The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 314

Chapter 314: Whatever You’re Thinking, Stop

Dex had never been the obstacle before. He had been the solution, the shield, the man who stood between Serena and whatever was trying to reach her. In approximately ninety seconds, a Fae mage with mismatched eyes was going to tell him that his love was the thing putting her in danger, and the sentence was going to rearrange his understanding of himself.

Alaric’s study smelled like antiseptic and old parchment, and it was the only room in Drakenfell where the healer’s authority outranked the Crown’s.

Dex had carried Serena here because it was closer than their chambers and because Hyran had arrived at the corridor intersection before he reached the staircase.

Serena was unconscious in his arms. His mark on her neck was still flushed, the venom holding her under with the particular depth of an Alpha claim delivered at full power. Her breathing was steady. Her face was slack. She looked peaceful in a way that made his chest ache, because the last expression she had worn while conscious was grief, and the contrast was brutal.

Hyran stood beside Alaric’s desk, arms folded, studying Dex with the focused intensity of a mage who had just been told something extraordinary and was resisting the urge to take notes.

Alaric sat on his desk, flask in hand, assessing.

"You glowed gold and surrounded you both in it," Alaric repeated.

"Yes."

"From your own core. Your own magic."

"Yes."

Alaric looked at Hyran. Both of them wore expressions that had no business being on the faces of men attending to an unconscious woman and a rattled prince. The look was identical: wide-eyed, bright, the specific excitement of professionals encountering a phenomenon they had theorized about and never witnessed.

Hyran’s mouth opened.

"Whatever you both are thinking," Dex said, "I’m going to need you to stop."

"Marking her was actually smart," Hyran offered, undeterred. "The venom knocked her unconscious, which severed the active emotional transmission through the tether. If the Emperor was reading her emotional state in real time, and we believe he was, your mark functioned as an emergency blackout. You shut the signal off at the source."

Dex gave him the flattest look a man holding his unconscious wife had ever produced. "I didn’t plan it, Hyran. I am thrilled that it was strategically sound. I would also like everyone in this room to acknowledge that I did it on instinct while a dead-eyed Emperor was reaching for her face."

"Acknowledged," Hyran said. "Still smart."

"Thank you. I feel so validated."

The portal opened three feet from Alaric’s desk.

Maelor stepped through, robes immaculate, expression carrying the specific urgency of a man who had been summoned from another kingdom and had chosen to look unbothered about it. His mismatched eyes swept the room once, found Serena in Dex’s arms, and dismissed every other person present.

He crossed to her without a word. His hands came up, palms glowing emerald, and he placed his fingers against her forehead.

Green magic flowed from his fingertips into her skin, sinking beneath the surface. The magic reached for the cloak he had placed days ago, searching for the structure, assessing the damage.

Dex’s body ignited gold.

The reaction was instantaneous, involuntary, and violent. Gold light erupted from his skin, flooding outward from every point of contact with Serena, wrapping around her in a shell of protective power that hit Maelor’s emerald magic and shoved it backward like a door slammed in someone’s face.

Maelor pulled his hands back. His emerald light sputtered and died.

He looked at Dex.

"Whatever it is you are doing," Maelor said, staring at his own extinguished hands as though they had personally betrayed him, "I am going to need you to stop."

Dex looked down at his own arms. Gold light was crawling across his skin, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat, coating Serena in a protective layer that his conscious mind had zero control over.

"How do I stop it?"

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