The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

Chapter 302: Alphas Don’t Cuddle (Redacted)

If anyone had asked Alaric Kestrel how his evening was going, he would have said quiet, productive, and nearly over.

His shift was supposed to end at 10 o’clock, and he was already tasting sweet, glorious freedom.

At 9:57 he left his office whistling like an idiot, when the universe flipped him off and set his plans on fire.

Rewind sixty seconds. On an ice continent, two Alphas, a Queen, a Gamma, and three Master Mages stood in darkness.

The ancestors had just counted down and their flame was gone. All three mages stood with their hands up, magic ready, producing zero portals.

"Any time now," Maelor called. "One-second window my ass."

The ancestors did not respond.

The floor rumbled.

CRACK.

The door they’d come through cracked straight down the center like something on the other side had hit it.

"Son of a bitch!" Aeron yelped, nearly jumping out of his skin. "Portals! NOW!"

He didn’t need to say it. Hyran and Maelor felt the suppression lift at the exact same moment. Three portals ripped open in perfect sync.

They’d spent the last four hours bickering about glyphs. Now they were casting in flawless unison. Turns out mortal peril was the team-building exercise they needed.

BOOM.

The crack split wide. A figure filled the gap.

Black magic flooded the chamber like smoke.

Without hesitation, Gavriel scooped Serena up and bolted through Hyran’s portal, only to trip halfway through. Serena flew out of his arms, and he crawled the rest of the way.

Hyran and Aeron grabbed Dex just as the entire entrance detonated, stone fragments ripping across the chamber. They dove into Aeron’s portal sideways, falling in a tangle of limbs.

Fin was limping through black magic while getting pelted by stones, trying to get to Maelor’s portal. What happened next, he would remember for the rest of his life.

Maelor ducked under his good arm, took his weight, and hauled him through the portal. They hit the other side wrong, both landing with the grace of two cats tossed in a bath.

As the portal began to close, Fin glanced up and locked eyes with the High Emperor of Orosia, who was sprinting directly at his face with murderous intent.

He was going to make it.

"Maelor!" Fin’s voice cracked on the second syllable, the shout collapsing into a wheeze as his torso punished him for the volume.

He saw the rest unfold in slow motion.

The High Emperor lunged through the threshold, one knee and half his face already in Drakenfell, when a pink portal ripped open directly in front of Maelor’s.

Somewhere behind Fin on the floor, Serena had lifted her hand and started making one before Fin finished saying Maelor’s name.

The timing could not have been better.

The Emperor’s momentum hurled him through one portal and directly into the other. Both portals slammed shut with a violent crack.

Fin glanced at her and saw those vivid green eyes. Not gold. That was all Serena. His Serena.

The moment was short-lived. Her insides burned viciously, and the agony ripped through their matebond, completely overwhelming his own pain for a heartbeat. She was at her breaking point.

"Serena," he began.

"I know," she said softly.

No other words were needed.

Hyran and Aeron and Maelor looked at her.

"Well done," Maelor panted. It surprised everyone, including himself. "Where did you send him?"

"Void Glass Dunes," she breathed. "I think."

"You think?" Gav asked.

"I was aiming there."

"And if you missed?"

"Then he’s somewhere else far away."

Fin then noticed a very confused Alaric standing with his jaw open. The portals had deposited them in the medical wing of Drakenfell.

"Is anyone going to explain why my hallway smells like lake water and dark magic, or should I just start guessing?" he asked.

No one answered.

Alaric pinched the bridge of his nose. "How many of you can walk?"

Silence.

"I’m going to ask that again, slower, in case any of you misheard it as a trick question. Can. Anyone. Walk."

Nothing.

"How many of you can sit up?"

Dex grunted. That was it.

"Fantastic. Who is in the most critical condition?"

"Dex," Gav answered. "Serena next, then Shadowclaw."

Alaric was already moving.

As though answering her unspoken fear, Maelor said, "I will get you re-cloaked, Serena."

He pushed himself off the floor.

Serena’s stomach tightened. The warnings still rang through her mind. She was putting entire kingdoms at risk by existing in the same space as the people she loved.

"Okay," she whispered.

Aeron and Hyran guided Dex into one of the recovery chambers. One that Serena had stayed in before.

"Stay down," Aeron called over his shoulder to Fin. "I’ll be back."

"I’m fine."

"You have three holes in your back and you just portaled onto a stone floor. You are the definition of not fine."

Gav carried Serena into the chambers, putting her in the armchair next to the bed.

Then he went back out into the hallway with Aeron, because Fin was still on the floor and not in good shape.

Getting Fin off the floor required two things: physical assistance and the diplomatic skill to provide it without acknowledging that the Alpha King of North Varos needed help standing up. Gav handled the first. Aeron handled the second by talking about ward construction the entire time so Fin could pretend the conversation was the reason they were walking slowly.

They helped him into the room, putting him on the bed next to Dex.

Two Alphas. One bed. Under any other circumstances, the territorial implications alone would have started a diplomatic incident. Right now, neither of them had the energy to care.

"If you tell anyone I shared a bed with you," Fin breathed. "I will deny it under oath."

"Same," Dex grunted, before his eyes rolled back into his head.

The silence was the kind that happened when everyone in the room had processed the same information at the same speed and arrived at the same conclusion: they had almost died again.

Alaric started pouring gold magic into Dex with one hand and pointing with the other.

"You. Shadowclaw. You. Princess. You. The Gamma. You. Master Mage." Four fingers. Four healers. They moved.

More followed. The corridor went from empty to fully staffed in under a minute, Alaric’s team responding with the drilled efficiency of people who had done this before and expected to do it again. Each healer dropped beside a body, hands out, gold flowing.

The mages accepted healing with varying degrees of grace. Hyran sat against the wall and let it happen with his eyes closed in surrender.

"I could do this faster," Hyran snapped.

"I’m sure." His healer did not speed up.

"I’m just a little drained of magic," Hyran added.

"I’m not injured," Aeron insisted, pushing his away. In fairness, he wasn’t.

Maelor looked at his healer, looked at the gold light coming from her hands, and submitted with the rigid posture of a man enduring something beneath his station.

"I could heal myself," Maelor said.

"You have no magic left," Aeron called over his shoulder, walking to Fin.

"I have dignity."

"Dignity doesn’t close wounds. And you need to make a tether."

Maelor didn’t argue.

"Who wrapped this?" Alaric asked, examining Dex’s makeshift bandages.

"I did," Gav replied.

Alaric studied the bandage. "It’s not terrible."

He carefully began unwrapping. Serena looked over, noticing the puncture wounds, deep, ragged, still leaking dark fluid from the corruption that had lived inside them.

Her hand flew to her mouth. Dex and Fin both were far more battered than she had realized. Magic didn’t heal their wounds fully and they were bleeding.

She blinked rapidly to keep tears from falling. The marks looked worse in the firelight, swollen and angry, the bruising spread wider than it had any right to be. And the knowledge that she was the reason he bore them, that he had followed her into that water, that the spikes found him because he put himself between her and whatever had been down there, carved through her until she couldn’t breathe.

Dex was unconscious now. And Fin was in no condition to return to Shadowclaw. He lay on the bed, jaw clenched, eyes glazed with pain he’d been burying since the first spike had entered his body. The King of North Skardos did not display pain. The fact that it was visible now told everyone in the room exactly how bad it was.

One minute. One excruciating minute of watching Alaric work, of hearing Fin suppress sounds that belonged on a battlefield, of feeling his pain echo through their matebond, overpowering her own wounds.

Serena snapped.

It was the quiet kind of snap. The kind that didn’t come with shouting or dramatic exits. The kind where a woman who had been sitting still, processing, absorbing, calculating, simply stood up and decided she was done watching.

Alaric recognized it. "Serena, sit down."

She was already moving, eyes red-rimmed.

Alaric didn’t stop his gold magic. "Serena—"

Without a word, she fabricated a dagger and dragged it across her palm. Gold blood welled instantly, gold-tinged and warm, and she squeezed it directly into Dex’s wounds.

The blood sizzled against his skin, sealing every puncture and corruption track on contact. His breathing eased. The pain drained out of his expression. The bruising began to fade at the edges with a speed that made Alaric stop healing him for a moment and stare.

The healing assistants watched her blood with wide eyes but wisely kept their mouths shut.

Aeron had unwrapped Fin’s wounds by then so a healer could work on him too. Fin’s eyes followed Serena as she walked around the bed to stand by Aeron.

He grabbed her wrist with his good arm. "Serena, don’t...."

Wrong wrist.

She ignored him, squeezing her blood onto his wounds.