The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

The second they cleared the tree line and the wind hit her face and the ground fell away beneath them, the composure she’d been stitching together with spit and stubbornness finally tore apart.

She sobbed.

Not the quiet kind. Not the practiced, soundless tears she’d mastered in a dungeon cell at twelve. These were the ugly ones. The full-body, chest-heaving, can’t-breathe-between-them kind that came from the floor of a person and didn’t stop for dignity or altitude or the fact that she was sitting on a dragon a thousand feet above a kingdom that thought she was strong.

She pressed her face against Velkaris’s neck and let it happen. His scales were warm beneath her cheek, radiating the steady, volcanic heat of a creature whose body temperature ran hotter than any hearth, and the heat soaked through her tear-streaked skin like a hand pressed against a wound.

He didn’t adjust his flight. Didn’t angle toward a destination. Didn’t speed up or slow down. He flew at the exact speed that kept the wind from pulling the tears sideways before they could fall, the exact altitude that put the world far enough away to stop mattering, the exact trajectory of a creature whose only job right now was to carry her and whose carrying was the gentlest thing his two-ton body had ever done.

Velkaris was a loyal friend. He was also the only friend she had right now who couldn’t ask her what was wrong, and the couldn’t was the kindest thing anyone had given her all day.

She cried for at least three hours and couldn’t stop. Three continuous hours of a woman emptying herself at altitude while a dragon flew in circles that didn’t have a destination because the destination was the crying and the crying wasn’t finished.

Her ribs hated her. Her bandages were soaked. Her insides had stopped burning and started aching, which was worse because burning meant something was still trying and aching meant everything had quit.

The sky went from dusk to dark, the stars appearing one by one like an audience arriving to a show they hadn’t bought tickets for. The moon came up eventually because the moon didn’t care about her schedule.

Every time she thought the tears were done, her chest would hitch and the matebond would pulse with something faint and far away, an echo of Fin’s anger or Fin’s grief or Fin’s regret for ever meeting her, she couldn’t tell which anymore, and the echo would restart the cycle and the cycle would run until her lungs were raw and her throat was sandpaper and her eyes were so swollen they finally closed. She didn’t decide to close them.

Her body made the call the way it had been making calls all day, without consulting her, without waiting for authorization, the involuntary shutdown of a system that had been overloaded and was choosing unconsciousness over collapse.

She wasn’t sure how long.

She lifted her head from Velkaris’s neck and her stomach twisted immediately.

It was still dark, but she recognized the kingdom below them.

They were above Viremont. She hadn’t been back here since she escaped. She could see the slave streets empty at this hour.

Velkaris made a huff that in dragon translated to, Hold your complaints. I’m not thrilled about the view either.

Something was pulling at Velkaris. She could feel it through their connection, a deep, ancient urgency thrumming beneath his scales like a second heartbeat running too fast. He hadn’t brought her here to sightsee. He hadn’t brought her here to heal. He’d brought her here because something in this wretched kingdom needed her, and whatever it was, it couldn’t wait until sunrise.

Velkaris tucked his wings and dropped.

The descent was so sudden her ribs screamed and her hands fisted into his scales to keep from sliding. He dove through the dark like a golden comet, wind tearing her hair sideways, the slave streets rising up to meet them at a speed that made her teeth clench.

He landed in the center of the main road with enough force to crack the cobblestones beneath his claws, his tail sweeping wide and sending a merchant cart splintering into a wall.

The alarms started immediately. Bells. Horns. The guttural shouts of Viremont guards scrambling from their posts because a golden dragon had just announced itself in the middle of their slave quarter like it owned the ground it stood on.

Serena barely heard any of it.

The face behind the iron grating was one she would have known blind.

Charlie Thorne. A traveling healer captured by rogues and sold to Viremont. After forty lashes and a faceful of cobblestones and a crowd that watched like it was theater, he was the one who ran out. He carried her when her arms couldn’t hold her own weight. He called for clean linen and boiled water while her blood soaked through his shirt.

She barely recognized what was left of him.

He was skeletal. Whatever Viremont had done to him, it had been slow and thorough. His wrists were chained to the wall at an angle that said his shoulders had dislocated and reset and dislocated again. His skin looked like parchment stretched over a frame that was losing the will to hold it up. His eyes found hers through the grating and they were the only part of him that still looked alive.

She hit the ground running and regretted it immediately. Her ribs lit up like someone had threaded hot wire through them, but her hands were already on the lock, pulling for magic she didn’t have.

Nothing came.

A flicker. A gasp of light. Then dead air. Her body was too damaged, too drained, too freshly stitched together to give her what she needed.

"No. No, no, no." She pulled harder. The magic coughed and died in her palms.

The guards were coming. She could hear them forming up. Seconds, not minutes.

Velkaris channeled fire into her, more accurately, shoved it through their connection. Her Hidden Flame mark ignited.

Velkaris grunted at her, which in dragon translated to, just control the flame. You can do this.

She had always used her gold and fabricated around the flame to protect people. Even when she shot fireballs out of her hands like cannons, she fabricated around her skin.

She had never controlled the actual flame before. The fabrication was her hack. And right now, that hack was gone.

But she would not let this man die.

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