The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 296

Chapter 296: She Said Nothing While They Screamed

Maelor straightened and turned his palms over, studying them with the detached precision of a man cataloguing his own failure.

"The spikes are the anchor," he said, voice flat and clinical. "Dark Fae origin, threaded with parasitic magic designed to burrow. Every second they remain embedded, the corruption spreads deeper into the host." His mismatched eyes flicked to Hyran. "Your magic failed because you were trying to heal around an open wound still actively poisoning him. Mine failed for the same reason."

"So pull them out," Gav said.

"Bare contact with dark-forged material will necrotize flesh on touch." Maelor held up his own hands, where faint black veins had already bloomed across his palms.

Aeron looked at his own hands, then back at Maelor. "How do we extract them?"

"Barrier between skin and spike. Fabric. Leather. Anything." Maelor’s tone carried zero comfort. "And the removal will be the worst pain either of them has ever felt, so steel yourselves accordingly."

Gav was already moving. He tore a strip from the hem of his training suit, wrapped it twice around his right hand, and dropped to his knees beside Dex.

"Hold him down," Gav ordered.

Hyran pressed both palms flat against Dex’s shoulders. Aeron braced across his legs.

Gav gripped the first spike through the fabric, set his jaw, and wrenched it free.

The sound that left Dex was inhuman. His body arched so violently that Hyran’s arms shook holding him, and the scream tore from somewhere deeper than his chest, deeper than his lungs, ripped from the place where pain lived before language existed to name it. Blood sprayed across Gav’s forearm in a hot, dark arc.

Gav gave him zero recovery time, because recovery was a luxury they could lose him during. He grabbed the second spike and pulled with everything he had.

Dex screamed again. Raw. Shattered. The kind of sound no Alpha prince was ever supposed to make, the kind that told every wolf within earshot that their heir was dying and meant it.

The third spike was the deepest. Gav’s fingers slipped on the first attempt, the fabric already soaked through, and he had to re-grip with both hands and brace his boot against the stone beside Dex’s hip.

He pulled.

Dex’s body seized. His eyes rolled, and for one hideous second his back lifted fully off the stone while every muscle in his body locked rigid. The spike came free with a wet, sickening crack that echoed off the cavern walls and bounced across the surface of the lake.

Dex collapsed, his breathing threadbare and rattling.

"Fin." Aeron’s voice was rough, and he was already kneeling beside the Alpha King, tearing a strip from his own suit. "I need you on your stomach."

Fin’s dislocated shoulder hung useless at his side. He rolled with his good arm, and the movement alone drew a sound from his throat that he would have killed any man for witnessing.

Aeron wrapped his hand once. He gripped the first spike embedded in Fin’s shoulder, the one that had missed his heart by less than an inch.

"Do it," Fin said through his teeth.

Aeron pulled.

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