The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 419

Chapter 419: Halvek Survived Thor. Not This.

Fifteen minutes later, Petra reached the training field perimeter.

She was intercepted by Captain Halvek before she made it past the equipment racks. The interception was efficient, direct, and carried the energy of a man who had been expecting a second incursion and had positioned himself accordingly.

"Can I help you?" Halvek asked, and the question was polite in the way that military questions are polite, which was to say, the politeness was structural rather than sincere.

"My apologies, Captain." Petra clasped her hands in front of her with the composed deference of a woman who had been delivering unwelcome messages on behalf of Bellatrix Drakenfell for long enough to develop a professional immunity to the reactions they generated. "The queen has sent me for the blue dragon, Avalon. For Onyx. She believes they are companions and would benefit from—"

"What do you mean?"

The question was sharper than Halvek had intended. His clipboard hand tightened. The tightening was the physical manifestation of a captain who had just lost one juvenile dragon to a royal kidnapping and was watching the second one get extracted in real time and whose training schedule was being dismantled by a woman with a velvet cushion and a satchel full of scale oil.

Petra flinched. The flinch was brief, professional, the flinch of a woman recalibrating her delivery in response to a tone that suggested the conversation was going poorly.

"She just mindlinked me again, Captain." Petra’s voice was careful, measured, navigating the narrow corridor between the queen’s expectations and the captain’s authority with the precision of a woman whose job depended on occupying that corridor successfully. "I will bring him back after his massage."

"His what?"

"Massage, Captain. Scale oil. The queen has a regimen."

Halvek stared at Petra. Petra stared at Halvek. The staring lasted four seconds, which was long enough for Halvek to process the sentence "I will bring him back after his massage" and arrive at the conclusion that the sentence was real and the conclusion was his problem.

Before Halvek could respond, a sound erupted from the eastern edge of the field.

The sound was dramatic. The sound was sustained. The sound was the specific, operatic wail of a juvenile dragon who had been watching events unfold with the focused attention of a creature who understood that other dragons were leaving the training field and the leaving was an activity he was being excluded from, and the exclusion was unacceptable.

Wrex, Guinevere Ashford’s bonded dragon, was lying flat on the ground.

Fully flat. Legs splayed. Wings spread. Chin pressed against the dirt. His body was arranged in the precise configuration of a dragon performing a dramatic collapse, which was different from an actual collapse in the way that a theatrical faint is different from a medical emergency, and the difference was visible to every handler on the field because the dragon’s one visible eye was open and tracking Halvek with the sharp awareness of a creature that was acting and knew it was acting and was committed to the performance regardless.

The wailing intensified. The volume was extraordinary, filling the training field with a sound that was equal parts foghorn and heartbreak, the specific acoustic signature of a dragon whose bonded was in a prison cell and whose peers were being carried away by queens and whose life was an unending sequence of formation drills and loneliness and nobody understood her suffering.

Halvek’s head turned.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify