The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 129: She Big-Dicked The Queen. Your Move.

Dex closed the door behind him, and the silence in the private chamber told him everything he needed to know about what had been said before he arrived.

Tiberon stood at the window, hands clasped behind his back.

Bellatrix sat near the hearth, spine straight, face carved from ice. She spoke first.

"Your princess made quite the display."

Dex didn’t sit. He leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "My princess could set this room on fire and I’d hand her the match. What’s your point?"

Bellatrix’s nostrils flared. "She cried. In open court. During a treason trial. For the accused."

"She cried for a seamstress with a kid who’s about to lose her mother over a crime she didn’t commit. You’re right. What a monster."

"Cass is a woman who had poison in her possession and proximity to the Crown Princess’s wardrobe." Bellatrix turned her gaze on him fully. "She needs to understand that open displays of emotion in a treason case as such weakens the crown. She should know better. She is, after all, a princess."

Dex tilted his head, slow, the way Aegon did when he was deciding whether to bite.

"Oh," he said. "Now you acknowledge she’s a princess."

"I don’t give a damn what she is," Bellatrix said, her voice clipped. "I have only ever wanted you to have a strong ruler beside you. Someone who could match the weight of the crown. Agnes had potential."

From the window, Tiberon laughed.

It was a single sound, low and sharp, and it cut Bellatrix off mid-breath. He didn’t turn around. He clapped his hands once, the sound cracking through the room like a whip.

Bellatrix’s mouth pressed into a thin line.

Then she cut back in, because Bellatrix always cut back in.

"I said she had potential. Past tense. Until she decided to take things entirely too far. The whole thing was ridiculous and beneath this house. We should never have handed her over to Darkhowler."

Dex pushed off the wall. "You mean like when you tried to poison Serena?"

Bellatrix held his gaze for a long, dangerous moment. Then she lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug that somehow conveyed both aristocratic disdain and a total lack of remorse.

"I have been poisoning people since before you were born, Dexmon. If I had actually tried to poison your princess, we would not be having this conversation. She would be dead, and I would be having tea."

Dex stared at her.

Tiberon, still at the window, made a sound that might have been a second laugh.

✦✦✦

Serena turned and walked toward the private chamber. She didn’t look back.

Gav stood in the corridor, watching her go.

He’d found her on the floor. He’d made her laugh. He’d walked her through it until the gears started turning again, the way he always did. And now she was gone, armed with something he’d handed her, moving toward a fight he couldn’t follow her into.

The gods gave Dex a matebond. They gave Fin a second chance. They gave Gav a voice Serena trusted, and then asked him to use it to bring her back to someone else.

He did it. He did it well.

He always did. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

✦✦✦

Serena walked back into the private chamber without knocking.

Tiberon turned from the window. Dex looked up. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. What was pouring through their matebond made his wolf stir. Resolve, the cold, focused kind. And cold-blooded detachment that would rival his father’s.

Bellatrix looked up from her chair, one eyebrow raised.

"I need to speak with the Queen," Serena said. "Alone."

Her eyes were red but her voice was steady.

Dex straightened immediately. "Serena..."

Bellatrix looked at Serena the way one might look at a stain on an otherwise clean tablecloth.

"And why," she scoffed, "would I go anywhere with a princess who can’t handle her own emotions?"

Serena held her gaze.

"I asked for privacy as a courtesy to you. I have no problem doing it here."

Dex looked between them. Tiberon turned from the window for the first time since the recess began.

Bellatrix laughed. Then stopped abruptly, holding Serena’s gaze.

"Five seconds before I start," Serena said, zero fucks given.

"Please, you have no proof."

"The poisoning? No. But that’s blatantly obvious. I’m referring to something entirely else."

Serena held the silence like a weapon.

It registered.

Bellatrix stood abruptly, her chair scraping back against the stone.

"Fine."

She looked like a woman about to deliver a killing blow, but Serena had seen enough predators to know the difference between a display and the real thing.

Bellatrix crossed the room in four strides.

Serena didn’t move.

Bellatrix stopped. Her hand was on the door frame. She didn’t turn around, but her shoulders shifted. Barely.

The kind of adjustment a person makes when they realize the person behind them isn’t following, and the reason they aren’t following is because they don’t have to.

Two seconds passed.

Bellatrix grabbed Serena’s arm.

Dex took a step forward. Tiberon’s hand caught his arm. One look. Don’t.

Bellatrix moved fast through the corridor. Her heels struck the stone like punctuation. She turned left, then right, then pushed open a door to a small receiving room Serena had never been in.

The fireplace was cold and curtains were drawn. A room designed for conversations no one was supposed to hear.

Bellatrix hauled Serena inside and slammed the door.

She dropped Serena’s arm as if the skin were rotting, then marched to the nearest chair and sat. Legs crossed. Hands folded.

"What."

Not a question. A command.

"You poisoned my suit."

The words landed in the room like a blade on stone.

Bellatrix didn’t flinch or blink. She just sat there, perfectly composed, perfectly still, and let the accusation settle around her like smoke.

"What an extraordinary claim."

"Cass flushed the vial Agnes gave her. She never laced anything. But the suit was still poisoned, which means someone else got to it after she finished sewing it. Someone with access to the finishing room. A master key to every wardrobe in the keep. And the resources to put alchemical compounds in someone’s hands without ever touching it herself." Serena took a step closer. "That’s you."

Bellatrix uncrossed her legs. Slowly.

"Prove it," she said.

Serena tilted her head. Her eyes were still red. Her cheeks were still streaked. She looked like a girl who had been crying for an hour, which she had been.

But her voice was steady.

"I know about Gavriel."