The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 146

Chapter 146: She Took The Head Like A Champ

"We need to move. Someone probably heard the screaming," Serena hissed from outside the bathing chamber door.

"Which screaming? His, yours, mine, or the encore?"

"All of it, Elara."

"One second."

"We don’t have one second. We have negative seconds. We have a debt of seconds that we are currently accruing interest on."

"Just hold on."

Serena heard running water. Drawers opening and closing. Glass clinking against glass. Sounds that had absolutely no business being made by someone who had just witnessed a decapitation.

She crept to the bathing chamber door and peered inside.

Elara stood at the vanity, carefully applying eyeliner.

Serena’s jaw dropped.

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"What?" Elara didn’t look away from the mirror.

"What do you mean ’what’? You know what."

"We look like we’ve been running through tunnels and hiding in closets and witnessing accidental decapitations. If we’re going to infiltrate a fortress, we should at least look presentable." She said this as though she were explaining something to a child. A particularly slow child.

"Presentable? Elara, there’s a headless body ten feet away from us." Serena stared at her in disbelief. "I cannot believe you’re doing your makeup right now."

"I cannot believe you’re judging me right now. We all cope differently, Serena. Some of us scream. Some of us apply concealer. Neither is wrong."

"That’s meant for battle markings. Meant for his body," Serena snapped.

"And now, it’s meant for my face," Elara said unbothered. "He’s not using it. Consider it liberated."

She tilted her chin up to get the angle right. "Panicked, disheveled women draw attention. Put-together women with purpose do not."

"I have purpose. My purpose is to not die."

"Then sit down and let me fix your face."

"My face doesn’t need fixing."

Elara turned and her eyes gave Serena a Bellatrix-level up-and-down. "You have blood splatter on your cheek. Your hair looks like you lost a fight with a windstorm. And your eyes are so wild right now that you look like you’re about to commit a murder, not solve one."

Serena opened her mouth to argue.

"Two minutes," Elara cut her off before a word could get out. "That’s all I need."

Elara grabbed her arm and pulled her onto the vanity stool. Serena went, because arguing with Elara when she had that look on her face was like arguing with weather. You could do it, but nothing would change.

Her hands were steady despite everything they’d just been through. The blood came off Serena’s cheek first, wiped away with a damp cloth. Then she unpinned Serena’s hair, combed through the tangles with her fingers, and put it half up. She moved with the efficiency of a field medic saving lives

"There," Elara said, stepping back to admire her work. "Now you look like someone who belongs in a fortress, not someone who accidentally killed the second-in-command with a decorative axe."

Serena looked at herself in the mirror. She had to admit, the transformation was remarkable. She looked composed. Confident. Almost regal.

Completely different person than the screaming mess who’d had a severed head land in her lap ten minutes ago.

"Fine," she admitted grudgingly. "This was a good idea."

"I know." Elara tucked a loose strand of hair behind Serena’s ear. "I have those sometimes."

They returned to the main chamber, carefully avoiding looking at the body.

"We need something smaller to put the head in," Elara said. "The travel bag is too obviously a travel bag. If someone searches us—"

"There." Serena pointed to an ornate wooden box sitting on a shelf near the desk. It was large enough to hold a head but smaller than the bag.

They crossed to the shelf.

Elara opened the travel bag.

They both looked at the head.

The head, with its slack jaw and yellow eyes and expression of eternal confusion, looked back at them.

"You do it," Elara said. "I’m not the genius who put it in a bag."

"It rolled in there on its own."

"It’s your turn."

"That’s not how turns work."

"It’s exactly how turns work. I touched it last and pulled it off your lap. Now you touch it."

"You grabbed it by the hair and threw it at a wall, " Serena snapped. "That was a choice. That doesn’t create a turn system."

"It absolutely creates a turn system. Your turn."

Serena gagged. She reached into the bag, grabbed the head by its hair, and lifted it out.

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