The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 364

Chapter 364: The First Queen Of Wolves

Lucian Moon had been riding between the Northern Kingdom and Aelindris every week since the field.

But this time was different because he decided River was coming home with him.

His fated mate was disappearing by increments and he was done watching.

He found her in the wild garden, the one behind the library, the one where the flowers grew without permission and the trees did whatever they wanted.

She was sitting on the stone ledge. Alone. Her knees were pulled up. Her arms were wrapped around them. Her white hair was loose, falling around her face in a curtain that was doing the job her composure couldn’t: hiding the evidence. She was crying the way she always cried. Quiet. Stubborn. Fought against and lost.

Lucian didn’t announce himself. He crossed the garden in four strides, sat beside her on the ledge, and pulled her into his arms.

River stiffened for a fraction of a second. The warmth of him was steady and solid and carrying a quality that her grief recognized as safe, and the stiffness dissolved, and she let herself be held.

He didn’t say anything. He held her while she cried, and the silence between them was the silence of two people who had known each other since childhood and understood that words were sometimes the least useful thing a person could offer.

When the crying slowed, he helped her stand. "Walk with me."

They walked through the wild garden, past the wall where a boy had taught a girl to climb, past the formal gardens, past the library, down the path that led to the lower terraces where the sea wind was strong enough to carry the salt inland and the light was the particular gold that only existed in the hour before sunset.

Lucian stopped at the terrace wall. He leaned against it. His gold eyes moved to the horizon, then to her, then back to the horizon. The rhythm of a man building the courage to say something he had been holding for twenty years.

"Can I tell you something?"

River wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Of course."

"The truth is, I have been miserable for a long time." His voice was steady. "Because I fell in love with my best friend’s chosen tie. A girl I’ve known since we were children. A girl I found on a rock by a river when I was a boy, and I have been in love with her since that afternoon, and I have never said it aloud until right now."

River’s lips parted. Her pink eyes widened by a fraction, the specific fraction that separated surprise from shock, and the expression on her face was the expression of a woman hearing a truth that rearranged her understanding of a man she thought she already knew.

"And that girl," Lucian continued, and his voice dropped into a register that belonged to confessions and prayers, "I found out at her bonding ceremony, that she was my fated tie too. She had no idea."

The silence that followed had a heartbeat.

River stared at him. The wind moved her white hair across her face and she didn’t push it back. Her mind was running through memories, re-examining every interaction through a lens she hadn’t known existed, and the re-examination was changing the color of everything.

The stillness at sixteen, standing behind her in a courtyard, letting the reunion with Tristan happen with patience and warmth. The wolf who appeared in a dream she never told anyone about. The way he said her name. The way he had always said her name.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify