The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 432

Chapter 432: Thank Fuck There’s Wine

VIREMONT KEEP

Guinevere Ashford opened her eyes, assessed the handcuffs, assessed the chair, assessed the man sitting across from her, and thought: what fresh hell is this, and thank fuck there’s wine.

She blinked, taking in the scene. On the table was bread, cheese, dried meat, and fruit. The spread was generous. It was supposed to communicate hospitality but generally hospitality did not involve handcuffs.

Then again, who was she to judge.

Beside the food was a bottle of wine. Two glasses. Both empty. Waiting.

A man was sitting across from her.

He was older. Fifties, maybe sixties, with the kind of face that had been hardened by decades of decisions that other men would have lost sleep over and that this man had made before breakfast. His eyes were small, calculating, set deep beneath a brow that communicated permanent dissatisfaction with everything beneath it.

He was watching her wake up the way a man watches an investment mature.

Guinevere’s eyes moved past him and scanned the room. She had grown up in a family where reading a room was a survival skill and the reading happened before the greeting.

The furniture was eastern hardwood, a regional material that did not travel west because the trade routes between east and west Skardos had been disrupted for decades by a single family’s territorial control.

The wine was eastern vintage. She could tell from the bottle shape. Viremont’s vineyards produced a specific bottle with a narrow neck and a flared base, and the bottle on the table matched.

"Uncuff her."

The man’s voice was flat, carrying the specific register of authority that did not raise itself for emphasis because the authority was structural rather than performative. He did not look at the guard when he said it. He looked at Guinevere.

A guard stepped forward. The cuffs clicked open. Guinevere’s wrists were free.

She did not rub her wrists. She did not stretch. She did not perform relief or gratitude or fear or any of the responses that a woman waking up handcuffed should have.

She reached for the wine immediately with zero fucks. Her day had included a prison carriage, a shepherd named Bertram, a smoke-screen extraction, a mage sedation, and a chair with cuffs. Her priorities had been rearranged by the day into a hierarchy where wine occupied the top position and everything else could wait.

She poured a full glass. Lifted it. Drank.

If it was poisoned, she would deal with the poisoning after the first sip, because the first sip was non-negotiable and the poisoning was a secondary concern and the secondary concern could get in line behind Bertram’s sheep appeal and the rock that had assaulted her tailbone and every other indignity the universe had delivered in the last twelve hours.

The wine was good. Eastern vintage. Dry.

She set the glass down. Poured a second.

The man across from her watched the entire performance.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked.

Guinevere paused on the second glass. Her eyes moved to his face, to the decorative blades on the wall, and to a portrait behind his head.

"You are Alpha Viremont."

Reginald Viremont’s expression shifted by a fraction. The fraction was small, controlled, but visible to a woman who had spent her entire life reading the faces of powerful men for information they were trying to withhold. He was impressed. The impression was brief, filed, and replaced by the baseline assessment he had been wearing when she woke up.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify