The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 228

Chapter 228: Is This A Sexual Thing, Or—

Dexmon: Serena. Baby. Please. Answer me. I’ll tell you everything.

Silence.

Dexmon: A woman I have never met picked my lock, took my pants, and tried to bite my neck.

Dexmon: The necklace. She stole it. I didn’t give it to her. I didn’t even know it was your mother’s.

He stopped mid-step, considered it, then kept moving.

Dexmon: I realize that sounds bad. I’ve seen you wear it every day. It never came up and I’m sorry for not asking you.

He turned a corner, following her scent like it was his only truth. Five seconds went by. Still nothing from her.

Dexmon: She was naked, wearing your necklace in my bed and touching me while I was asleep. I didn’t know. I woke up hard because I thought it was you.

Aegon: NO. STOP.

He ignored his wolf and followed the scent of her tears down the corridor.

Dexmon: Because of the dream, I was hard. Not her. I was dreaming about us.

Aegon: STOP MINDLINKING. EVERY WORD YOU SAY IS A CRIME.

He made it two corridors before he heard the footsteps behind him.

Fast. Barefoot. Gaining.

Because some reflex at the base of his skull required him to confirm, personally, that this specific combination of circumstances was real, he glanced behind him.

"Oh, for the love of every god."

Guinevere was ten paces away. She had, at some point in the sixty seconds between the portal and now, lost the infantry tunic and was entirely nude again.

Aegon: She lost the shirt.

Dex: I am aware, Aegon.

A door to his left opened.

Queen Bellatrix stepped out into the corridor with a cup of morning tea in her hand and the expression of a woman whose servants had, seven seconds earlier, informed her that something extraordinary was occurring near the solarium and that she ought to come see.

She took in the scene. Lifted her cup. Took a sip.

On the one hand, Serena Frostborne had two mates. On the other hand, a nude woman was currently pursuing her only son through a public corridor. The mathematics of her feelings were, for the first time in months, not entirely straightforward.

"Mother."

"Darling."

"Do something."

"I am observing, Dexmon."

"MOTHER."

She gave him a faint, unreadable smile and returned to her tea.

From the opposite end of the corridor, a voice rang out.

"AND DOWN THE STRETCH THEY COME."

Thor Crushturn was standing at the mouth of the gallery with a visible, aggressive erection tenting the front of his training suit that he was making absolutely no attempt to conceal.

He had positioned himself like he had arrived at a sporting event, and he was already narrating.

"THE PRINCE TAKES THE OUTSIDE LANE. THE CHALLENGER ROUNDS THE TURN, FULLY NUDE, STRONG FORM."

"Thor," Dex clipped. "Shut the fuck up."

"A FORMAL THREAT FROM THE MONARCH, FOLKS, WHICH SUGGESTS WE ARE ABOUT TO SEE AN UPSET."

Thor continued falling in behind him at a trot, goblet sloshing, providing commentary at a volume that was drawing servants.

Guinevere lunged.

She came off her back foot with the precise athletic instinct she had developed in the last hour of her life, hair in her face, arms extended, mouth open, and she went for Dex’s neck with the explicit intent to mark him.

Dex caught the movement in his peripheral vision one half-second before her teeth would have landed.

He moved in a blur of Alpha speed.

"What is wrong with you..."

He stepped inside her reach, turned under her outstretched arm, and caught her by the shoulders at a distance of approximately twenty inches from his neck. She hung in his grip for a moment, teeth still bared, eyes bright.

He let go, stepped back, then looked at the two guards posted at the corridor intersection.

They had been at parade rest. Their eyes were fixed at a point somewhere slightly above his head, and their faces held a careful blankness.

"Arrest her."

The guards did not move.

"I said arrest her."

The guard on the left, a young man named Corin who would, years later, tell this story to his grandchildren and have none of them believe him, cleared his throat with care.

"Your Highness, forgive me, ah, is this a, ah, a sexual thing, or—"

"WHAT."

"I only ask, Your Highness, because if this is a private, ah, recreational matter between yourself and the lady, we were instructed in the last standards review that we are not to intervene in, ah—"

"CORIN. SHE IS TRYING TO MARK ME. THIS IS NOT A RECREATIONAL MATTER. INTERVENE."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Corin did not intervene.

The other guard, Matthias, glanced sideways at Corin. Dex realized they both were trying to determine whether this was the kind of order that had a follow-up test attached to it.

"INTERVENE, CORIN. INTERVENE, MATTHIAS. THIS IS A DIRECT ORDER FROM YOUR COMMANDER AND PRINCE OF DRAKENFELL."

"Yes, Your Highness," they said in unison.

They did not move.

Guinevere lunged again.

Fin came around the far corner at a dead run.

He saw, in the span of one second: his nude cousin launching herself at the Prince of Drakenfell’s neck.

Dex dodged out of the way.

"Guinevere."

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