The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 195

Chapter 195: Subtract Yourself & I’ll Fucking Add You Back

"Everyone in that chamber heard the ancestors." Her throat tightened, but she pushed through. "And I have been tearing myself apart trying to figure out a version of this where no one gets hurt, and there isn’t one, Dex."

He didn’t interrupt. His thumb moved in slow circles against her hip.

"You deserve someone who is completely yours. Not someone who is split in half. Not someone who wakes up carrying guilt she can’t put down." Her eyes burned, but she managed to hold her tears back. "I can’t be the reason you lose yourself trying to hold on to something I can’t give you in full."

Silence stretched between them. Long enough for her to hear his breathing change. Long enough to feel something shift through their matebond that wasn’t hers.

"Are you done?"

She blinked. "What?"

"Your speech. The real one, not the brunch version." He tilted his head. "Is there more, or can I talk now?"

"I’m serious, Dex."

"So am I." His hands found hers, lacing their fingers together, and he held on with the grip of someone who had done the math on letting go and rejected every answer.

Something flickered across his face. Not amusement. Something sadder. Something that looked like recognition, like he was watching her do something he’d already seen coming and had been dreading.

"Let me guess," he said. "You convinced yourself that walking away is the noble thing. That if you remove yourself from the equation, everyone heals and the math works out."

He was reading her the way Velkaris read the sky before a storm.

"Serena." His voice dropped. "No one is making you choose right this second."

He hated the words, but he needed to say them.

Her chin trembled. She locked her jaw to stop it.

"The self-sacrifice thing is very noble and very stupid, and I say that with love and the full understanding that you could probably kick a severed head at me right now with perfect aim."

"You don’t understand," she whispered, and her voice cracked on the last word, shattering the composure she’d practiced. "Every time I look at you, I think about what this is costing you. And every time I look at him, I think about what it’s costing him. And I am the common denominator in both of those equations. I’m the variable that doesn’t balance."

"Wrong."

"I’m not wrong."

"You are catastrophically wrong." He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger. Gentle. But deliberate. Tilting her face up so she couldn’t look at her hands or the sheets or anywhere that wasn’t him. "You are not a variable. You are the entire equation. And I am not going to let you subtract yourself from it because you think that’s what we need."

A tear slid down her cheek before she could stop it.

He caught it with his thumb. Didn’t wipe it away. Just held his hand there, warm against her jaw.

"The ancestors said both matebonds are real," he continued. "I was standing right there. I heard every word, and I’m not going to pretend I didn’t. I’m also not going to compete with Fin by asking you to erase him. That’s not a fight I need to win, because it’s not a fight."

"It’s a problem, Dex."

"No. It’s you, trying to solve a problem that isn’t yours to solve alone." His grip on her hands tightened. "And it’s me telling you to stop."

Aegon: Good. She stays.

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