The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 251

Chapter 251: The Great Escape (Onyx Had A Plan)

"Hey," Fin said in the soft voice he only used with her.

"Hi." Her voice cracked on the single syllable.

He crossed the room and crouched in front of her chair, his hands finding her knees, his eyes level with hers.

"Come home with me. You’re destroying yourself in this room."

"I’m okay, Fin."

"No. You’re not. The matebond has been carrying your exhaustion and your grief, baby. I’m asking you to let me take some of it."

"I can’t leave him." The words came out immediately, reflexive, the automatic response of a woman who had already considered and rejected this option a hundred times.

"Alaric is here. Hyran is monitoring. Tiberon has a rotation in place. He is being cared for."

"I know he’s being cared for. I need to be here when he wakes up. If he wakes up..." She trailed off. The sentence died in her throat.

Fin pulled her off the chair and into his lap on the floor in a single motion. His arms locked around her, one hand on the back of her head, pressing her face into his neck.

He held her. The way he had held her before.

"Hey... it’s okay. I know, baby. That means I’m staying here then."

She pulled back enough to look at him. Her face was wrecked, blotched and swollen and streaked with tears. "You have a kingdom to run."

"I have a Beta and Gamma." His thumb swept under her eye, catching a tear she’d missed. "I’m staying, Serena. That is a decision I’ve already made. You don’t get to argue with it."

✦✦✦

Onyx executed the three-count intervals with a discipline that made the larger juveniles look like they were idiots. Thornton had even noted, privately and with visible reluctance, that the dragon’s spatial awareness was "exceptional for his developmental stage."

Thornton called the three-count. Onyx held. Two, three. Perfect.

On the release, every juvenile dragon stepped forward in formation.

Onyx stepped backward.

He took another step back, still facing forward, his gold eyes still locked on Thornton as if he were paying attention, his body language projecting obedience while his feet were doing the opposite.

By the fourth backward step, he was at the edge of the formation. By the sixth, he was behind the larger juvenile whose bulk blocked the handler’s line of sight.

Then he bolted.

He went low using the bigger dragon’s body as cover, and by the time the handler realized what had happened, Onyx was past the perimeter.

"He used a flanking maneuver," Handler Cole said, his voice equal parts horror and admiration. "He used the bigger dragon as concealment and executed a flanking maneuver. That is a third-year tactical exercise."

✦✦✦

The castle guards had been briefed. Tiberon Drakenfell had personally issued a memo after Onyx’s second corridor incursion, and when Tiberon Drakenfell issued a memo, the memo was followed with the precision of scripture.

The juvenile dragon designated Onyx is to be intercepted and returned to the Draken Forces training field upon entry to the castle.

The guard captain had positioned two men at the eastern service entrance, one at the main gate, and one at the kitchen corridor, which Onyx had used on day two with devastating effect.

The library window was latched. Onyx pressed his snout against the glass and made the keening noise. Inside, a mage-librarian looked up from a stack of scrolls and saw a baby dragon pressing its face against a window like a child outside a candy shop.

She opened the window because the alternative was watching him cry, and she had already survived one Onyx corridor incident this week and could not emotionally afford another.

Onyx squeezed through the opening, knocked an inkwell off a reading desk with his tail, skidded across the polished stone floor, and barreled into the corridor at speed.

Guard Matthias heard the claws before he saw the dragon. The sound was distinctive: rapid, clicking, percussive, the sound of sixty pounds of determination running on stone at a pace that suggested physics was a framework and gravity was a suggestion.

He braced himself.

Onyx rounded the corner, saw Matthias, and did not stop, going straight between the guard’s legs.

Matthias stumbled. His hand caught air where a dragon should have been. Behind him, Corin, who had been walking from the opposite direction carrying a stack of documents for the King’s study, saw Onyx coming and made the critical error of trying to block the corridor with his body.

Onyx went through Corin’s legs as well. Corin, who was taller than Matthias and therefore had more clearance, barely felt it. The documents, however, caught the updraft from Onyx’s wings and exploded into the air like a paper grenade.

"THE DRAGON IS LOOSE," Matthias called, which was information the corridor already possessed.

"I CAN SEE THAT," Corin responded, on his knees, gathering pages.

Onyx reached the double doors of the private corridors.

He sat in front of it. He stared at the door. He made the keening noise, high and thin and broken, the sound of a creature that had crossed a training field, executed a tactical flanking maneuver.

His claws scratched the base of the door. Once. Twice.

The sound was so small compared to everything that had preceded it. A baby dragon, scratching at a door, waiting to be let in to see a man who could not open it.

Serena opened the door.

She looked down. Onyx looked up. His gold eyes were enormous, watery, and aimed at her with the desperate sincerity of a creature who had broken every rule in the Draken Forces handbook to be here and was fully prepared to break several more if the door closed again.

"Oh, Onyx." Her voice broke.

He pushed past her legs, crossed the room, and climbed onto the bed with the scrambling urgency of an animal that had been separated from the thing it needed and had finally, finally found it.

He settled on Dexmon’s chest.

His small body rose and fell with Dex’s breathing. His chin pressed into Dex’s shoulder. His tail curled around Dex’s forearm. His wings tucked tight, covering as much of Dex’s torso as his sixty-pound body could manage.

His eyes closed.

Morholt looked at his clipboard: Tactical awareness: exceptional. Evasion skills: beyond developmental stage. Obedience: selective. Motivation: singular. Conclusion: this dragon is smarter than most cadets.

Recommend reassignment to royal guard detail. He is going to end up there regardless.

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