The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

Gavriel’s expression softened by exactly one degree.

One degree was all he gave her. The degree said good. The degree also said I’m watching you, and the watching was going to continue until Alaric arrived or the sun fully committed to rising, whichever came first.

She settled against the pillows. Her body recognized horizontal the way a body that had been vertical on borrowed time recognizes the thing it actually needed. Her muscles unclenched. Her breathing deepened. The green magic that was still wrapped around her pulsed once, warm, steady, and she could feel it refilling her reserves with the patient, relentless generosity of a man whose magic treated her wellbeing as a standing order.

She looked at him.

He looked at her.

The room was silent except for Fin’s breathing, Dexmon’s sleep-mumbling, and Onyx’s purring, which had resumed the moment she returned to the bed and was vibrating through the mattress at a frequency that could have registered on seismic equipment.

Gavriel’s eyes were green. Regular green. The Fae magic had settled back beneath the surface, doing its work quietly, without the emerald lightshow. He looked exhausted and bandaged and uncomfortable in that chair and he was staying in it anyway.

She wanted to tell him to find a real bed. She wanted to tell him his wraps needed changing. She wanted to tell him forty things and every single one of them would make noise and noise would end this, so she told him none of them.

He could feel her through the matebond. The gratitude. The guilt. The warmth she was still pretending was friendship and the pretending was getting thinner by the hour.

He gave her a look that said go to sleep, Frostborne.

She gave him a look that said you first.

Neither of them closed their eyes.

The door opened.

Alaric entered the room the way weather enters a valley, inevitable, indifferent, and carrying consequences for everyone in its path. He was holding a fresh I.V. bag in one hand and a chart in the other, his arrival timed with the particular accuracy of a healer whose internal clock was calibrated to the exact minute his patients would do something stupid.

His eyes found the empty I.V. stand first.

Then the dangling tubing.

Then Serena, in the bed, looking at him with an expression that was attempting innocence and achieving nothing.

Alaric gave her a look.

The look was a twin to Gavriel’s. The same flatness. The same temperature. The same comprehensive, devastating lack of surprise from a man whose patient had removed her own medical equipment for the fourth time in recent memory and whose capacity for shock had been cauterized by repetition.

He said nothing.

The nothing was louder than anything he could have said, because Alaric’s silence was a weapon he deployed when words would wake sleeping patients and waking sleeping patients would produce more patients and more patients meant more paperwork and Alaric despised paperwork more than he despised the woman’s inability to stay connected to medical equipment.

He crossed the room in four silent strides. Set the fresh I.V. bag on the stand. Reconnected the tubing with hands that moved in the dark with the practiced ease of a healer who had done this enough times to qualify for a frequent-flier program. The needle found her vein. The drip began. His fingers were gentle despite the look on his face, the disconnect between his bedside manner and his bedside expression the eternal paradox of Dr. Alaric Kestrel.

He reached into his coat and produced a tonic.

Set it on the nightstand beside her with a soft click.

Pointed at it.

The pointing was an instruction. The instruction was drink this. The drink this carried the implicit follow-up of or I will pour it down your throat and bill your mates for the inconvenience.

She picked it up. Drank it. The tonic was cold and bitter and tasted like recovery and made every cell in her body sigh the way cells sigh when they receive something they needed six hours ago.

Alaric looked at the empty tonic bottle. Looked at her. Looked at Gavriel, who was still awake, still green-lit, still functioning as an unauthorized magical battery from a chair he refused to leave.

His eyes said: both of you are idiots.

Gavriel’s eyes said: correct.

Serena’s eyes said: also correct.

Alaric pocketed the empty bottle. Checked her pulse with two fingers against her wrist, the touch brief, clinical, carrying zero warmth and maximum competence. Her pulse was stronger. Steadier. The transfusion and the tonic and the green magic and the horizontal were doing their work.

He released her wrist.

Adjusted the I.V. drip rate by a quarter turn.

Pulled the blanket up to her collarbone with a sharp, efficient tug that had all the tenderness of a man closing a filing cabinet and all the care of a man whose patients kept almost dying and whose emotional reserves were a shallow puddle he refused to acknowledge.

Then he turned and left.

The door closed behind him without a sound.

Gavriel looked at Serena. His eyes were already heavy, the adrenaline of catching her out of bed fading, sleep pulling at him with the insistence of a body that had been running on fumes and had just confirmed that she was horizontal, hydrated, and staying put.

She looked at him.

Go to sleep, Gav.

You first, Frostborne.

Her eyes closed first.

His closed second.

The green stayed.

Wrapped around her, steady, warm, filling her reserves while three men and a dragon surrounded her in a room where nobody spoke and everything was said.

Onyx opened one gold eye.

Surveyed the room. Every person accounted for. Every body horizontal or close enough. Every breathing pattern stable.

The eye closed.

His purring deepened.

The sun rose without permission from anyone.

✦✦✦

DRAKENFELL INFIRMARY INCIDENT LOG — SHIFT 3:

I.V. removal: Patent is a repeat offender.

Equipment status: Replaced. Again.

Patient compliance rating: Abysmal.

Green-glowing Gamma in the corner: Still unauthorized. Still effective. Still sitting in that goddamn chair.

Recommendation: Install locks on the I.V. stand. Or on the patient. Dealer’s choice.

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