The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 343

Chapter 343: What The Fuck Are You Doing

Gavriel’s heart was still slamming against his ribs when the answer walked through him.

River hadn’t been looking at him.

She had been looking at the doorway behind him, where Vesper now stood, and the scream that had torn from her throat was the scream of a woman mid-orgasm watching the woman who had destroyed her wedding walk into her bathing chamber on her wedding night.

Vesper passed through Gavriel’s body the way a hand passes through steam, her form displacing nothing, her presence registering as a cold pulse that walked through his back and out of his chest.

Red dress. Dark hair. The specific posture of a woman who had located the room she was looking for and intended to make it everyone’s problem.

Tristan was still inside River when his brain caught up. His body was locked in the final pulses of a climax that his nervous system refused to release, and the transition from ecstasy to fury was so violent his vision split. He pulled out of her abruptly, the motion graceless and urgent, and reached for the folded towel on the floor beside the basin.

He handed it to River without looking away from Vesper. River took it, wrapping it around herself, her hands shaking so badly the fabric nearly slipped twice before she secured it. She stood in the bath, trembling, wet, flushed, her pink eyes enormous and filling fast.

Tristan grabbed a second towel, wrapped it around his waist, transitioning from lover to executioner.

He stepped out of the bath. Water pooled on the marble beneath his feet. His green eyes were molten, carrying a heat that had nothing to do with the woman he had just been inside and everything to do with the woman standing in his doorway.

"What the fuck are you doing."

The words came out low. Dangerous. The specific register of a man whose rage had gone past shouting and arrived at the temperature where voices drop and consequences multiply.

Vesper’s chin lifted. Her eyes moved from Tristan to River, and the assessment was thorough, clinical, carrying a tone of cruelty. As if that reaction was exactly what she wanted.

"You are desecrating our sacred bond," she stated. Her tone was sure, and it was clear she truly believed every word she was saying. "The Gods granted you a fated mate, and you are inside another woman on the night you were supposed to be consecrating our union."

River’s hand flew to her mouth.

The sound she made was small and broken and buried behind her fingers, and Gavriel, still standing invisible in the corner, felt the grief hit him through a channel that had no business being open. Fresh tears tracked down her face, and the sight of them on a woman who was still trembling from an orgasm she had been pulled out of was a particular kind of cruelty that made Gavriel’s fists clench at his sides.

Tristan moved between River and Vesper’s line of sight, putting his body in the gap the way a wall fills a breach.

"You are supposed to be in a cell. You have now interrupted my wedding, upset my wife, and walked into my private chambers on my wedding night uninvited." His voice carried cold authority. He had stopped negotiating and started sentencing. "I am going to end this. Right now. Tonight."

"Tristan, you cannot possibly—"

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify