The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 235

Chapter 235: He Felt Every Lash On Her Back

Dexmon Drakenfell had been knocked unconscious exactly four times in his life. Twice in training. Once by his father’s fist. Once by Gavriel, which he’d never admit to.

He didn’t go under gently.

Whatever hit him, hit him like a door kicked off its hinges, and on the other side was someone else’s life.

The world inverted.

He didn’t fall into her memories so much as her memories swallowed him whole.

A crowd. Hundreds of people, packed into a cobblestone square framed by stone buildings draped in Viremont banners.

"By order of Lord Viremont, the slave known as Silverveil is hereby sentenced to forty lashes for her crime. Let every collar in this square remember what freedom costs. You run, you will be caught. There is no mercy."

Dex’s blood ran cold.

Then he heard it. The crack of leather on skin. Pain lanced through his own back in tandem. Followed by a sound that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

A little girl screamed.

He shoved through the crowd, but his hands passed through them like a ghost. Tethered to her memories, forced to watch.

She was fifteen. Maybe younger. Her wrists were bound to a wooden post in the center of the square. Her shirt was torn down the back, exposing a spine he could count every vertebra of.

A man stood behind her with a whip with the kind of calm that comes from repetition.

Crack.

Her body jerked against the post. A strangled cry tore from her throat, high and thin, bitten off at the end because she was trying and failing to hold it.

Dex’s hands shook. His jaw locked so hard his molars ground audible and his vision went red at the edges.

The whip came down again. Across the same spot. Her legs buckled and the ropes at her wrists were the only thing holding her upright. Blood ran in thin rivers down her back, pooling in the waistband.

A woman in the crowd turned away. A man pulled his daughter’s face into his hip so she couldn’t see.

Nobody stopped it.

CRACK.

Her scream cut off into a wet, choking gasp. Her head dropped forward, chin to chest. Her fingers twitched against the rope, reaching for purchase that wasn’t there.

Dex counted. He couldn’t stop himself. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. At twenty-two, she stopped screaming. Her body still flinched, the muscles involuntary, but the sound was gone. She had retreated behind a wall he recognized because he’d built versions of it himself.

At thirty, her head lolled to the side and her eyes were open but vacant. Gone. Wherever she was, it was far from this square.

At thirty-eight, the man paused. Wiped his brow. Took a drink of water.

Resumed.

Thirty-nine. Forty.

The ropes were cut and she dropped face first into the cobblestones, arms useless, back a landscape of flesh and muscle.

Nobody picked her up.

Dex was on his knees. He didn’t remember going down. He couldn’t breathe. His hands were on the ground, pressing into cobblestones that weren’t real, and every instinct in his body was screaming at him to pick her up and carry her out of this, and he couldn’t.

She lay in the dirt for a long time until Viremont left. Then a cloaked figure ran out sobbing.

A man ran out behind her, picking her up.

"Elara, boiled water and clean linen. Now."

✦✦✦

The whipping square vanished. What replaced it made him wish for it back.

A white-haired girl hung from the ceiling by her wrists, silver chains coiled around her torso.

Serena was sixteen, maybe seventeen.

She stared at the wall, tears falling.

"Aurelia, are you there? I’m so sorry."

The memory shifted. It looked like a few weeks but Dexmon wasn’t sure. She was curled up on the ground in the same windowless cell. Her cheekbones were sharper. Silver cuffs circled her wrists and a collar sat tight around her throat.

"Aurelia. Please don’t die on me too." Her voice cracked.

Dex fell to his knees next to her, his eyes burning. Serena had downplayed what happened to her wolf when she explained it to him. She never said she called for Aurelia every day.

"Why didn’t you tell me any of this?" he asked, knowing she couldn’t hear.

He reached for her, but his hands went straight through her like air.

"Baby, if I would have known you were out there, I would have burned this goddamn place to the ground to get you out."

The memory kept shifting as if time were showing him glimpses of each day. They alternated her from hanging by her wrists and her curled up on the stone floor. She was always wrapped in silver chains. A death sentence for wolves.

It was known that Viremont was the only kingdom with slaves and to still use silver on women. But most thought the silver punishments would still keep the woman working. On the wrists or a collar so others could see what would happen if they stepped out of line. Otherwise, it’d cost more to keep them alive.

The fact she survived it was a miracle. The time sequence stopped. Her cell door opened and a hooded figure entered. The man who saved her in the streets.

"Marxus?" Her voice came out weak.

✦✦✦

The scene shifted again, Serena lying on a bed looking better than she had in the cell. Elara stood next to her, eyes red.

Marxus entered. "Third time runners is execution, Serena. Are you sure?"

"What are they going to take from me? You can’t execute someone who stopped being alive a year ago."

Dex’s fingers were numb watching this. She didn’t sound like Serena at all. The fight was beaten out of this poor girl.

"I’m going with you. She won’t be caught a third time."

"Elara, you don’t have to. It’s dangerous."

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