The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 326

Chapter 326: The Boy Who Ruled Time For A Nameless Girl

Past lives were supposed to be abstract. Theoretical. The kind of thing mages debated over wine and Hyran referenced in lectures nobody asked for. Gavriel Sterling watched himself and thought: that kid is going to be a problem.

The scene shifted.

King Atlas set his pen down and exhaled, realizing he had already lost this one three days ago.

"You should be aware that I have reached zero decisions regarding the girl. Do keep your expectations measured."

Tristan grinned. "Measured. Absolutely. Is she getting the room next to mine or across the hall? I have opinions on both."

Atlas looked up. "I said measured, Tristan."

"I heard you, Father. I am measuring. The room across the hall has better light, but the room next to mine has the advantage of proximity, which is important because she had a nightmare last night and Lucian and I handled it, but it would have been faster if she was closer."

"You handled a nightmare."

"Lucian howled. It was very comforting. She stopped crying within minutes."

"The wolf boy doesn’t have his wolf yet. How could he howl?"

"Easily. He’ll show you."

"At what hour was he howling in my palace?"

"The hour is irrelevant, Father. The results speak for themselves."

✦✦✦

The tour happened the following morning.

Tristan held River’s hand and walked her through the Fae palace like she was a new puppy.

"This is the great hall. Father sits there. I will sit there one day. You can sit wherever you want because you are with me."

River said nothing. She looked at the hall with the wide, cautious eyes of a child who had never been inside a building this clean and was afraid of touching things.

"This is the library. It has every scroll ever written. Lucian says that is an exaggeration but Lucian is wrong because I counted and there are more scrolls than I can count which means every scroll."

Lucian, trailing behind them with his hands in his pockets, said, "You counted to fourteen and gave up."

"Fourteen is a lot of scrolls, Lucian."

"This is the training yard. I will teach you to use a sword. Lucian will teach you to fight without one. Between us you will be unstoppable."

River looked at the training yard. Her pink eyes tracked the soldiers moving through drills, and something behind her expression recalibrated, the way a child’s face changes when they see something they have been afraid of and discover it exists in a context where it cannot hurt them.

She squeezed Tristan’s hand tighter.

He squeezed back.

"This is the kitchen. We have already stolen from it together and will continue to do so because that is what family does."

✦✦✦

Two weeks later, Tristan introduced her to the other children.

There were seven of them, sons and daughters of court officials, ranging in age from five to twelve, gathered in the courtyard for their afternoon lessons. Tristan positioned River behind his leg and addressed the group with the authority of a ten-year-old prince who understood social hierarchy on an instinctive level and intended to use it.

"This is River. She is with me. If anyone makes her cry, they answer to me. If they answer to me and I am unavailable, they answer to Lucian. If they answer to Lucian and Lucian is unavailable, they answer to my father, and nobody wants to answer to my father."

Seven children absorbed this information at varying speeds.

A boy named Caelen, the son of a court advisor, squinted at River. "She is very small."

"She is growing," Tristan corrected. "People do that. You should try it."

Caelen was, in fact, the shortest boy in the group, and the observation landed with the precision of a ten-year-old who knew where every nerve was and had chosen the right one.

"Does she talk?" a girl asked.

"When she wants to. She is selective. It is a quality I admire and am working on myself."

Lucian, behind him, let out a sound that communicated his assessment of that claim.

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