The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 320

Chapter 320: Something Was Done To That Boy

Dex’s eyes went to Serena first. Her face was tear-streaked. Her composure was gone, replaced by the raw, unguarded expression of a woman watching a man she cared about die and having no magic, no portal, no ancient power that could stop it.

Then Dex’s eyes went to Gav. His best friend. His brother. The man he had punched in the jaw and poured whiskey for and still trusted like gravity. The man who loved his wife and had chosen to carry that silently because the alternative was losing both of them.

"He severed the matebond," Alaric said, without looking away from Gav.

"How long ago?" Fin asked.

"A few hours."

"What do you need?"

The healer straightened. He looked at Fin, then at Dex, and the expression on his face was the one that made Dex’s stomach drop, because Alaric Kestrel always had an answer.

The expression on his face right now was the absence of one.

"I have never seen this before," the healer said. "I have never heard of it. Matebond severance causes pain, nausea, disorientation. Documented cases describe it as debilitating for weeks, sometimes months."

He looked at Gav on the bed.

"What it doesn’t do is this. His vitals are crashing. The discoloration in his irises is spreading. His core temperature has dropped four degrees in thirty minutes. This is beyond matebond shock. This is organ-level failure from a source I cannot identify, because nothing in any text I have ever read describes a severed matebond killing the wolf who severed it."

The word hung in the room.

Killing.

Serena’s grip on Gav’s hand tightened. His fingers moved once against hers. Weak. Intentional.

"Hey." His voice was barely there, a whisper scraped from the bottom of a chest that was running out of reasons to keep breathing. His darkening eyes found Serena’s face. "Don’t look at me like that, Frostborne. I’ve survived worse. Probably."

"Name one thing," she whispered.

"Dex’s cooking."

"I can hear you," Dex said from the doorway.

"Good. Make sure it goes on the headstone."

Dex crossed the room. He stood beside Serena, looking down at the man on the bed, and his face did something that Gavriel Sterling was never supposed to see. It broke. For one unguarded second, Dexmon Drakenfell’s composure cracked wide open and the grief underneath was so total it could have filled the room.

Then it sealed. Fast. Rebuilt itself behind the jaw and the eyes and the particular set of his shoulders that communicated control.

But Gav had seen it. And the ghost of a smile that crossed his face was the saddest thing in the room.

"Don’t you dare cry over me, Drakenfell. I’ll haunt you."

"Shut up, Gavriel."

"Terrible last words, by the way. ’Shut up, Gavriel.’ Write something better."

"You’re going to write your own because you’re going to be alive to do it."

"Optimistic. I appreciate that. Wrong, but optimistic."

Elara looked at Fin. He was standing at the foot of the bed, arms at his sides, watching Gavriel with the expression of a king who had buried one person he loved and was watching the preparations for another.

"Both of you should leave," Alaric said to Serena and Elara. "Until I understand what’s happening, proximity to the patient is..."

"No," Serena answered.

"Absolutely no," Elara agreed.

Alaric looked at Dex. Dex looked at Serena.

Serena looked at Alaric with eyes that carried the full weight of every argument she was prepared to have and every authority she was prepared to defy.

"I am staying with him. You can work around me or through me. Those are the options."

"What she said," Elara added.

Alaric exhaled. He looked at the ceiling. He looked at his flask. He looked at the ceiling again.

ONE HOUR LATER

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