The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 131

Chapter 131: Tiberon Held Her Like A Bouncer

The sound Gavriel made was not words. It was the noise a man makes when his soul briefly leaves his body. The sound of twenty-three years of reckless confidence meeting sudden, catastrophic accountability.

He hunched over, both hands cupping himself, and collapsed sideways onto the floor next to Serena with his knees drawn up and his mouth frozen in a perfect O of silent agony.

"Both of you," he wheezed from the floor, voice three octaves higher than normal, "are fucking insane."

Serena started laughing. It hurt. Everything hurt. Her ribs, her jaw, her nose, her throat where Bellatrix’s fingers had been. But she couldn’t stop.

Gav watched her, and then he was laughing too, one hand still pressed protectively between his legs, shoulders shaking.

"I hate this family," he managed between breaths. "I hate this courthouse. I hate this floor. And I especially hate that I can’t get up right now because my entire lower body has left the chat."

Two floors up and one corridor over, Dexmon stopped mid-sentence. Pain hit him through the matebond, blooming across his ribs and radiating up through his jaw.

Hale watched him with the slow, careful attention of a man who had learned to read the signs. "That’s not yours, is it."

"No," Dex said, already moving.

In the great hall, Tiberon set down his glass. His expression didn’t change, but his hand stilled, and his eyes moved to the far wall as if he could see through it. Something had come through from Bellatrix.

He stood.

Dexmon reached the corridor first. He followed Serena’s scent, her pain pulsing stronger with every step.

He threw the door open just as Bellatrix shoved Serena into the curtains. The curtain rod ripped from the wall. Fabric billowed down over them.

There was a muffled curse from Bellatrix, and then both of them were tangled in velvet like the world’s worst magic trick.

Bellatrix’s voice came from somewhere inside. "Get this off me, you insufferable creature."

Serena got free first. She crawled out of the curtain, nose still bleeding, dress torn at the shoulder.

Dex looked at her. Then at his mother. Then at Gavriel, groaning on the floor in the fetal position.

His brain offered him several possible explanations for what he was looking at. He rejected all of them.

"What the fuck happened in here?" His voice came out calmer than the situation deserved.

Bellatrix scrambled up, standing over Serena. She was breathing hard, and there was nothing queenly about any of it.

Tiberon stopped in the doorway.

He’d commanded armies, negotiated treaties with hostile kingdoms, and maintained composure through three wars, two attempted coups, and thirty-one years of marriage to Bellatrix. None of it had prepared him for this.

His wife’s hair destroyed. His daughter-in-law’s face bleeding. His son’s best friend on the floor protecting his reproductive organs. He looked at the overturned chair and briefly considered if it was too early to retire as a king.

"Everyone in this court is talking about you," Bellatrix said. "The entire kingdom thinks the Crown Princess is unstable. They say it in the corridors when you walk past. You are not the queen they expected, Serena. You are a girl who cries in court and has nightmares and can’t hold herself together long enough to sit through a trial."

Dex’s jaw ticked so hard the muscle visibly jumped. Through the matebond, Serena felt his rage hit her like a wall of heat.

She pushed something back to him that made him freeze. A feeling of, I’ve got this.

Dex didn’t move. But he wanted to and was fighting every fiber in his body to stay put. His hands curled into fists at his sides, and Aegon was trying to force a shift.

"That’s enough," Tiberon said.

He said it at the same time Serena spoke.

Two voices. Different octaves. Tiberon’s carried the weight of a king who had decided his wife had crossed a line. Serena’s carried the weight of a woman who had been hit in the face four times in fifteen minutes.

"Good," Serena said. "Then they won’t be surprised when I do something crazy."

Serena’s leg swept out. Her foot hooked behind Bellatrix’s ankle and pulled. The Queen’s legs went out from under her. She hit the floor.

The sound of ass hitting stone was louder than it had any right to be. The acoustics in this room were, unfortunately, excellent.

Tiberon closed his eyes. In the particular exhaustion of a man who had been married for thirty-one years to Bellatrix and never witnessed anything like that.

"That’s my girl," Gavriel muttered from the floor, then immediately, "I said that out loud, didn’t I."

Dex’s head turned slowly toward Gavriel. His eyes were still surging molten gold, Aegon very unhappy. And the look on his face could have peeled paint off castle walls.

"Reflex," Gav said quickly. "Entirely reflexive. No romantic context whatsoever. I have a head injury. From the floor. Where your mother put me."

Dex stared at him for three more seconds. Gav stared back with the wide-eyed innocence of a man who was absolutely guilty of something but would die before admitting it.

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