The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

SHADOWFELL - ALPHA’S STUDY - 5:00 PM

Finnick Shadowclaw gave it a full hour before it fully sunk in: she was not coming.

His fated, second-chance mate, had looked at the schedule, looked at the clock, and decided that tonight, Finnick Shadowclaw could go screw himself.

Apparently his custody night was optional because she had two other mates. Two goddamn safety nets that would take her in a heartbeat so she could skip him and nobody would notice.

Serena Frostborne, who had faced down kings and queens and ancestors and squids and every goddamn thing the universe had thrown at her, was avoiding a conversation with her own mate because the conversation was going to hurt and she had decided that distance was preferable to damage.

She was wrong. That was bullshit. Absolute, weapons-grade bullshit. Distance wasn’t a strategy. Distance was cowardice wearing a sensible coat, and Serena Frostborne was not a coward, which meant she was choosing to act like one.

She didn’t get to dodge him. If she wouldn’t come here, then he would go to her. That conversation was happening.

Fin: Aeron. Where the hell is Serena?

The mindlink was delivered at volume-twelve, which is to say, all the way turned up, which told Aeron everything he needed to know about the next thirty minutes of his life.

Aeron: I haven’t heard from Hyran today.

Fin: Get me a portal to Drakenfell.

✦✦✦

DRAKENFELL — JUVENILE TRAINING FIELD

The portal deposited them onto the Draken Forces field because that was where Aeron anchored it every time. Routine. The pickup point for Onyx, the drop point for arrivals. Something Aeron or his Beta handled every day.

Fin scanned the field. Cadets running formations. Handlers barking. Juvenile dragons doing drills in staggered groups across the southern quad.

No Onyx.

He glanced at Aeron. Aeron shrugged, unbothered. "He might be doing drills on another field. Sometimes he’s gone when I stop by."

Fin gave a nod and crossed the grounds towards the castle. He walked with the pace of a man who had somewhere to be and the posture of a man who was going to be unpleasant when he got there.

Unbeknownst to both of them, Onyx was not, in fact, on any training field and hadn’t been all day.

No sign of Tiberon or Dexmon. But the field was busy. Drills, sparring, the organized chaos of a military training operation that ran whether the Crown Prince was present or otherwise.

Fin: Serena, where are you?

Silence.

She was absolutely, categorically, without question avoiding him. The confirmation settled into his chest like a coal and the coal was getting hotter with every step he took across Drakenfell’s training grounds.

The Alpha King of Shadowclaw was being goddamn ghosted. And she most definitely had put on that damn necklace too so he couldn’t feel her.

He entered the castle through the double doors of the eastern wing, Aeron behind him, and nearly walked into the Beta Luna of Drakenfell.

"Elara."

She stopped abruptly. Mid-stride. Whatever hurry she had been in redirected into the conversation with the practiced pivot of a woman whose social reflexes were faster than her feet.

"Where is Serena?" Fin asked.

"Oh, hello Finnick." Elara’s voice was warm but carried an undertone that Fin couldn’t classify. "Infirmary. I was on my way to check on her actually."

Infirmary.

He had been prepared for "I don’t know" or "the library" or "training" or "refusing to see you." Infirmary was not on the list and the change was giving him vertigo.

The anger in his chest stuttered while the timeline assembled itself in his head.

He had left her there over a day ago. A full day. He had carried her through a portal, laid her on a bed, and walked out without a word and without looking back, and she had been in that infirmary ever since.

He followed Elara through the corridors without speaking. Aeron fell in behind them. The guilt was a bitch-burning bonfire now, fed by every minute he’d spent pacing his study like a prick while she might still be in the infirmary.

But none of that excused her for not answering the mindlink. It didn’t change the fact she never bothered sending word to Shadowclaw that she wasn’t able to come. And it sure as fuck didn’t change the fact she was still avoiding him.

Elara pushed the infirmary door open.

Fin’s stomach dropped through the floor.

Serena was in the bed unconscious. Completely. That was why he couldn’t feel her. It had nothing to do with that necklace.

Her brows were creased, restless, uncomfortable, caught in the grip of something her body was fighting. She looked feverish, her skin flushed and damp, sweat darkening the pillow beneath her white hair.

Her lips were blue, the particular shade of blue that belonged to bodies whose oxygen wasn’t circulating properly and whose circulation was a problem that Fin’s brain registered as emergency before the word had time to form.

His vision tunneled.

Every other object in the room dissolved. The only thing in focus was her, blue-lipped and sweating and still, and the still was so wrong on Serena Frostborne that his chest cracked down a fault line he hadn’t known existed.

Every thought he’d had today, every option, every pacing lap, every shattered glass, every minute of pissy, self-absorbed silence, collapsed into a single, devastating realization: he had left her here. He had walked out of this room and not looked back, and she had been like this, and he hadn’t known because he hadn’t fucking asked.

He crossed the distance in four strides.

Gavriel’s body had ragdolled in a chair at the foot of the bed, looking like he had fought sleep, lost, and been arranged by gravity into a position that was going to produce neck pain he’d complain about for days.

Fresh wraps covered his chest under his shirt. There was no green glowing magic coming from him. His hand was dangling off the armrest, fingers curled loosely around nothing.

Dexmon was in the chair beside her, head forward, holding her hand. His knuckles were white which suggested he had been holding on for hours, like a man holding a rope over a cliff. The grip wasn’t affection. The grip was structural. Let go and something falls.

His eyes were also closed.

Both of them looked about as bad as Fin felt.

"What the hell happened?" Fin asked.

The question came out hot, fast, carrying emotional whiplash fury and something else he didn’t have a name for. He had been expecting a fight but instead was here and now his chest was doing things he didn’t like.

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