The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

Every king needed a room where shit could shatter without consequence and Garrett didn’t so much as blink at the glass in Fin’s hand.

That was what studies were for.

He stood, pulled a fresh glass from the cabinet, poured three fingers, and handed it to Fin along with a small towel from the side table. The towel was there because Garrett kept towels in his study the way other kings kept decorative swords. Function over aesthetics. Darkhowler to the bone.

"Breaking it would kill her. There’s an ancestor fire situation, long story, different whiskey. But even without that, I’d never break a fated matebond. I’m not that man."

As far as Finnick Shadowclaw was concerned, the ancestors could go fuck themselves for even making that a mechanical possibility.

Garrett collapsed back into the chair. "I’ll take that as another story for another whiskey."

At the rate Fin was generating stories that required whiskey, he was going to need a second cabinet.

"So if breaking it is off the table," he continued. "Option two. You keep the matebond but end the relationship with her. Find someone less complicated."

Fin’s stomach lurched. The lurching was violent, immediate, the physical rejection of a concept his body found so fundamentally repulsive that his organs staged a walkout before his brain could process the suggestion. A full-body hell no.

His jaw tightened hard enough to make the tendon jump.

He didn’t say anything.

Garrett was watching him. The watching was the watching of a man who had offered a terrible option on purpose because the reaction to terrible options told you more about a man’s priorities than the reaction to good ones.

"Option three," Garrett continued, voice steady. "You put things on hold with her temporarily and figure it out. Doesn’t mean you’re ending it. Just space to think. There’s nothing wrong with that." He tilted his glass toward Fin. "Sounds like what you’re doing currently."

"It’s been a day," Fin snapped. "And yesterday wasn’t my night with her."

As if thinking was the goddamn problem. Thinking was all he’d been doing.

Garrett raised both hands in surrender, whiskey still in one without spilling. The man had the drink-holding instincts of someone whose mate produced at least three dramatic situations per week that required steady hands and raised palms.

"Option four." He lowered his hands. "You accept that your mate is complicated and share her, but find another mate in the meantime. Crown the other mate. Have a life with that other mate. Eventually, you’ll move on from Serena."

Fin let out a dark laugh.

"Does that sound like something I would do?"

Rhetorical.

"No. Obviously," Garrett answered without hesitation.

"Then why did you say it?"

"Because I needed you to hear yourself say no to it. You walked in here not knowing what you wanted. Now you know a few things you don’t want. That’s progress, Shadowclaw. You’re welcome."

Fin looked at him for a long, loaded second that somehow still managed to call him several different kinds of asshole while also admitting, with extreme bitterness, that the asshole might have a point.

"But hear me out on this," Garrett continued. "You would have every right to. She has two other mates. You take another mate. It’s only fair. It might crush her and it would almost certainly destroy your relationship, but she couldn’t argue with the logic."

Garrett had just offered the most fucked option in his entire arsenal and said it like he was announcing a light chance of rain.

"Next option."

Two words. Carrying the full weight of "if you finish that sentence I will break another glass and this time I’ll aim the son of a bitch."

"Option five." Garrett leaned forward, elbows on his knees, glass held between both hands. "You accept the other mates. You still crown her. You have a schedule."

Fin drained his glass.

✦✦✦

SHADOWCLAW — FIN’S STUDY 4:00 PM

The portal from Darkhowler deposited him in his own castle. The silence hit like a bad omen. It wasn’t the peaceful kind. It was the tense, waiting-for-shit-to-happen kind that made the walls feel like they were leaning in for the gossip.

Finnick Shadowclaw was pacing.

It had started at 3:45.

Wall to window. Window to desk. Desk to door. Door to wall. The rectangle was wearing a groove into a rug that had survived three generations of Shadowclaw kings and was now being stress-tested by a fourth.

By 3:55, his wolf had started counting the laps and was currently at forty-seven, which was a number that concerned both of them for different reasons and neither of them was willing to address.

Serena Frostborne was a woman who saw early as on time, on time as late, and late as unacceptable. She operated that way with the reliability of gravity. Which meant she was supposed to be here by now.

4:02. Nothing.

This was probably nothing. Two minutes was traffic. Two minutes was a slow portal or a late start or a conversation that ran long. Two minutes was reasonable and his response to two minutes was unreasonable and he knew it was unreasonable and the knowing did not reduce the unreasonableness.

4:05. Nothing.

Five minutes was still explainable. Five minutes had excuses available. He was not interested in excuses. He was interested in the door opening and his mate walking through it.

4:08.

Eight minutes was a choice. Eight minutes was a woman who knew the schedule, knew the portal time, knew the man on the other end, and was choosing to be eight minutes away from where she was supposed to be.

The nothing was becoming a something, and the something was producing a heat in his chest that was migrating from anger to rage.

She was never goddamn late. The fact that today of all days was the one she chose to not show up felt like a calculated middle finger and made his blood boil.

Did she think he didn’t want to see her?

That would be fair.

He didn’t know if he wanted to see her.

That was the problem. The wanting and the anger were occupying the same square footage in his chest and the square footage was limited and neither was paying rent and both were refusing to leave.

But if she had made the decision for him, if she had looked at his silence and concluded that silence meant absence and absence meant permission to skip, that was a different conversation entirely.

That was her avoiding him.

Distance was a choice. An active verb disguised as a passive one. Walking away from this was telling him something her mouth hadn’t said yet.

That was her reading his anger as a door she could walk away from instead of a door she needed to walk through, and the walking-away was producing a fury that was hotter than the original fury because the original fury was about a matebond and this fury was about her choosing distance instead of choosing him.

And there it was. The bottom of it. Under the anger, under the confusion, under the matebond math and the volcanic memories and the options and the whiskey.

Choosing him.

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