The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 230

Chapter 230: Yeah, No. He Picked Her Up.

Aurelia had never wanted blood before.

Fury, raw and unrecognizable, flooded through Serena’s core and into her limbs. Her vision tunneled, gold flickering at the edges, and her hands trembled, curling into fists she didn’t remember making.

The sting on her neck over her mark was the only thing keeping her grounded.

She closed her eyes, and with every ounce of discipline she had, pushed her wolf down. Aurelia was not happy and it echoed through her bones for three full seconds.

Fin’s Alpha command cut through the courtyard. "Guinevere. Shift back. Now."

The grey wolf’s legs buckled, bones cracked, and the shift was slow. A forced reverse shift that she was clearly fighting. Guinevere came back into human form, shackles still dangling from one wrist where the shift had snapped the other.

Guards closed in.

✦✦✦

A wall made of magic was still a wall, and Dex had never met one he couldn’t step around. He moved around it in a blur, and pulled Serena into his arms.

She did not hug him back, but she didn’t push him away either.

Aegon: Aurelia wants out. Tell her to let her free.

Dex: Absolutely not.

He held her against his chest, one hand pressed flat between her shoulder blades where he could feel her heartbeat slamming through her ribs.

He pressed his lips to her hair and held them there.

✦✦✦

Gavriel Sterling stood fifteen feet away and watched the scene like a man watching his own autopsy.

He realized three things in that moment.

First: The love he felt for Serena hadn’t changed. Blessed by fate or not, it was real and it was deep. No one could tell him otherwise. His chest still cracked at the sight of her in Dex’s arms, still ached with the particular grief of loving a woman who would always choose his best friend first.

Second: Fated mates were supposed to supersede everything, but his didn’t. Serena was still the center. Guinevere was a new planet in the orbit, pulled into his gravity by a force he did not choose, and she was on fire.

Third, and this was the one that settled in his chest like a stone: he had felt sorry for Guinevere, thinking she had gotten carried away. The Dex thing was insane, yes, but maybe she was lonely, or desperate, or just the kind of unhinged that came from growing up in a court where status was oxygen. He had been constructing a version of her that was salvageable. A version where the binder was eccentric instead of predatory, where the nude chase was impulsive instead of calculated, where she was just a girl who had gone too far and needed a firm hand and a reality check.

He had been wrong. This was not a woman who had gotten carried away. This was a woman who had a color-coded plan and a subscription to a tabloid and the moral compass of a forest fire.

And she was his mate.

His wolf had recoiled the moment the math landed.

Rook: Our mate is insane.

Gav: I am aware.

The initial draw to her soul, the deeper current beneath the physical pull, was altered. Damaged. He could feel it the way a man felt a cracked rib: functional, but wrong. Every breath reminded him it was there.

He didn’t know if it was fixable or even if it was worth fixing.

Rook: I can still smell Serena.

Gav: Stop.

Rook: I can’t. Her scent is stronger than mate’s. That is a problem. I am in crisis.

Fated mate or not, he would not hurt Serena more than he already had. The kiss in the temple, the confession, had detonated his brotherhood with Dex and hurt her.

He wouldn’t hurt either of the more than he had. He would make this right.

If Dex would let him, and if she would still have him in her life as a friend, as a Gamma, as the man who cleaned blood off the floor and pretended it didn’t happen, he would take it. He would swallow the grief of wanting more and he would take what she could give him, because losing either of them entirely was a price he would not pay.

Rook: Dexmon will come around. And she is still ours to protect. The oath does not change.

The ancestors had been clear. A Fae princess and her protector reborn. Souls intertwined in this life as their first.

He would blame the kiss on heightened emotions and a draw to her that he mistook as love, but was actually an oath of protection. He would make this go away.

Protecting her did not require her mouth on his to be honored.

He looked at Dex holding her, at the way her body fit against his even when she was too angry to hug him back, and for the first time since the day he found out Dex claimed her, the ache in his chest wasn’t jealousy.

It was recognition.

She was where she was supposed to be.

Rook: Mark her.

Gav: No. How many times a day do I tell you that.

Rook: She’s sad. We take her from Dexmon and cheer mate up.

Gav: She’s not our mate, Rook.

He rubbed one hand down his face, breathed out through his nose, and watched the guards cuff Guinevere Ashford with silver-lined manacles.

✦✦✦

Xeon: Your cousin is an embarrassment to our bloodline.

Fin: I know.

Xeon: Our mate is hurt. We pick her up and bring her home now.

Fin: We can’t fix her hurt this time. Only Dexmon can.

Xeon: Good luck to that Beta. The redhead mate is angry.

Fin: I see that.

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