The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 644

Chapter 644: Respect Thy Elders

"I’ve got you," Lucian whispered. To nobody. To her. To the matebond that was the cruelest gift any goddess had ever given. "I’ve got you, River. I’m here."

She couldn’t hear him. She would never hear him. The words existed in a corridor and died there, absorbed by stone that was warmer than the distance between them and colder than everything he felt.

Atlas’s voice came through the door again, carrying the full weight of a crown and a father.

"She is a princess because I made her one. The crown I placed on her head carries my authority, my blood, and my name. If this council has a problem with that, I invite the council to remember who built this chamber, who funds this chamber, and who can dissolve this chamber before the sun reaches the western wall."

The door opened.

Atlas walked out with River’s hand in his. The king’s grip was steady, certain, the hold of a man who had once said it is done with the weight of a decree and meant every syllable.

River walked beside him with tears on her face and her father’s hand around hers.

She passed Lucian.

She didn’t see him. Her eyes were down, her composure broken, her magic still radiating grief in waves that hit him at arm’s length with a force that should have dropped a lesser wolf. She walked three feet from the man whose matebond was screaming her name, and the distance between them was three feet and twenty years and an entire life’s worth of silence.

Lucian watched her go.

His gold eyes tracked her down the corridor until she turned the corner, and the matebond stretched between them like a wire pulled taut, and the wire vibrated with every step she took away from him, and the vibration was the specific frequency of a man watching the woman he loved walk into another man’s protection because another man’s protection was the only kind she knew existed.

Fin sat beside him on the corridor floor.

"You’re going to tell her," Fin said. The words came out as a statement, addressed to a man who existed ten thousand years before Fin was born, in a corridor Fin would never stand in, on a floor that had been dust for millennia. "Someday, you’re going to open your goddamn mouth and tell her."

Lucian didn’t hear him. Couldn’t hear him.

Someday was getting closer. And the silence was getting heavier. And the corridor was getting smaller. And the man on the floor was running out of walls to lean against.

✦✦✦

Tristan returned to the council without River.

Lucian returned with him. Back row. Arms crossed. Burns still visible on his forearms beneath rolled sleeves. The posture of a guest, the attention of a general.

"I will say this once more." Tristan’s voice had changed. The pleading was gone. The arguments were gone. What remained was a prince who had stopped asking and started informing. "I am taking one wife. She is River. I will never take a second."

"Your Highness—"

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