The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 347

Chapter 347: She Begged The Goddess

Tristan made it four steps past the chamber doors before his knees hit the stone.

A dark vein crawled up the side of his neck, the corruption rooting itself beneath his skin, branching at his jaw, forking towards his ear.

He fell to his side, flat on the floor as his body seized.

His eyes rolled. His hands clawed at the stone, and the magic that lived in his blood, the Fae power that had defined his lineage for a thousand years, fought. Green light erupted from his palms in jagged, uncontrolled bursts that scorched the walls and shattered a window fifteen feet away.

"Tristan!"

River sprinted around the corner, her eyes still red, her face still carrying the grief of being called something less than a daughter. The grief evaporated the instant she saw him on the floor.

"Oh gods."

She dropped beside him. Her hands found his face, turned it toward her, and the sound she made when she saw the dark veins branching across his jaw was a sound that had no name in any language and belonged to every language at once.

"Tristan. Look at me. Open your eyes."

His eyes opened. The green was fading. The irises were clouding, the color draining outward from the pupils as if the darkness crawling through his veins was reaching for the last bright thing left in him.

"River." His voice was wrong. Thin. Scraped hollow. "Something is wrong."

"I know. I see it. Stay with me."

She screamed for the healers. The scream echoed through every corridor in the palace, and the quality of it, the particular frequency of a woman watching the man she loved die on a stone floor, brought six Fae healers running before the echo finished.

✦✦✦

TRISTAN’S QUARTERS

They gave him a day.

The healers worked through the afternoon and into the evening, their hands glowing with gold Fae magic that fought the dark veins the way a candle fights a storm: valiantly, visibly, and with diminishing returns. The corruption was deep. It had been building for weeks, and the blood magic accelerating it had threaded so thoroughly into Tristan’s soul that removing it without killing him was impossible.

Time sped up, and Gavriel Sterling watched a prince die at double speed.

Nosebleeds that started without warning and refused to stop. Blackouts that lasted seconds, then minutes, then longer. Moments where Tristan’s magic detonated sideways, scorching bedsheets, cracking the stone beneath his bed, filling the room with the smell of ozone and something darker, something rotting, the scent of Fae power being consumed from the inside.

River stayed. She held his hand through every seizure, every blackout, every moment where his body convulsed and his magic tried to tear through the walls. The healers told her to leave. She refused with a look that ended the conversation before it started.

Atlas stayed. The Fae King sat in the chair beside the window, his posture carrying the weight of a father watching his son die and understanding, with the strategic mind that had held a kingdom for thirty years, that the dying was political in a way that couldn’t be solved by holding a hand.

The head healer delivered the assessment.

"The fated tie between the prince and Vesper Willow has been tainted by his refusal to accept her. He has a day. Perhaps less."

River’s hand tightened around Tristan’s. Her knuckles went white.

Atlas said nothing. The nothing was louder than anything the healer had said.

✦✦✦

TEMPLE OF THE MOON GODDESS

River went alone.

TRISTAN’S CHAMBERS

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