The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 157: The Fae Queen’s Abs Are Not The Point

"Don’t tell me she is fine. She was bleeding and collapsed." Fin’s jaw was tight. His eyes flickered gold and he didn’t bother forcing them back. "I watched it happen and I FELT every second of it through our matebond."

He turned towards Aeron and Hyran. "I am standing on the wrong side of a closed portal. FIX. THAT."

Aeron opened his mouth to respond, but the sound that came from the stairwell made every person in the chamber turn.

It was a shriek. High-pitched, indignant, and followed immediately by the unmistakable scrape of claws against stone.

Queen Bellatrix descended the final steps into the underground chamber with Onyx draped across both of her arms like an oversized, scaly infant.

The baby dragon had grown noticeably since the last time Fin had seen him, and his tail curled around Bellatrix’s waist in a way that suggested he was completely comfortable doing that and had absolutely no intention of ever being put down again.

The shriek had been hers. Onyx’s tail had snagged one of the ancient sconces on the way down the narrow stairwell, ripping it clean off the wall.

Bellatrix was staring at the bent metal on the steps behind her with the expression of a woman who had been pushed to the outermost edge of her patience approximately twenty-four hours ago and had been free-falling past it ever since.

"This creature," she said, her voice trembling, "has not let go of me. If anyone tells Tiberon that I sang to a baby dragon at three in the morning, I will have you sealed inside this chamber permanently."

She looked down at Onyx, who was purring against her chest with his face tucked into the crook of her elbow, completely unbothered by her tone or the damp chill of the underground air.

"He also," she continued, quieter now, as though she were confessing something deeply shameful, "Cries if I leave the room."

Gavriel, who had been watching this entire display with the barely contained delight of a man witnessing a miracle, tilted his head. "The fact that he loves you is genuinely unprecedented."

"Of course he loves me. That is not the point," Bellatrix snapped. "Someone needs to come collect their dragon before I lose what remains of my composure."

"With respect," Gavriel said, grinning so wide it bordered on reckless, "it looks like he already collected you."

Bellatrix’s nostrils flared. Onyx chose that exact moment to lift his head, chirp once, and lick the side of her jaw with a small, warm tongue.

Her eye twitched.

"I am going to pretend that didn’t happen," she said. "And so is everyone in this chamber."

Onyx then turned his head toward Fin, and every ounce of contentment drained from his small body in an instant.

His gold eyes went wide, his wings snapped open, and he launched himself out of Bellatrix’s arms with a wail so loud and so desperate that it echoed off the stone walls of the chamber and bounced across the surface of the lake.

He hit Fin square in the chest.

Fin staggered back two full steps as sixty-some pounds of baby dragon slammed into him, wings folding tight around his torso, tail lashing once and then wrapping around his ribs so hard Fin could feel each individual scale.

Onyx buried his face under Fin’s chin and made a sound that wasn’t any of the noises a dragon was supposed to make. It was a whimper cry, shaking and broken, the kind of sound that only comes from something small that has been waiting too long for someone to come back.

Fin stopped moving.

His hand came up slowly, still trembling from the adrenaline of watching Serena collapse through a closing portal, and rested on the back of Onyx’s neck.

The dragon was shaking against him, his small body vibrating with the force of his relief, and every few seconds he would press his face harder into Fin’s throat as though he were checking that Fin was real, that he was solid, that he wasn’t going to disappear again.

"I’m here," Fin said, his voice rough and cracked at the edges. "I know. I’m sorry I left. I won’t do it again."

Onyx pressed closer, and the sound he made next was so clearly a demand for that to be a promise that Fin’s throat tightened around words he couldn’t get out.

Xeon: The dragon has better instincts than you do. He holds on. You let her go and walked through a portal. Learn from the lizard.

Bellatrix watched from the bottom of the stairwell, her arms now empty, her gown shredded in four different places, her hair falling out of its pins on one side. She looked down at the claw marks on her forearms, then back at the dragon who had just abandoned her without a backward glance.

"Typical," she muttered.

But she didn’t leave. Her expression softened for half a second but no one was stupid enough to mention it.

✦✦✦

"Halt!" a Fae guard called before Serena could enter the palace.

Give to get trust. Smart. That was clearly working for her.

Serena stopped.

Multiple guards swarmed. But then froze for a split second when they saw her. She didn’t move. She could have or channeled flame if she wanted. But she was silent

"State your business here," a commander called.

"I have come to seek counsel with the High General," Serena answered. "I come in peace."

The commander motioned to his Fae soldiers. "If you wish to have counsel, then you will be cuffed."

He waited for her response.

Interesting, she thought to herself.

"Then I shall be cuffed, for I have nothing to hide," she said, not flinching. She held out her wrists. It was ironic because she could melt the cuffs off but they didn’t need to know that. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

The warrior hesitated, but put cuffs on her.

Serena could feel his emotions and he didn’t want to. Not like a matebond, but fae energy was so dependent on emotion.

The cuffs were magic suppressing and silver. Also interesting. Serena felt the silver burn into her skin but she didn’t flinch.

She was led to the throne room, with her head held high. Not unkind, but not afraid. The silver was still burning into her wrists, and she let it.

The pain gave her something to focus on that wasn’t the fact that she was a wolf standing alone in the heart of a fae kingdom with no plan beyond the stubborn, irrational hope that decency might still mean something on the other side of a war.

It was enormous, open on three sides to the sky, with walls of white marble that stretched so high they disappeared into canopies of vines and flowering trees.

Pools of clear, turquoise water cut through the floor in winding channels, their surfaces scattered with white petals that drifted lazily in a current she couldn’t see the source of.

Fae courtiers reclined on low, cushioned platforms draped in silk the color of persimmon and gold, their conversations a hum that blended with the sound of stringed instruments.

Giant leaves, fanned slowly above the raised dais at the far end of the room, moved in perfect synchronization.

And at the center, on a throne carved from white marble, sat the High General Fae King.

People froze, mid-conversation, mid-laugh, mid-drink, their eyes finding her one by one with expressions that landed somewhere between curiosity and caution.

They weren’t sure what she was. Or who she was. But the crown on her head and the way she carried herself told them she was not someone who had wandered in by accident.

She stopped at the base of the dais, dipped respectfully, and spoke fluently in High Orosian. "King Kaelith, High General of the Velanori Isles."

The throne room went silent. The music stopped. Every pair of eyes in the room locked onto her, because a woman had just addressed their king by name, in their language, without an accent or stumble.

King Kaelith leaned forward on his throne, his golden eyes narrowing. He laughed, a low, rich sound that rolled through the marble chamber like distant thunder, and when he spoke, it was in High Orosian as well.

"You speak the old tongue and wear a Fae crown." He tilted his head, studying her the way a collector studies something he hasn’t decided whether to acquire or destroy. "You are not what you appear to be. Neither am I."

A beautiful woman stepped out from behind the silk curtains to the left of the dais. She was wearing a short skirt that sat low on her hips, her midriff bare, her cleavage unapologetic, and none of it was for show. Every inch of exposed skin revealed muscle that had been carved by combat, not vanity.

She was stunning. She was also, without question, deadly.

"I do not grant audiences," King Kaelith continued. "I grant opportunities. Defeat my queen and you will have earned one."

"Am I to win cuffed?" Serena asked in High Orosian.

The king didn’t answer.

The woman unsheathed double blades from the harness across her back and stormed toward Serena, her bare feet silent on the marble, her expression flat and focused.

Serena sighed. She had tried to give trust to get it. This was clearly a trap designed to force her to reveal her power. The question was whether she took the bait or held.

The woman storming towards her didn’t give her an option. She moved to kill, blades slicing through the air where Serena’s neck would have been half a second earlier.

Serena moved out of the way, channeling flame. Her cuffs glowed white, then orange, then dissolved into twin pools of molten metal on the marble floor, hissing and spitting against the stone.