The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 504

Chapter 504: Little Guys Doing Their Best

Gavriel was murdering the same goddamn skeleton for the fourth time and the skeleton was acting like it had a lifetime membership to the "fuck you, I get back up" club. Either the fucker was deaf, pure stubborn, or running on some ancient fuck-up warranty that covered unlimited reassembly.

"Shit!"

He fought like a beast to reach her, muscles straining, magic flaring, but they kept reforming.

The corridor was a fucking factory and the factory’s product was "things between Gavriel and Serena" and the production rate was exceeding his ability to destroy.

The runes overhead flared violently. Sections of stone lit in pulsing slabs of light, and suddenly they weren’t looking at carvings anymore.

They were looking at echoes of the dead. Moments of dying replaying themselves in the walls like projections burned into reality.

Wolves screaming. Vampires pouring over them like locusts. Bodies ripping open, then reforming, only to be torn apart again. Shadows dragging wolves into the stone as if the wall itself were hungry. The dying was on loop. Eternal.

A ten-thousand-year screensaver of slaughter that the corridor had been playing to an empty audience until now.

"WHAT THE FLYING SHIT IS THIS PLACE!"

The corridor did not answer. The corridor was busy being the worst room Gavriel had ever entered, and he had been in Bellatrix’s parlor.

The echoes didn’t stay contained to the walls. Of course they didn’t.

Hands reached out of the scenes, tangible, clawing at his clothes, his hair, his skin, trying to drag Gavriel into a death already lived. He had been popular his entire life. This was the first time the popularity was going to kill him.

Rook: This is a memory trap. The corridor is replaying every death it recorded.

Gavriel: How the fuck do you know that?

Rook: I am very smart, Gavriel. Do NOT let them pull you in.

Gavriel: Oh thank the gods you said something. I was just about to walk into the ghost murder replay and introduce myself.

Rook: You are welcome. I accept apologies in the form of steak

Gavriel: We are in a death corridor and you are negotiating compensation.

Rook: A wolf has priorities. Mate first. Steak second. Both are non-negotiable.

The world lurched. The lurching was the corridor’s way of saying ’you thought this was bad, watch this.’ He was yanked sideways and hurled through a portal depositing him into an identical corridor that mindfucked him in every way possible except he had company in this one.

A literal slaughter was occurring around him. Vampires were tearing into wolves, shifted and human. Fangs ripped throats open. Claws split ribcages. Men screamed as they were ripped apart, only for their bodies to knit back together, just enough to be killed again.

Gavriel had seen a lot of shit in his life. He had seen a coma, a past life, and a giant mural of Dexmon in the last week alone. This shit took the cake and set it on fire. This was the echo nightmare from hell and he was inside it.

A ten thousand years of recorded massacre playing on repeat and he had just been thrown into the projection like a man shoved through a movie screen into the film.

"No," Gavriel snarled.

The fighting stopped. Every vampire turned to look at him in the nightmare as if they could hear him.

Whoops.

A vampire lunged, grabbing his leg with clawed fingers. Blood spilled hot down his calf.

Real.

The pain was real. The blood was real.

The echo responded. Every vampire in the memory lunged towards him simultaneously, their recorded hunger redirecting to the one thing in this corridor that was fresh, alive, and bleeding.

Rook: We are bleeding.

Gavriel: I know we are bleeding.

Rook: Bleeding attracts vampires.

Gavriel: NO SHIT.

Rook: Stop bleeding.

Gavriel: Oh, wonderful idea. Let me turn off the blood. Where’s the goddamn faucet, Rook?

"FRESH BLOOD! DON’T LET HIM LEAVE!" one vampire roared.

Gold magic detonated from his hands, instinct taking over. He blasted the vampires back in a violent wave, bodies disintegrating into ash and shadow. They screamed as they burned, but more poured in, relentless.

Magic hit multiple at once, obliterating them.

The blast was satisfying in a way that nothing else today had been. The vampires screamed and stayed the fuck down. For the first time in this entire damn corridor, something Gavriel did produced a result that lasted longer than four seconds.

Rook: You did the thing.

Gavriel: I DID THE THING.

Rook: Do it again.

Gavriel: I DON’T KNOW HOW I DID IT THE FIRST TIME.

Rook: Your hands are still glowing. Just aim them at things. This is not complicated.

Gavriel: Aiming. Why is nothing coming out.

Rook: Find the gold inside you. Gold. Your magic is GOLD.

Gavriel: That is the most unhelpful thing possible.

Rook: It is because she is—

Gavriel: If you say MATE right now I will lose my MIND and I need my MIND because my MIND is the only thing keeping me ALIVE in a DEATH ECHO full of VAMPIRES!

Rook: I was going to say your form is sloppy.

Gavriel: You were not.

Rook: Okay, fine. MATE.

Rook: We run. Stop trying. This is embarrassing.

Gavriel: The wolf skeletons weren’t that bad. Little guys. Doing their best.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify