The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 346

Chapter 346: Cage Or Kill. Your Choice.

Tristan watched them go. His chest was a war.

Every instinct in his body screamed at him to follow her, to find her, to pull her into his arms and press his mouth against her hair and tell her that every elder in this room could burn and he would still choose her.

He stayed.

Because following her meant abandoning the fight, and abandoning the fight meant the elders would decide in his absence, and their decision would be the one he was standing here to prevent. His father would hold her. His father would say the right things. Tristan needed to end this.

"I will say this once more," Tristan said, and his voice had changed. The pleading was gone. The arguments were gone. What remained was the voice of a prince who had stopped asking and started informing. "I am taking one wife. She is River. We have been bonded in every way that matters. I will never take a second."

"Your Highness—"

"We abandoned the practice of multiple bondings centuries ago. I understand that every elder at this table remembers those centuries personally, but for the rest of us, the practice is dead. Do try to keep pace."

Elder Maren’s eyes narrowed. "How dare you imply—"

"That you’re old?" Tristan finished. "That is the word you are looking for, and yes, I am using it. You are old. Your traditions are older. Your suggestion that I take a second wife is the oldest thing in this room, and I include the furniture." He stepped closer to the table. "I am asking for the Severing Ceremony. Grant it. Vesper Willow can marry a man who wants her. I certainly do not qualify."

The eldest priestess rose.

She had been seated at the far end of the crescent, separate from the elders, her silence carrying the particular weight of a woman whose authority came from the divine rather than the political. Her robes were white. Her eyes were silver. Her voice, when it came, carried a resonance that filled the chamber without effort.

"It is against the will of the Moon Goddess," she said. "The fated bond is a sacred gift. Severing it is an act of defiance against the divine order. I am sorry, Tristan. Deeply. But this council cannot grant what you are asking."

The words landed across Tristan’s shoulders and stayed there.

"Then you are sentencing that woman to a life in the dungeons," Tristan said. "Where she cannot harm herself and where she remains away from me and away from my wife. I will keep her there as long as it takes."

Gavriel watched Tristan redirect the argument in real time, watched him take the council’s refusal and hand it back to them with consequences attached. You won’t free me? Fine. Then you own what I do next. The technique was Atlas. The fury was Tristan. The combination was devastating.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify