The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 153: Ripped From His Arms

Do all mages speak Sylvarae? Gods.

She certainly wouldn’t have shared all of that if she knew Aeron and Archibald were listening too. Her confession was a letter she’d sealed and addressed to one person. Instead, she’d read it aloud to the room.

"Maelor cloaked it temporarily," she added. She noted that did not change the alarm on any of their faces.

Gavriel had been listening. He recognized Sylvarae and caught the name Maelor, and knew exactly what conversation was being had.

"It went away after we met with Maelor," he vouched. "And she practiced Operculum."

Hyran and Archibald both glanced down at Gavriel in disbelief. Gavriel knowing advanced magical terminology visibly offended them on a professional level.

Aeron also stared. The way a professor looks at a dog that has fetched the newspaper and opened it to the right section. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Gav gave all three mages a flat, unimpressed look that clearly said, I’m not a chimpanzee contrary to what you think.

Then he resumed floating on his back, arms spread, with the energy of a man who had been underestimated his entire life and oscillated between being annoyed by it and weaponizing it.

Serena exhaled. Gav stepping in for her was a card played at the exact right moment. The mages were distracted enough that the tension lessened by a mile.

She looked down at the water, not at Hyran, hoping the conversation would have come to a natural conclusion on its own.

"Did it go away fully?" Hyran asked in common tongue.

Of course he did, because why not inform the entire cave.

All conversations stopped and every head turned towards Serena.

You can’t un-ring a bell, and Hyran had swung the clapper with both hands.

"Yes," she lied. Fin’s arms tightened around her. She could feel his protective instincts flaring through their matebond and he didn’t even understand why she was anxious. She was anxious about herself being the problem. Not Hyran.

And he was ready to fight Hyran for making her anxious, which was sweet and spectacularly misguided.

That was the thing no one understood. She wasn’t afraid of what was coming for her. She’d accepted that. She was afraid she was the thing that was coming, and that every person protecting her was standing on the wrong side of the wall.

She gave his arm a gentle squeeze. A don’t-worry squeeze that she hoped would be enough to work. She felt his reluctant compliance through their matebond. It tasted like someone swallowing an argument sideways.

Hyran was about to speak again when Serena sat up abruptly. A burning sensation in her core was yanking her so hard it almost stole her breath. It felt like déjà vu mixed with espresso.

"Have you been here before?" Fin asked.

"Just déjà vu," Serena answered. She felt her crown vibrate on her head. She touched it, bewildered.

"In the throne room, were you not controlling it there either?" Aeron asked.

"No," she said quietly, her voice trailing off as she looked down at her glowing pink hands and sighed.

She was glowing, her crown was vibrating, and she was sitting in pink water. The absurdity of her life had lapped itself.

"New rule," Gavriel commented. "When the crown shows up, we all pay attention. Adding that to the list."

"Don’t worry. I like it," Fin said.

Him trying to make her feel better made something in her soften.

She put her glowing hands on top of his where they held her. He opened his fingers, lacing them through hers. Together they looked like a religious painting.

She almost turned to kiss his shoulder, but remembered Dexmon, and caught herself. Her smile fell, and the inner turmoil started.

What the hell was wrong with her?

She was in a healing lake with one mate while missing the other, and the guilt was so sharp it had its own damn pulse. Dex was gone and she was here, softening against another man’s chest, and the tenderness she felt made her sick because she couldn’t tell if it was loyalty or betrayal.

Her ribs felt too small for what was inside them. The wanting. The missing. The shame of wanting while missing. All of it packed in so tight she couldn’t breathe without one of them shifting.

She didn’t realize that as her thoughts spiraled, she had started to glow brighter, or that her eyes had changed to a pink glow.

Around her upper arm, a golden armband formed.

"That’s new," Gavriel said from across the lake, which was becoming his catchphrase of the day. He looked at the armband, then at Fin, then at the armband again. "Should I be concerned, or is this a fae accessory thing?"

Aeron clapped his hands once, leaning in with the expression of a man watching a theory he’d published get confirmed in real time.

Then she heard whispers. She stood, pulling out of Fin’s arms, legs wobbling, and turned toward the sound. One section of the cave wall was flat and reflective, like a mirror.

"Has that always been there?"

"What?" Fin stood moving behind her.

"Has what always been there?" Aeron and Archibald called. It was becoming the group’s motto.

Her brows furrowed.

"Do you see that?"

"See what?" Fin asked.

Fin not seeing what she saw was exactly the kind of development that made her want to sit back down and pretend this wasn’t happening.

Elara sat up slowly, her face shifting from relaxed to the particular brand of alert that meant she’d clocked a red flag.

In the mirror Serena saw herself diving to the middle of the lake they were in. But something about it felt off. A pull hooked her with too much force. She felt her body move.

Control had been a rope she’d been white-knuckling for weeks. She stumbled, fighting the pull. But lost after seconds.

Then her body was no longer hers.

"Serena?" Fin called her name, reaching for her.

Her body was sucked under the water in a dive.

The water closed over her rapidly and the panic was instant, lungs locking before she’d even lost air. The feeling of being claimed by something she couldn’t see.

It was deeper than it looked. At least sixty feet. A depth that would be difficult for mages and Fae alike. She was barely swimming. Something was pulling her like gravity.

Hyran’s voice brushed her mind.

Hyran: Serena, stop.

She felt Fin’s arm hook around her, pulling her to his chest. The sensation of his arms cut through everything else. The current, the pull, the panic.

She wasn’t in full control, but she had enough to not fight him. Somewhere between aware and possessed. A grey area she was getting dangerously familiar with.

Fin: Serena, fight it. Stay with me.

She tried. She wanted to mindlink him back and tell him, but she couldn’t.

Then she was pulled, the decision made for her. Water sucked her down, ripping her out of Fin’s arms.

Being yanked out of his grip required a force that should have offended him personally. It did.

One second his hands were locked on her, the next they weren’t, and the absence was so sudden her chest seized like a wound reopening.

His terror slammed into her so hard her vision whited out. Raw and animal. So loud it drowned out the current, drowned out the pull, drowned out everything except the single screaming note of a man who had just lost his grip on the only person he couldn’t live without.

Her hands flew to her head, skull throbbing. Pain lanced through Fin’s head in tandem. But his eyes surged molten gold and he torpedoed down to her.

His arms found her again, locking around her protectively. Full grip. No negotiation. Wherever she was getting pulled, he was going with her, and the gods themselves couldn’t have stopped him.

Whatever was at the bottom of this lake had just made an enemy.