The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 323

Chapter 323: And Then There Were Three

DRAKENFELL - GAMMA QUARTERS - THIRTY MINUTES BEFORE EXECUTION

The castle was empty in the way castles are empty when the living go to watch the dying, and Serena Drakenfell was the only person left behind.

Gav’s breathing was ragged. Shallow, uneven pulls of air that sounded like they were being negotiated rather than taken, each inhale a concession his body grudgingly allowed before the next exhale tried to be the last.

Serena sat on the edge of the bed, her hand wrapped around his. His fingers were cold. They had been cold for hours, and she had been holding them for hours, and the warmth she was trying to push into him through her grip was accomplishing nothing and she refused to stop.

Dex had asked her point-blank before he left.

"Please stay here, baby. Don’t watch it," he had said, and the words carried zero of his usual wit, zero deflection, zero of the cocky edge that made everything he said sound like a dare. He was asking her as a man, and she had heard the reason beneath the request before Maelor’s name had entered the sentence.

Watching Guinevere Ashford die would break something inside her, and the breaking would light a signal fire for the most dangerous man alive.

She understood and agreed. She also wanted to stay because Gavriel was dying in a bed and leaving him alone while the rest of the castle watched his fated mate’s execution was a cruelty she was incapable of committing.

Dex had known that too. Through their matebond, she had felt the truth he carried out the door with him: he didn’t want to leave Gav either. The emotion had moved through her chest in a single, sharp pulse, grief and loyalty tangled together in a knot that neither of them could untie, and then he had kissed her forehead and walked away because the Crown Prince of Drakenfell had charges to witness and a sentence to enforce, and the cost of the crown was paid in rooms you had to enter while the people you loved were in rooms you couldn’t be.

Elara was there. Hale was there. Fin was there. Alaric, Hyran, Tiberon, Bellatrix. Every person who mattered was standing in a courtyard watching a woman die.

Serena squeezed Gav’s hand. His fingers gave nothing back.

"You’re going to be fine, Gav," she said, because the silence was worse than a lie.

The fire cracked once in the hearth. The shadows shifted. His chest rose. Fell.

Then it stopped.

The absence of motion was louder than any sound the room had ever held. His chest, which had been fighting for every breath since she sat down, went still. Flat. The ragged, uneven rhythm that had been her only proof of life for the last six hours ceased with the quiet finality of a machine being switched off.

"Gav?"

Her voice cracked on his name. She leaned forward, free hand pressing against his chest, feeling for the rise, the fall, anything.

Still.

She moved her fingers to his neck. Pressed them against the spot beneath his jaw where a pulse lived. Held.

The silence pressed back.

"No." Her composure was disintegrating because the man under her fingers had no heartbeat and the room was empty and every person who could help was watching a woman die in a courtyard.

"No, no, no. You were supposed to have another day. No."

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