The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 157

Chapter 157: The Fae Queen’s Abs Are Not The Point

"Don’t tell me she is fine. She was bleeding and collapsed." Fin’s jaw was tight. His eyes flickered gold and he didn’t bother forcing them back. "I watched it happen and I FELT every second of it through our matebond."

He turned towards Aeron and Hyran. "I am standing on the wrong side of a closed portal. FIX. THAT."

Aeron opened his mouth to respond, but the sound that came from the stairwell made every person in the chamber turn.

It was a shriek. High-pitched, indignant, and followed immediately by the unmistakable scrape of claws against stone.

Queen Bellatrix descended the final steps into the underground chamber with Onyx draped across both of her arms like an oversized, scaly infant.

The baby dragon had grown noticeably since the last time Fin had seen him, and his tail curled around Bellatrix’s waist in a way that suggested he was completely comfortable doing that and had absolutely no intention of ever being put down again.

The shriek had been hers. Onyx’s tail had snagged one of the ancient sconces on the way down the narrow stairwell, ripping it clean off the wall.

Bellatrix was staring at the bent metal on the steps behind her with the expression of a woman who had been pushed to the outermost edge of her patience approximately twenty-four hours ago and had been free-falling past it ever since.

"This creature," she said, her voice trembling, "has not let go of me. If anyone tells Tiberon that I sang to a baby dragon at three in the morning, I will have you sealed inside this chamber permanently."

She looked down at Onyx, who was purring against her chest with his face tucked into the crook of her elbow, completely unbothered by her tone or the damp chill of the underground air.

"He also," she continued, quieter now, as though she were confessing something deeply shameful, "Cries if I leave the room."

Gavriel, who had been watching this entire display with the barely contained delight of a man witnessing a miracle, tilted his head. "The fact that he loves you is genuinely unprecedented."

"Of course he loves me. That is not the point," Bellatrix snapped. "Someone needs to come collect their dragon before I lose what remains of my composure."

"With respect," Gavriel said, grinning so wide it bordered on reckless, "it looks like he already collected you."

Bellatrix’s nostrils flared. Onyx chose that exact moment to lift his head, chirp once, and lick the side of her jaw with a small, warm tongue.

Her eye twitched.

"I am going to pretend that didn’t happen," she said. "And so is everyone in this chamber."

Onyx then turned his head toward Fin, and every ounce of contentment drained from his small body in an instant.

His gold eyes went wide, his wings snapped open, and he launched himself out of Bellatrix’s arms with a wail so loud and so desperate that it echoed off the stone walls of the chamber and bounced across the surface of the lake.

He hit Fin square in the chest.

Fin staggered back two full steps as sixty-some pounds of baby dragon slammed into him, wings folding tight around his torso, tail lashing once and then wrapping around his ribs so hard Fin could feel each individual scale.

Onyx buried his face under Fin’s chin and made a sound that wasn’t any of the noises a dragon was supposed to make. It was a whimper cry, shaking and broken, the kind of sound that only comes from something small that has been waiting too long for someone to come back.

Fin stopped moving.

His hand came up slowly, still trembling from the adrenaline of watching Serena collapse through a closing portal, and rested on the back of Onyx’s neck.

The dragon was shaking against him, his small body vibrating with the force of his relief, and every few seconds he would press his face harder into Fin’s throat as though he were checking that Fin was real, that he was solid, that he wasn’t going to disappear again.

"I’m here," Fin said, his voice rough and cracked at the edges. "I know. I’m sorry I left. I won’t do it again."

Onyx pressed closer, and the sound he made next was so clearly a demand for that to be a promise that Fin’s throat tightened around words he couldn’t get out.

Xeon: The dragon has better instincts than you do. He holds on. You let her go and walked through a portal. Learn from the lizard.

Bellatrix watched from the bottom of the stairwell, her arms now empty, her gown shredded in four different places, her hair falling out of its pins on one side. She looked down at the claw marks on her forearms, then back at the dragon who had just abandoned her without a backward glance.

"Typical," she muttered.

But she didn’t leave. Her expression softened for half a second but no one was stupid enough to mention it.

✦✦✦

"Halt!" a Fae guard called before Serena could enter the palace.

Interesting, she thought to herself.

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