The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 412

Chapter 412: The Crown She Couldn’t Say Out Loud

DRAKENFELL — DEXMON’S QUARTERS

Serena made it through the door of Dex’s chambers before her body quit.

Her knees buckled two steps past the threshold, and she caught herself on the edge of the bed, lowering onto the mattress. She collapsed backward, arms spread, white hair fanning across the dark sheets, her breathing ragged and her body vibrating with the residual ache of fifteen shifts and forty-seven minutes of blade work and the kind of emotional exhaustion that lived in bones rather than muscles.

She stared at the ceiling. The ceiling stared back. The ceiling had no opinions about her day and she was grateful for its neutrality.

Dex closed the door behind him. He looked at her, splayed across his bed and immediately followed by movement because Dexmon Drakenfell did not assess problems without solving them and the problem was that his mate was broken and the solution was a bath.

He walked to the bathing chamber. She heard the water start. She heard him moving, the sounds of a man who knew his own space and was navigating it with purpose.

He came back. Stood over her. Looked down at the woman on his bed whose eyes were half-closed and whose body was trembling with a fine, persistent vibration that said the shifts had taken more than she had been willing to admit in the arena.

"You’re sore, baby."

"I’m alright," Serena said to the ceiling.

"You are lying to a man who can feel your body through a matebond, and the matebond is telling me you are the opposite of fine. Come here."

She didn’t move. Getting up required muscles and the muscles had filed a formal grievance.

Dex leaned down and kissed her. The kiss landed on her forehead first, then her temple, then the bridge of her nose, a trailing path that ended at the corner of her mouth. Each press was warm, unhurried, the specific tenderness of an alpha whose default was cocky and whose override was gentle and whose mate brought out the override with a reliability that would have embarrassed him if anyone else had been watching.

He slid one arm under her knees. The other went behind her shoulders. He lifted her off the bed with the casual, one-armed strength that made her feel weightless and the careful positioning that made her feel held, and the combination of weightless and held was the combination that undid Serena Frostborne every single time because she had spent six years carrying herself and the experience of being carried was still novel enough to make her chest ache.

He walked her to the bathing chamber. Steam was rising from the water, filling the room with warmth that hit her sore muscles like a promise. He lowered her in.

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