The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 146: She Took The Head Like A Champ

"We need to move. Someone probably heard the screaming," Serena hissed from outside the bathing chamber door.

"Which screaming? His, yours, mine, or the encore?"

"All of it, Elara."

"One second."

"We don’t have one second. We have negative seconds. We have a debt of seconds that we are currently accruing interest on."

"Just hold on."

Serena heard running water. Drawers opening and closing. Glass clinking against glass. Sounds that had absolutely no business being made by someone who had just witnessed a decapitation.

She crept to the bathing chamber door and peered inside.

Elara stood at the vanity, carefully applying eyeliner.

Serena’s jaw dropped.

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"What?" Elara didn’t look away from the mirror.

"What do you mean ’what’? You know what."

"We look like we’ve been running through tunnels and hiding in closets and witnessing accidental decapitations. If we’re going to infiltrate a fortress, we should at least look presentable." She said this as though she were explaining something to a child. A particularly slow child.

"Presentable? Elara, there’s a headless body ten feet away from us." Serena stared at her in disbelief. "I cannot believe you’re doing your makeup right now."

"I cannot believe you’re judging me right now. We all cope differently, Serena. Some of us scream. Some of us apply concealer. Neither is wrong."

"That’s meant for battle markings. Meant for his body," Serena snapped.

"And now, it’s meant for my face," Elara said unbothered. "He’s not using it. Consider it liberated."

She tilted her chin up to get the angle right. "Panicked, disheveled women draw attention. Put-together women with purpose do not."

"I have purpose. My purpose is to not die."

"Then sit down and let me fix your face."

"My face doesn’t need fixing."

Elara turned and her eyes gave Serena a Bellatrix-level up-and-down. "You have blood splatter on your cheek. Your hair looks like you lost a fight with a windstorm. And your eyes are so wild right now that you look like you’re about to commit a murder, not solve one."

Serena opened her mouth to argue.

"Two minutes," Elara cut her off before a word could get out. "That’s all I need."

Elara grabbed her arm and pulled her onto the vanity stool. Serena went, because arguing with Elara when she had that look on her face was like arguing with weather. You could do it, but nothing would change.

Her hands were steady despite everything they’d just been through. The blood came off Serena’s cheek first, wiped away with a damp cloth. Then she unpinned Serena’s hair, combed through the tangles with her fingers, and put it half up. She moved with the efficiency of a field medic saving lives

"There," Elara said, stepping back to admire her work. "Now you look like someone who belongs in a fortress, not someone who accidentally killed the second-in-command with a decorative axe."

Serena looked at herself in the mirror. She had to admit, the transformation was remarkable. She looked composed. Confident. Almost regal.

Completely different person than the screaming mess who’d had a severed head land in her lap ten minutes ago.

"Fine," she admitted grudgingly. "This was a good idea."

"I know." Elara tucked a loose strand of hair behind Serena’s ear. "I have those sometimes."

They returned to the main chamber, carefully avoiding looking at the body.

"We need something smaller to put the head in," Elara said. "The travel bag is too obviously a travel bag. If someone searches us—"

"There." Serena pointed to an ornate wooden box sitting on a shelf near the desk. It was large enough to hold a head but smaller than the bag.

They crossed to the shelf.

Elara opened the travel bag.

They both looked at the head.

The head, with its slack jaw and yellow eyes and expression of eternal confusion, looked back at them.

"You do it," Elara said. "I’m not the genius who put it in a bag."

"It rolled in there on its own."

"It’s your turn."

"That’s not how turns work."

"It’s exactly how turns work. I touched it last and pulled it off your lap. Now you touch it."

"You grabbed it by the hair and threw it at a wall, " Serena snapped. "That was a choice. That doesn’t create a turn system."

"It absolutely creates a turn system. Your turn."

Serena gagged. She reached into the bag, grabbed the head by its hair, and lifted it out.

It was heavier than she expected. And colder. And the skin had a texture that she was absolutely not going to think about.

She dropped it into the box with more force than necessary.

It landed with a meaty thunk that made both of them gag again.

Elara slammed the lid shut and latched it.

"That’s one way to do it. You could have just turned the travel bag upside down and dumped the head out into the box."

Serena huffed, irritated. She was absolutely right and that was the worst part.

"Here you go," she said cheerfully, handing the box to Serena. "You are the one insisting we take it with us. Lead the way Frostborne."

Serena tucked the box under her arm and made a note to get even with Elara as soon as possible.

Holding the box was awkward and she hated every single thing about it. But it might be useful later.

She didn’t know how. And she didn’t want to know how. But it might be.

They slipped out into the corridor and moved quickly through the shadows. The fortress was a labyrinth of stone passages and flickering torches, but the architecture followed the patterns Serena had memorized from the library books.

Cells would be in the lower levels. The command center would be at the heart of the structure. And if this fortress followed standard Orosian design, the throne room would be at the top, overlooking everything.

As they moved, Serena tried to summon her magic.

She could feel it still inside her body. But when she reached for it, it slipped through her fingers like water. The dampening wards pressed against her senses, blocking her usual channels.

Instead, she felt something else inside. Another energy. A different side of her magic, one she hadn’t mastered yet. One she’d barely touched. It felt familiar but not.

She reached for it cautiously.

Instead of the familiar gold, it came out as sparkling pink.

The light danced across her fingertips, beautiful and completely useless for anything practical. They swirled around her hand like tiny stars before fading away.

"Well," Serena muttered, watching the pink sparkles dissipate into the air. "That’s new."

"That’s festive."

"We’re infiltrating an enemy fortress. We don’t need festive."

"Can you make it do anything?"

"I can apparently make it look like a fairy sneezed on me."

Serena bit back a frustrated scream at her lack of control over it and kept moving.

They rounded a corner and found themselves facing a long corridor lined with alcoves. At the far end, massive double doors stood open, revealing a cavernous chamber beyond.

Voices echoed from inside. Deep voices, speaking in High Orosian, interspersed with the clanking of armor and the shuffle of boots.

Serena pulled Elara into the nearest alcove, pressing them both flat against the cold stone. The box dug into her ribs. She adjusted it. The head inside shifted with a soft, fleshy slide that she was going to need extensive therapy to forget.

A procession emerged from a side passage.

Guards. A dozen of them, heavily armed, surrounding a single prisoner.

Fin.

He was barely recognizable. His face was swollen and bruised. Chains bound his wrists in front of him, and two guards gripped his arms, half-dragging him forward because his legs didn’t seem to be working properly. His torso was bloody.

But he was alive.

He was alive, and they were taking him towards the double doors.

Towards what Serena now realized must be the throne room.

Fortresses in Orosia worked similarly to kingdoms in Skardos. The High General would be the equivalent of a king, and the throne room would be where he held court, passed judgment, and executed prisoners.

They were taking Fin to the High General.

Serena’s blood ran cold.

She looked at Elara. Elara looked back at her, eyes wide with the same realization.

They couldn’t fight a dozen guards. They had no weapons, no magic, and they were carrying a severed head in a box.

But they couldn’t let Fin disappear into that throne room alone.

Serena straightened her spine and lifted her chin. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

"Follow my lead," she said, handing the box to Elara.

Elara took it, looked down at it, and then back up at Serena with an expression that said you want me to carry the head?

Serena’s expression said yes, I want you to carry the head.

Elara’s expression said we are going to have a conversation about this later.

Serena was already walking.

Elara leaned in close as they approached the doors. "For the record, if we die in there, I want it known that my eyeliner looked incredible."

"Noted," Serena whispered back.