The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 189

Chapter 189: Love Makes Men Do Profoundly Idiotic Things

Reginald Viremont walked into Nightspire’s throne room like he still had a kingdom.

He didn’t. Nightspire’s general was keeping his seat warm, his vassal lords had helped themselves to his territory, and the allies who once drank his wine now pretended they’d never met him.

Two armed men flanked him. Bold. Stupid. But bold.

Corvin’s hand went to his sword. The four guards stepped forward as one.

Riven Nightspire raised a single hand.

They stopped.

The quiet that followed had teeth.

"Bold of you to come here, Reginald." Nightspire let the sentence land before adding to it, because Riven Nightspire understood silence the way archers understood wind.

"Armed men in my throne room. After the war summit. After what you did to her in front of fourteen kings."

He didn’t say Serena’s name. Naming her in front of this man felt like putting something clean on a filthy table.

"I’ve executed men for less than that look on your face." Nightspire tilted his head and the temperature in the room dropped by several degrees. "So before my guard captain decides my restraint is a suggestion, I want to hear three things. Why you’re here. What you think you have that I could possibly want. And why I should let you walk out of this room with the same number of limbs you walked in with."

The tendons in Viremont’s neck went taut, and he looked like he was swallowing something sharp.

"You think I came here to beg?"

"I think you came here because you ran out of options and confused that with courage." A smile spread across Nightspire’s face. "And because every other door on this continent is closed to you and mine is the only one you haven’t been thrown through yet."

He paused. "Though I have to say, the evening is still young."

Corvin hadn’t moved his hand from the hilt. The guard to Nightspire’s left hadn’t blinked since Viremont entered.

Viremont scanned the room the way a cornered animal scans for exits. Quick. Reflexive. The arithmetic was grim.

"I have intelligence on the High Emperor." He squared his shoulders. "Active contacts inside Orosia that no other king in Skardos has access to."

"Contacts you built while running from your own people." Nightspire didn’t move. "Or contacts you built while trying to sell my niece to the highest bidder. Remind me which."

The word "niece" dropped into the silence like a knife laid flat on a table.

Viremont’s face went red. He looked like a man who had rehearsed this conversation fourteen times and was now on version fifteen, which was going worse than all of them

"Agnes was framed. Everything I did was to protect my daughter."

"Everything you did was to protect yourself." Nightspire’s tone didn’t change. He was a king just stating facts. "Agnes was a tool you used until she broke, and when she stopped being useful, you came looking for new leverage. That’s not fatherhood. That’s asset management."

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