The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

Reginald Viremont walked into Nightspire’s throne room like he still had a kingdom.

He didn’t. Nightspire’s general was keeping his seat warm, his vassal lords had helped themselves to his territory, and the allies who once drank his wine now pretended they’d never met him.

Two armed men flanked him. Bold. Stupid. But bold.

Corvin’s hand went to his sword. The four guards stepped forward as one.

Riven Nightspire raised a single hand.

They stopped.

The quiet that followed had teeth.

"Bold of you to come here, Reginald." Nightspire let the sentence land before adding to it, because Riven Nightspire understood silence the way archers understood wind.

"Armed men in my throne room. After the war summit. After what you did to her in front of fourteen kings."

He didn’t say Serena’s name. Naming her in front of this man felt like putting something clean on a filthy table.

"I’ve executed men for less than that look on your face." Nightspire tilted his head and the temperature in the room dropped by several degrees. "So before my guard captain decides my restraint is a suggestion, I want to hear three things. Why you’re here. What you think you have that I could possibly want. And why I should let you walk out of this room with the same number of limbs you walked in with."

The tendons in Viremont’s neck went taut, and he looked like he was swallowing something sharp.

"You think I came here to beg?"

"I think you came here because you ran out of options and confused that with courage." A smile spread across Nightspire’s face. "And because every other door on this continent is closed to you and mine is the only one you haven’t been thrown through yet."

He paused. "Though I have to say, the evening is still young."

Corvin hadn’t moved his hand from the hilt. The guard to Nightspire’s left hadn’t blinked since Viremont entered.

Viremont scanned the room the way a cornered animal scans for exits. Quick. Reflexive. The arithmetic was grim.

"I have intelligence on the High Emperor." He squared his shoulders. "Active contacts inside Orosia that no other king in Skardos has access to."

"Contacts you built while running from your own people." Nightspire didn’t move. "Or contacts you built while trying to sell my niece to the highest bidder. Remind me which."

The word "niece" dropped into the silence like a knife laid flat on a table.

Viremont’s face went red. He looked like a man who had rehearsed this conversation fourteen times and was now on version fifteen, which was going worse than all of them

"Agnes was framed. Everything I did was to protect my daughter."

"Everything you did was to protect yourself." Nightspire’s tone didn’t change. He was a king just stating facts. "Agnes was a tool you used until she broke, and when she stopped being useful, you came looking for new leverage. That’s not fatherhood. That’s asset management."

"You know nothing about my daughter."

"I know she’s alive because Garrett Darkhowler has more honor in his left hand than you’ve had in your entire bloodline. I know she confessed to poisoning Serena. Twice. And I know that you stood in a tent full of allied kings, put a knife to a girl’s throat, younger than your daughter, and called her a whore while her mate watched." Nightspire leaned forward an inch. "So let’s skip the part where you pretend to be a grieving father and get to the part where you tell me what you actually want."

Viremont’s hands curled into fists at his sides. His men shifted behind him, restless, reading the room the way prey reads wind.

"Withdraw your support from Rathmore."

"Rathmore is useful to me. You’re asking me to trade a functioning asset for a broken one." He paused. "Convince me you’re worth more to me with a crown than without one."

"I have boots on the ground in Orosia and information that is worth its weight."

"Your intelligence is worth exactly as much as I decide it’s worth, and right now, I’m not impressed." Nightspire settled back into his throne. "Convince me. You have about thirty seconds before I get bored, and when I get bored, Corvin gets creative."

Corvin didn’t smile.

Viremont swallowed. Then committed. "The High Emperor isn’t trying to take all of Skardos. He wants the Frostborne girl, and he will burn through every kingdom between him and her to get her."

Nightspire’s expression didn’t change. "Is that your intelligence?"

"Obviously not. I have intelligence on why he is after her. Things Seraphine took to her grave." His eyes were hard and bright, the look of a man playing his last card and betting everything on the dealer’s greed. "Information that you, specifically, would kill to have. Given your... history."

The name landed in the room, and even Corvin went still.

Something behind Nightspire’s expression tightened by a fraction that only a dead woman would have recognized. A door he’d kept locked because the man on the other side was dead and gone.

"You walk into my throne room uninvited and invoke the name of a woman you are not worthy to speak of. You offer me intelligence that may or may not exist, bought with contacts that may or may not be compromised, and you expect me to shelter you from the consequences of your own stupidity."

"Tell me, Reginald. In what version of this conversation did you think mentioning Seraphine would make me more inclined to help you, and not less?"

"Because you loved her," he answered, voice low. "And love makes men do profoundly idiotic things."

Nightspire’s smile came back. Slower this time. Colder.

"It does," he agreed. "You, for instance, loved power so much you lost a kingdom for it." He lifted his hand. "Leave us."

The guards filed out. Corvin was last. He paused at the door, looked at Viremont’s two men, and held the door open for them, eyes narrowed.

✦✦✦

Long after Viremont had left, Nightspire sat with what Viremont had given him. The intelligence was currency with a shelf life and they both knew it.

Riven had allowed Reginald Viremont to take back his kingdom. A kingdom the man had lost through his own incompetence, handed back to him like a toy returned to a child who hadn’t earned it.

The cost was information. The information was about a dead woman’s daughter and what ran through her blood. Whether it was worth a kingdom remained to be seen. But Riven had traded for worse on less, and the name Seraphine had never once steered him wrong. Even from the grave.

He stood and went to find Maelor.