The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 373

Chapter 373: A Traitor Who Entertained Him In Bed

The window was small and narrow. The kind that existed in bathing chambers for ventilation, and the architect who had designed it had never once considered the possibility that a pregnant woman in silver burns would need to fit through it.

She crossed to it. Pushed it open. Cold air hit her face with the specific hostility of a winter night that had been waiting for exactly this moment to remind her that escaping a building was only step one and surviving the climate was step two.

She looked down.

Five stories.

The wall below the window was stone. Old stone, rough-cut, carrying the particular texture of masonry that had been exposed to weather for two centuries and had developed the kind of surface that was either excellent for climbing or excellent for dying, and the distinction depended entirely on the skill of the climber and the mercy of the gravity.

Agnes looked at the window. Looked at the five-story drop. Looked at the window again.

"This is my only option," she said to the empty bathing chamber. "This is genuinely my only option. I picked two locks, found a secret passage, navigated to a second guarded room, threw up in my kidnapper’s personal basin, and my reward is a window the size of a dinner plate five stories above the ground."

She looked down at her midsection.

"If you survive this, I will never deny you a single thing for the rest of your life. That is a binding verbal contract, witnessed by a basin and a window. Let’s go."

The window was a tight fit. She went feet-first, which was the only orientation that allowed her hips to clear the frame, and the process required a degree of contortion that would have impressed a circus performer and horrified a physician.

Her silver-burned wrists screamed as they took her weight on the sill. Her fingers found the first handhold: a gap between stones approximately one inch deep and four inches wide.

She eased out.

The wind hit her immediately. Cold, vicious, carrying the particular contempt that winter air reserved for people who voluntarily exited warm buildings through bathroom windows. Her cloak was gone, torn on a thorn in a forest that felt like it belonged to a different lifetime. Her dress was thin. Her fingers were already numb from the silver, and the cold was going to finish what the cuffs started.

She descended. One handhold at a time. One foothold at a time. Each movement methodical, tested, the patient downward progress of a woman who had been trained to scale walls since she was twelve and was applying that training in conditions her instructors had never anticipated.

Fourth story. Fine. The stone was cooperative. The gaps were consistent. Her body was light enough that the handholds supported her weight without complaint, and the darkness was dense enough that anyone looking up from the ground would see shadow rather than a woman clinging to a wall.

Third story. Less fine. The stone was smoother here, the gaps shallower, the footholds narrower. Her left foot slipped once. She caught herself on her fingertips, the sudden load transfer sending a jolt through her wrists that made the silver burns sing. She pressed her forehead against the cold stone and breathed.

"We are fine," she whispered to her midsection. "We are completely fine. This is controlled. This is calculated. I have done worse shit."

She hadn’t done worse shit. She was lying to a fetus, and the fetus couldn’t verify, which made it the safest audience she had ever had.

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