The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 617

Chapter 617: She Bled. Viremont Burns.

At thirty, her head lolled to the side and her eyes were open and vacant. Gone. Wherever she was, it was far from this square, far from this post, far from the man with the whip and the crowd that watched and the kingdom that had decided this was justice.

At thirty-eight, the man paused. Wiped his brow. Took a drink of water.

The casualness of it made Fin’s vision tunnel. The man was hydrating. Between lashes. He was treating this the way a laborer treats a midday break, the refreshment of a man with a physical job whose physical job was destroying a child’s back and whose thirst was the only discomfort he was experiencing.

"I will find you." Fin’s voice was quiet now. "I will find whatever’s left of you and I will make it wish it had never held a whip."

The promise was made to a man who couldn’t hear it. Fin meant every word with a conviction that guaranteed he would.

Resumed.

Thirty-nine. Forty.

The ropes were cut and she dropped face-first into the cobblestones. Her arms were useless at her sides. Her back was a landscape that Fin would have classified as a war crime if he’d seen it on a battlefield, the skin flayed in parallel lines that overlapped and crossed and wept, the tissue beneath exposed in places, the damage systematic and thorough and professional in a way that made the professionalism the most obscene part.

Fin dropped to his knees beside her.

His hands hovered over her back, shaking, unable to touch, unable to help, unable to do the one thing every cell in his body was commanding him to do. He could see the damage. He could count the lashes by their marks. He could smell the blood, or his mind was filling in what the memory wouldn’t provide, and the filling was worse because his imagination had military-grade accuracy.

"I’m here." He said it to a girl who was years and an entire lifetime away from hearing it. "I’m right here."

Nobody picked her up.

The man with the whip rolled it into a coil and tucked it under his arm and walked away the way a man walks away from a finished task.

Fin stayed on his knees beside her in the cobblestones. His jaw was locked so hard the tendons in his neck stood out like cables. His eyes were burning and the burning was not something he was going to name because naming it meant acknowledging that the Alpha King of Shadowclaw was on his knees in a memory, crying over a girl he hadn’t met yet, and the crying was the most honest thing he’d done in weeks.

This was his mate. This was the woman he’d told to get out. The woman whose composure he’d cracked. The woman whose silence he’d punished with his own.

The cobblestones around her were turning red. She lay there for a long time. The crowd watched her bleed out and did nothing. He watched her blood spread and counted the seconds nobody came. Thirty. Forty.

A minute went by. Then two. Five.

This was the kingdom Reginald Viremont had built. This was what his crown protected. A machine that processed children and called it order. Fin was going to dismantle it. Piece by piece. Stone by stone. If it took the rest of his life, the machine was coming apart. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

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