The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 137

Chapter 137: Fucked, Chucked, & Left With All His Goddamn Paperwork

Serena reached for him before she was fully awake, and her hand found nothing. Her eyes snapped open to cold sheets and an empty bed.

Her heart was thudding against her ribs.

Did she dream that too?

No. If she could remember, then it wasn’t a dream.

They’d been keeping all of this from her for almost three weeks.

She shook her head.

No more. She was done being protected and kept in the dark.

✦✦✦

Serena and Elara made their way to the healing wing.

Alaric looked up from his work the moment they entered.

"Serena, how are you feeling?"

"I’m feeling much better, thank you for your tonics." Serena met his gaze steadily. "I need to speak with you in private."

His face darkened. Without a word, he turned and walked towards his office. Serena and Elara followed.

He closed the door behind them and crossed to his desk without offering either of them a seat, which told Serena everything she needed to know about how this conversation was going to go.

"I don’t think I can give you what you want. By all means, ask."

"I need a portal to Orosia."

"Of course you do." Alaric exhaled through his nose, and resignation settled into the lines around his mouth. "You aren’t fully healed. Throwing yourself into danger would be a slap in everyone’s faces who are trying to protect you."

His words landed like a punch to the chest. She hadn’t considered that angle. Elara shifted beside her.

"Dexmon left hours ago." Alaric held her gaze, unflinching. "Give him two days before you throw yourself into danger."

"Two days." Serena’s jaw tightened. "And if he disappears?"

"Then we reassess."

"Reassess." The word tasted bitter in her mouth. "People I care about are missing, Alaric. They could be dead. They could be tortured. And you want me to sit here and wait?"

"They could also be fine. You’re catastrophizing, which is understandable, but I’m not going to validate it."

He wasn’t wrong. She hated that.

"One day," Serena countered. The words still felt like surrender.

"You are the worst patient I’ve ever had. And I have treated soldiers who pulled their own stitches out to get back on the field."

He shook his head.

"Fine. One day. Now get out of my office."

✦✦✦

One day became three, and Alaric became a ghost.

Serena and Elara were fulfilling the duties of Hale and Dex, and neither were able to hound Alaric again. By the time they finished their responsibilities for the day, Alaric was nowhere to be seen.

Serena suspected that wasn’t a coincidence. The man had survived wars, plagues, and royal politics. Avoiding two women in a castle was well within his skill set.

It was the morning of day two, and they were curled on opposite ends of her bed, when Serena finally said what she’d been thinking for hours.

"Do you think they miss us too?" Her throat closed around the question, and she pressed her palm flat against the bed because her fingers had started to tremble.

"Gods, I hope they both have blue balls and their hands cramp so there’s nothing they can do about it. Hale was getting this ass three times a day up until he left."

"I had sex with Dex twice the day he left."

"He fucked you, then chucked you."

"Gods, don’t ever say that again," Serena said, face in her hands.

"They are missing us. Dex was following you around like a puppy. If we feel it, they definitely feel it."

Elara stood, giving Serena a hug. A much needed one.

Her bed still smelled like Dex and she found herself getting emotional about being apart from him. She couldn’t feel his emotions through their matebond.

The absence grew daily, a low hum that turned her stomach and made her hands restless. She’d felt this once before. The day she severed the matebond. This wasn’t as extreme, but the flavor was the same, and that terrified her.

Elara kept touching her mark when she thought Serena wasn’t looking. They were both reaching for men who weren’t there.

On the second day, she went through the ledgers at alpha speed and finished Dexmon’s work in under one hour. She looked up to find Tiberon standing in the doorway, watching her.

It dawned on her then that they’d just made a tactical error by being too efficient.

"Oh, I had a feeling," he said dryly.

He crossed to the war room table and dropped another pile of documents in front of her. The stack landed with a heavy thud that echoed off the stone walls.

Elara looked at the pile, then at Serena, then back at the pile.

"Dexmon’s work for the week." He added two more stacks beside it. "Along with Gavriel’s and Hale’s."

Serena didn’t flinch. She pulled the first stack towards her and began.

She completed Dexmon’s weekly reports by midday. She moved through Gavriel’s intelligence summaries and flagged three discrepancies that had been overlooked for months. She reorganized Hale’s training schedules to eliminate redundancies and increase coverage during shift changes.

Elara worked beside her, handling the administrative tasks. She organized correspondence and managed the steady stream of messengers and junior officers who appeared at the door with questions.

They moved in tandem, anticipating each other’s needs without speaking, a rhythm born from years of survival together. A force to be reckoned with.

By the end of the third day, they had cleared it.

Tiberon returned to the war room that evening and stopped in the doorway.

His eyes swept across the empty table, the organized stacks ready for distribution, and the two women who had accomplished in three days what his staff would have struggled to complete in two weeks.

Interesting, Serena thought to herself.

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