The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

"I have never been more embarrassed to call you family."

Guinevere looked at him as though he had just suggested she apologize to a houseplant.

He shook his head. It was the head shake of a king who had mentally drafted, reviewed, and signed an eviction notice before his mouth opened.

"Two weeks. You leave the castle and out of my sight. And when you come back, if you come back, you will apologize then you will never speak to her again. You will not look at her or be in the same room unless I specifically allow it."

"She’s an omega, Fin."

"That’s not the point. But you keep bringing it up. She’s the Crown Princess of Drakenfell. But even if she was an omega, you would still be wrong. And you would still be leaving. Unacceptable."

Her face cycled through several expressions: shock, offense, outrage, and finally cold, narrow-eyed recalculation.

✦✦✦

Fin found Garrett on his way out of the sitting room, Agnes trailing behind him still dabbing at the stain on her bodice.

"Where is Serena?"

Garrett’s expression shifted to something careful. "She said she had something to take care of. Left about twenty minutes ago."

"Take care of what?"

"She didn’t say. She lied about it and left before I could ask."

Fin pinched the bridge of his nose. Serena, who could light a man on fire, channel dragon energy, and read dead languages, could not tell a convincing lie to save her own life. The fact that she kept trying was endearing.

And he knew that pattern. She had the emotional crisis management strategy of a cat: disappear, process alone, return composed, and deny everything. Fin understood it, because that was his own method. He also hated it, because it meant she was somewhere in his castle upset by herself.

He needed to find her.

But more than that, he needed to fix something that had been gnawing at him since the moment she arrived in Shadowclaw.

He couldn’t mindlink her.

Every time something happened, every time she was upset, or lost, or being torn apart by someone in his own house, he couldn’t reach her. He had to physically find her. Track her scent. Ask other people where she’d gone. It was maddening and it was dangerous, and he was done with it.

He was an apex predator reduced to asking hallway staff if they’d seen a small white-haired woman walk by recently. Like a man who’d lost his keys, except the keys could start fires and had a habit of solving ancient mysteries when left unsupervised.

She needed to be initiated into Shadowclaw’s pack so he could mindlink her and have her by his side at all times. That was how it was supposed to be.

He hadn’t claimed her publicly yet, moving slow for her. But that was now becoming an issue.

The longer he didn’t acknowledge what they were, the more speculation would arise. That was inevitable.

The problem was jurisdiction. She wore a Drakenfell crown. She was mated, on paper, to Dexmon. Dual-pack membership wasn’t standard. But it wasn’t explicitly forbidden either, which meant there was a loophole in his experience.

If there wasn’t Fin was going to find one or kick a hole in the wall next to where the loophole should have been and call it a door.

The only other path to a mindlink was if their wolves mated and marked, and her wolf wasn’t healed. He wasn’t going to try to pressure that. Not all wolves mated, and that was too far away.

This needed to be resolved now.

He had been planning on taking care of her the rest of the day regardless. She’d come back from Drakenfell upset, trying to hide it, and he could feel her turmoil getting worse through their matebond. The plan had been dinner in his quarters with her.

Then Guinevere happened.

Three words that could summarize roughly forty percent of Fin’s problems in any given month.

And now Serena had disappeared into his castle, and the matebond was feeding him a cocktail of exhaustion, shame, and the dull ache of helpless worry.

He was halfway to his quarters when his insides caught fire. Because of course they did. He stopped mid-stride. Hand flat against the stone wall. Teeth clenched.

He knew this feeling.

It was the same sensation he’d felt the day of the battle, every time she’d shot a damn arrow. That searing, phantom burn that ripped through his gut like his energy was being torn out and used by someone else’s body.

It got worse.

His vision blurred at the edges. His hand pressed harder into the wall, knuckles white, every muscle in his core seizing as the burn climbed from his stomach into his chest.

He pushed off the wall and moved.

He followed her scent like a compass.

Aeron’s study.

He didn’t knock.

The door hit the wall hard enough to rattle the hinges.

Serena was on her knees. Nose bleeding red, cloth pressed to her face, pink magic still flickering and dying at her fingertips. The magic fizzled out like a candle that had been asked to do too much and finally quit.

Her other hand was braced against the floor, holding herself up. Barely. Like a woman who had made a deal with gravity and was losing the negotiation.

She looked up at him with a guilty expression, realization dawning on her face that he could feel it too.

That wasn’t the issue. The fact she was doing this to herself was the issue.

Hyran sat in his chair. Aeron stood by the table. Maelor had his hands clasped behind his back, observing her with detached curiosity.

None of them had moved to help her.

"Baby..."

The word fell out of him before he could stop it, rough and broken at the edges. Not a pet name in that moment. A reflex. The sound a man makes when the person he would burn continents for is bleeding on a stone floor.

He would later deny saying it in front of three mages. All three would remember it. Aeron would write it in his journal. The journal the ancestors had already publicly identified as a problem.

Fin crossed the study in four strides, crouched, and lifted her off the ground.

She didn’t fight it, which was how Fin knew she was either truly exhausted or had finally accepted that arguing with a man who had already picked her up was an inefficient use of her remaining energy.

Her hand fisted in his shirt, the cloth still pressed to her nose, and she let him take her weight.

He stood, Serena in his arms, and turned slowly so every mage in that room felt the full weight of his attention.

His eyes were gold. His jaw was locked.

The look he gave them wasn’t a warning. It was a verdict.

"She’s done."