The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 158

Chapter 158: Tiberon Held Pink Swords And Didn’t Say A Damn Word

Serena looked up at the king. "I come in peace."

’I come in peace’ felt like something a person said right before everything stopped being peaceful. She was aware of the irony.

She looked at the woman, who had already pivoted and was circling back with both blades raised, murder written in her eyes.

Serena understood what this was. That woman was a pawn in a game they were all meant to play. She could feel the woman’s emotions bleeding through the Fae energy that saturated the room, and what she felt was duty, iron-hard and unyielding.

"I will not hurt her."

Serena said it with the calm certainty of someone who had absolutely no backup plan if the woman didn’t stop.

The Fae King ignored Serena, his eyes fixed on her with the patient, calculating stillness of a predator who has decided to watch his prey run before he decides whether it’s worth chasing.

The woman lunged toward Serena again, aiming to kill, her double blades carving parallel arcs through the air.

Serena felt Fae energy flowing into her, more than she’d realized she could take. It was pouring in from every direction as if the room itself were feeding her, as if the marble and the water and the living vines in the walls were all conducting something ancient directly into her bloodstream.

Flame still ran through her too, coiled at the base of her sternum like an ember that never went out.

Then she felt something else.

Tiberon.

He hit her senses like a flare in the dark. Through her Hidden Flame mark, she knew she was close enough that she could channel into him.

That was unexpected. She hadn’t sensed him at all earlier and would’ve had no idea he was anywhere near here.

She didn’t hesitate. She shoved flame into him immediately. Then she pushed her pink magic. As soon as it flooded into him, she could feel his pain fully. She was about to have a very cranky, very opinionated passenger on this rescue mission.

She imagined him in whatever cell he was in, suddenly flooded with pink magic, and the look on his face was worth every drop of energy it cost her.

The woman threw a blade at her heart.

And just as before, Serena felt the blade call to her, the metal singing through the air with a frequency that resonated somewhere deep in her chest, as if the weapon itself were asking to be caught.

She moved at Alpha speed, grabbing it from the side, her fingers closing around the grip.

Right when she pushed her flame into it, runes carved into the floor and the torches flared pink.

The woman froze in stunned shock, her remaining blade still raised, her chest heaving, her eyes wide and locked on the burning sword in Serena’s hand as though she were looking at something out of a story she had been told as a child and never believed.

Another blade came for Serena, from a guard or warrior somewhere to her left, thrown hard and aimed at the space between her shoulder blades.

She felt it. The air shifted, the metal hummed, and her body moved before her mind had time to form the thought.

She spun, catching it by the handle mid-rotation like a dance, her other hand still holding the burning blade, her body completing the turn with the kind of grace that she evidently only had on this continent.

The pools that wound through the throne room floor lit up beneath the surface, their clear water flooding with soft, luminous pink light that spread outward.

The water turned pink. Her blades were on fire. And ancient runes were glowing. Serena was one dramatic wind gust away from starting a religion by accident.

Other warriors looked as if they were going to throw their blades.

King Kaelith held up one hand, and the warriors froze.

"Why did you enter the way you did if you could do this all along?" King Kaelith’s voice was measured, but the edge beneath it was unmistakable. "Most would consider that deceptive."

Serena wanted to say, Your queen tried to kill me twice before I lit anything on fire, but she was being diplomatic today.

"I entered the way your protocol requested. When I go to a new place, I treat their rules and customs with respect, even if they differ from my own," Serena answered, her voice carrying across the throne room with the clarity of someone who had decided that this was not a conversation she intended to have quietly.

The King didn’t beat around the bush. "What do you want?"

"Bring the prisoner to me, unharmed, now." Serena was unsure where the boldness came from, but she rolled with it.

The emotions of the Fae in the room reverberated through their magic and into her, and it was strengthening her. The ones in this room believed her, and they wanted her to not be harmed.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify