The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 209

Chapter 209: Shift Timing Aurelia

Fin woke to an empty bed.

He hadn’t planned on being awake. What dragged him out of sleep was the absence of her, his arm sweeping across cold sheets where Serena should have been. His hand found nothing. His body registered the wrongness before his mind caught up.

"Serena?"

The silence that answered was worse than any alarm.

Then it hit. A searing, bone-deep agony that ripped through his chest and radiated outward, the same savage frequency he’d felt the night he saved her life. His lungs locked. His vision whited at the edges. This was her pain, bleeding through their matebond with the subtlety of a war drum.

He was dressed and moving at alpha speed before his next heartbeat. Shirt, boots, weapons belt, all of it muscle memory while his nose tracked her scent down the corridor. The forest and moon fire.

This was exactly why he needed to get her initiated into Shadowclaw. She was a queen living under guest protocols, and guest protocols did absolutely nothing when your mate was burning alive from the inside out.

Her scent trail led to the hall outside their quarters. He found her on the stone floor, curled on her side, white hair soaked dark at the temples and plastered to her neck. She was wearing her training suit over a silk camisole and shorts, every inch of the fabric damp with sweat. Her breathing came in shallow, staccato pulls that made his chest cave.

"Baby... you’re burning up."

Those words dragged her back to the surface. Her eyes opened, glassy and unfocused, blinking at the vaulted ceiling before finding him. Confusion first. Then recognition. Then the quiet, infuriating attempt to look like she was fine.

"Fin..." Her voice was a rasp.

She’d come out here for fresh air. He could see it in the way she’d positioned herself near the open archway, back against the stone, trying to cool down without waking him. Always trying to handle it alone.

His hand moved from her face to her throat. Two fingers against her pulse. Racing. Thin. The kind of pulse that ran when a body was working too hard to keep itself running.

He scooped her off the floor before she could push herself upright, one arm hooking beneath her knees, the other bracing her back, lifting her like she weighed nothing. The scrawny frame that hid all that fire was trembling against his chest.

✦✦✦

Aurelia: Serena. Can you hear me?

Serena: Yes.

Aurelia: I’m fighting to hold this back. Are you controlling me?

Serena: No. I have no idea how to shift.

✦✦✦

Fin’s gaze locked onto her eyes. Gold flickered through the green, pulsing in uneven surges, there and gone and there again.

Xeon: I feel her wolf. She’s close to the surface. Ask her if she’s fighting a shift.

"Is your wolf trying to shift?"

Xeon: The silver did a number on her. Worse than anything I’ve ever seen.

Fin: What can I do?

Xeon: You either need to Alpha command the shift. Or mark her again to give her body a break.

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