The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 370

Chapter 370: Consort Title Within The Year (Over Her Dead Body)

The words landed on Agnes’s chest and stayed there, each one heavier than the last, the sentence constructing itself in her mind with the slow, deliberate precision of a building being erected on a foundation she hadn’t known existed.

Her jaw dropped.

"You cannot be serious."

"Oh, I am very serious." Reginald’s hands were still folded. His voice was still level. The calm of a man who had spent months engineering this outcome and was delivering the final result with the composure of a diplomat presenting terms. "The Emperor is married. His wife holds the formal title. But the Fae monarchy has a long tradition of consorts, and the consort title carries political weight that rivals the queen’s in practice if the consort is strategic enough to leverage it."

He paused. Let the architecture settle.

"You will play nice with his wife. You will learn the court. You will make yourself indispensable. If things go well, and they will, because you will make sure of it, the consort title follows. Within the year."

Agnes stared at her father. The stare was long, empty, the particular vacancy of a woman whose mind was processing a revelation so enormous that her face had run out of expressions and was defaulting to blank.

"I need eyes and ears in Orosia, Agnes. They are vital for our survival in the invasion that is coming. The Fae Emperor needs a son who is part Fae, part wolf. A hybrid heir who can legitimize his claim over the wolf territories he intends to conquer. You come from an Alpha bloodline and you have the training to navigate court politics." His voice dropped half a register. "You will be the most important person on two continents. This is the assignment you were built for."

"I refuse."

The words came out clean. No calculation. No half-truth. No tactical positioning. The raw, unfiltered response of a woman whose body had just rejected a future so completely that the rejection bypassed every layer of training between her instincts and her mouth.

Reginald’s hand moved.

The backhand was fast, practiced, the specific economy of motion that belonged to a man who had struck this face before and knew the angles. The impact connected with her left cheek and snapped her head sideways, the chain on her wrists going taut as her body followed the momentum, and the sound of the contact echoed off the study walls with the flat, final quality of a sentence being punctuated.

Agnes’s lip split. Blood welled, tracking down her chin in a thin line that caught the window light and held it.

She turned her head back slowly. The motion was controlled. Her eyes found her father’s face, and what lived in them was new, something Reginald had never seen from his daughter because he had spent twenty years making sure it never had a reason to surface.

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