The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 345

Chapter 345: Blood Or Not, She Was His Daughter

Gavriel Sterling had thought the woman in the red dress was the worst part. He was wrong. The worst part was nine old men in a council chamber.

"I have a wife," Tristan said, his voice dropping to a register that preceded very bad decisions.

"You have a chosen bond," Elder Vareth corrected. "The Moon Goddess has provided a fated one, which, in our culture, always outweigh the chosen. The solution is older than this council and well-established in precedent." He looked at Atlas as he spoke, the way a man looks at a king when he is about to deliver a recommendation he knows will be received with violence. "Take a second wife. Crown the fated tie, as the Moon Goddess intended. The chosen mate may retain her position in the household, with dignity, with respect, with the protections of her status. The fated bond is crowned. The alliance with General Willow is preserved. The dark magic recedes. The matter is resolved."

The cruelest thing about Elder Vareth’s proposal was that it made sense. Politically. Diplomatically. On paper, in a ledger, weighed against alliance and stability and the preservation of a kingdom. It made perfect sense.

The chamber was silent.

Then a sound came from the back of the room.

River was sitting in the last row. Gavriel hadn’t seen her when the vision opened, because she had made herself small, the way she had made herself small on a rock by a river before a boy with mud on his boots reached out his hand.

Her hand flew to her mouth.

The sound she made was involuntary. A breath pulled inward so sharply it was almost a gasp, caught behind her fingers, swallowed before it could become the thing it wanted to become. Her pink eyes went wide, and the color in them flickered, dimmed, the way a candle dims when the air pressure in the room changes.

Second wife. The words sat in the air and River received them the way she had received every blow in her life: quietly, with her hands over her mouth, trying to make herself invisible in a room full of people deciding her future without looking at her.

Atlas heard the sound. His head turned. The speed of the turn was immediate, the reflex of a father whose body was tuned to his daughter’s frequency the way a harp is tuned to a note, and the expression that crossed his face when he saw her would have ended the conversation on its own if the elders had been paying attention.

They were still looking at each other. Still congratulating themselves on the elegance of the solution.

Atlas stood.

The chair scraped against stone. The sound cut through the chamber with the finality of a door closing.

"My daughter," Atlas said, his voice booming like thunder, "will never be a second wife to any king. She is a princess of this realm and will have the crown afforded to her."

Elder Vareth, who had survived three kings by knowing when to speak and had apparently miscounted which king he was currently advising, spoke.

"With the deepest respect, Your Majesty, she is a princess by adoption. She is your chosen daughter, loved and valued, but the bloodline of the crown—"

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