The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 163: Fight-Or-Flight Said Bitch Goodnight

Serena sat bolt upright in bed, heart slamming against her ribs, drenched in sweat despite the room being frigid enough to see her breath.

"Just a dream," she whispered to no one.

"Boo."

One word. The High Emperor of Orosia crossed dimensional boundaries for one word, and sat at the foot of her bed like he’d been waiting for her to wake up.

She squeezed her eyes shut. Counted to three. Opened them.

Gone.

Her pulse was still jackhammering when she threw the covers off and crossed to the bathing chamber. Cold water from the basin hit her face, and she braced her hands on the stone rim, forcing her breathing to slow.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

She lifted her head to look in the mirror.

He was standing directly behind her.

"Miss me?"

A scream ripped out of her before she could stop it. She had never, at any point, in any timeline, missed him.

Fear fed the tether. Acknowledgment strengthened it. She knew the rules.

But Maelor’s books hadn’t included a Chapter titled "What To Do When He’s In Your Mirror." Oversight, frankly.

She moved back into her chambers and pulled on a bra under her silk camisole, refusing to give him a show. She slid into her boots next.

He clapped, slowly, the sound echoing against the stone walls."I thought wolves were supposed to be comfortable with nudity."

Serena didn’t answer, pulling on her cloak.

That was when a vase on the mantle exploded. Every torch in the chamber went out at once, plunging the room into absolute darkness.

The cold temperature dropped even more, so fast her exhale crystallized in front of her face.

He vanished.

The dramatic flair was unnecessary. Point taken. He was terrifying. Gold star.

Fight-or-flight chose flight unanimously and without discussion. She moved at Alpha speed to the door.

Just as her fingers closed around the handle, a hand locked around her neck.

He spun her, slamming her against the stone wall. His grip tightened around her throat, fingers digging into her windpipe with the weight of a body that should not have been able to touch her at all.

"You can’t run from me," he said in her ear, his voice layered. Two tones stacked slightly out of sync.

Serena mindlinked.

Serena: Hyran. Are you awake? Gav?

"Your mindlinks won’t work. Wolves are foolish to rely on them."

As if choking wasn’t enough, he needed to narrate. Evil monologuing at its finest.

She threw gold at him, a concussive wave that should have sent him through the wall, but her magic seemed to go around him.

"Your magic can’t tell the difference between me and you. Fickle."

She threw fire. Then ice. Both in rapid succession, the blasts cracking stone and sending smoke rolling across the ceiling.

If every Hidden Flame member wasn’t awake yet, they would be now and probably wondering what the hell was happening. She was cycling through her entire arsenal like a panicked mage flipping through a spellbook during finals.

She reached for pink. But the tank was still empty. Of course it was. The one color that might have actually done something.

Was this how she would go out? Literally anyone’s worst nightmare. Waking up and the person in your actual nightmare is in your actual room then they choke you? Fuck.

"Pass out," he hissed. "That’s all I’m looking for. I’ll take things from there."

His skin was cool against her throat. No heartbeat beneath his fingers. He was choking her to death with hands that didn’t technically exist, and the contradiction made her want to scream louder than the lack of oxygen.

She struggled against him, black spots dancing in her eyes, limbs growing heavy.

Her legs stopped fighting before her brain did. Her mind was still screaming move, move, move while the body signed its own surrender. She could feel herself leaving, the edges of consciousness peeling away, and the helplessness of it was worse than the pain.

If she died here, in this room, with his hands around her throat, Dex wouldn’t even know. When he came back from Orosia, she’d already be gone, and he wouldn’t have been able to say goodbye. The thought sat in her chest like a stone, heavier than the hands on her throat.

A golden bracelet cuff she forgot she was even wearing vibrated.

The High Emperor looked down at it, then back up at her completely surprised.

"What is th—"

He didn’t finish.

She was horizontal, staring up at the moon on the ceiling of the underground chamber in the library, before she understood she’d moved.

She was coughing, throat crushed, swollen from the inside out. Every inhale was a razor-thin whistle of air that wasn’t enough.

Her neck was already darkening. She could feel the bruises forming in real time, his fingerprints writing themselves into her skin.

Boots thudded down the library stairs.

A portal cracked open, Hyran ran through.

"Serena?"

Alaric appeared a second later, looking disheveled and slightly alarmed, which was the emotional equivalent of anyone else screaming into a pillow.

Her throat was shot and she couldn’t talk but she needed to warn them.

Thankfully her mindlink went through on the first try. Whatever he’d done to block it, the cuff had broken through.

Serena: Don’t come any closer. I don’t know where he is. Don’t mindlink anything that I’m on either.

The voice in her mindlink was much calmer than she felt thankfully. Maybe she wouldn’t get one hundred percent of the blame for being afraid and failing at Operculum.

If anyone had a cuff on, they would have heard it. Surely they’d taken off their cuffs for the sheer sake of having privacy on mindlinks. Gods, she hoped so.

Hyran and Alaric stilled in understanding. A third portal opened in the chamber but Serena couldn’t see who.

Serena was still coughing, trying to get air. She rolled over onto all fours, attempting to move herself, preferably out of this underground chamber and into a well-lit room without sharp objects.

Her body was giving war hero effort with intern-level coordination.

"Serena?" Gav called from the bottom of the stairs.

She wasn’t sure when he arrived. At this rate, she expected Hale to wander in with a sandwich and zero context.

"Behind you!" Gav roared.

Too late. The High Emperor grabbed her by both of her ankles and pulled her entirely too fast to the lake across the ground. She would have screamed but she still couldn’t breathe.

Gold. Fire. Ice. The same results. She was running out of ideas because her entire magical repertoire was getting a zero percent success rate.

He moved so quickly the ground scraped her hands. The lake water hit her like a wall, knocking the wind out of her.

It closed over her as he pulled her deeper, her lungs seizing. Every instinct told her to gasp in a gulp of air, and every rational thought told her not to. She could feel him behind her, below her, around her, a presence without mass. This was not a fight she was losing. This was a fight that had never been fair.

The water turned gold instantly as soon as her body touched it.

His smile faltered. Then he vanished.

The lake had done what her magic couldn’t. But she didn’t trust it to hold.

Serena didn’t need to be told twice. Her legs kicked hard, with strength she didn’t know she had as she swam to the surface.

Just as she was about to break into air, he reappeared fifteen feet under her. He flashed a devilish smile, like a ’nice try’ and began swimming towards her.

He’d shown multiple times that he could pop her gold magic like a bubble, and she wasn’t stupid.

She channeled ice, pushing it to the surface to create a platform. Then scrambled onto it, choking up water.

Still unable to get a full breath, gasping, she managed to push more ice into the platform. It spread around the whole lake in an eerie crack, thickening at least a few feet.

Freezing the entire lake was either brilliant or the most expensive overreaction of her life. Time would tell.

She fell on her back, eyes on the star-studded ceiling, trying to catch her breath. The shouts from shore barely registered.

If she could get up, she would. But her limbs were numb and chest burning, and she genuinely couldn’t.

So she lay there thinking about the fact that if the ice broke, Fin would wake up tomorrow and find out she died. And she didn’t even say goodbye to him today. Instead, she ran away.

She didn’t know what was worse. Him holding her while she died, or finding out after sleeping.

The banging started.

Fists under the ice.