard. "At his HEAD, Marcus. Balls are for throwing at walls, at targets, and at people who deserve it. Andrew did absolutely nothing to deserve it. If I ever see you throw anything at my son’s head again, you will be running laps and I will rearrange this entire friend group so that nobody here likes you. You will be uninvited from every birthday party and game of hide-and-seek. I have reach, Marcus."

The boy looked like he’d been bitch-slapped by a royal decree. Which, functionally, he had. Agnes Viremont didn’t issue warnings. She issued sentences. And every goddamn one came with the death penalty for his dignity.

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