The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 164: Fin Screamed Her Name & Hit A Goddamn Wall

Every voice echoing across the ice sounded like it was coming through water.

Serena couldn’t answer any of them. Her throat was crushed and her vision kept tunneling, and she could hear Hyran, Hale, Gav, all of them shouting, but the words arrived a half-second after the sounds.

"Is he gone?" Aeron called, his voice managing to cut through.

Gods. She didn’t know when the hell Aeron had arrived. These cuffs were really the worst at keeping things private.

Arms shaking, she tried to push herself up but didn’t get past her hands and knees. Her lungs were operating on what felt like a single teaspoon of air.

She held out her hand and attempted to make a gold portal. No magic came. Instead her insides burned and she immediately stopped.

Fin was moving at Alpha speed. Because of course he was there. If Aeron was, then he would. Golden cuff.

Gav was behind him, running onto the ice. "This is advanced level nightmare fuel, Frostborne."

Him narrating the horror out loud was either a coping mechanism or a personality disorder. Or both. Definitely both.

She didn’t know if she was relieved or terrified that they were there.

If anything, Fin charging at this thing was exactly what the Emperor wanted. But his jaw set and his eyes burned molten at the edges. His wolf was close to the surface and not asking permission.

For a split second, she felt a moment of relief. She wasn’t alone.

She managed to get her boots under her and upright, and took a step towards Fin.

The second she took that step, a golden wall fabricated, cutting both men off.

Fin hit the barrier at full speed. It didn’t give.

"Take it down. TAKE IT DOWN, SERENA!"

He slammed both fists into it and the sound that came out of him was more wolf than man. She was on the other side of it dying, and he could do nothing but break his fists against the thing keeping him from her.

She glanced down at her hands, knowing full well it was her magic but not having an inkling on how. Mutiny by fabrication.

"Serena..." His voice cracked on the second syllable.

His chest heaved like something inside him was being torn in half. She knew that look. She had seen it once before, when he told her about his first mate. The look of a man who’d already survived losing someone, and understood in his marrow that the universe was capable of doing it again.

His grief flooded into her, stinging her eyes until tears began to fall. If she hadn’t just been choked, she’d be sobbing.

She wanted to tell him she didn’t do it. That she wanted to go to him. That she was just as confused, but the words didn’t come. She wanted to push calm into him through their matebond, but she didn’t have it.

The thought of losing him gutted her too.

She took another step towards him, her legs wobbling.

"Serena under YOU!" Gav yelled.

She looked down, right as the emperor punched through the ice, grabbing her leg.

A scream ripped from her. Or should have. What came out instead was barely a whisper. Maybe that was a mercy because she didn’t want Fin to hear it.

Gold. Kick. Ice. Fire. She cycled through everything, limbs moving on pure refusal even though the math was getting worse with every second.

The runes and stars lighting the chamber dimmed, almost like it was giving up on her too.

She was well aware her fear was feeding it and if she could turn it off she would.

Two portals began to form on the ice next to her, Hyran and Aeron both. Assuming he would do something to one, she could go through the other.

The air cracked open and she made eye contact with Hyran. Before she could move, black magic, thick as smoke, snapped both portals shut with a sickening crack. Two men’s screams followed, simultaneous, raw with pain. Her blood ran cold.

Fin’s roar came next, muffled by the barrier, a sound that bypassed language entirely. It was the sound of an Alpha who had watched two allies get hurt trying to reach his mate and could do nothing

The Hidden Flame mark on her arm flared hot on its own. And when the emperor spoke she got the sensation that he was projecting through her.

Being used as a speaker system by an enemy emperor was a new low. And she had a long list of lows.

"Ah. You flinched when they screamed. That tells me everything I need to know about where to cut next."

He came up behind her in a blur, yanking her down by her waist. Her back slammed against the ice hard enough to crack it beneath her, and the air left her lungs in a single punched-out gasp.

He pinned her arms on either side, hovering over her. For the first time, she was thankful that she was the only one who could see him. Because this wasn’t something Fin or any of them needed in their minds.

"You entered Orosia and removed my leverage," He leaned closer, his face an inch away from hers. "And you thought I wasn’t paying attention?"

Being choked was one thing, but his predatory lean was much worse. The tears blurring her vision weren’t just an echo of Fin’s grief anymore; they were her own, fueled by anger and how deeply disturbing she’d found him.

Then he vanished, the pressure on her arms gone. For a second, it was just her laying flat against the freezing surface.

He began punching holes all around her on the ice. She couldn’t see him. Just his fists coming up from under the ice, not trying to pull her through yet, just cutting off her exits. Carving a cage, one fist at a time.

"A mother bled gold on snow and six years later, her daughter bleeds the same color on ice. Poetic, isn’t it?"

The hand stopped punching through at that moment.

She pushed herself up. Refreezing the surface she was on. Small victory. She was not going to drown lying down. If the ice wanted to break, it was going to have to fight her for every inch.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

In through the—

She almost had it. For one second, her breathing evened and the operculum exercises worked.

One second.

Ice cracked ten feet away from her, then gave way completely. The High Emperor ascended, a pillar of water hoisting him upward like a living throne.

He made an entrance out of ice water and ego. If the circumstances were different she might have been impressed. They weren’t, so she was furious.

He looked entertained, which was infinitely worse than his expression earlier. The look of a cat who’d realized the mouse knew a trick.

He stepped forward. She scrambled back away from him.

Round two. Because the first time underwater didn’t finish the job.

Fin’s voice reached her one last time, distant and wrecked, stripped of authority and composure, stripped of everything that made him Finnick Shadowclaw. Just a man calling her name like a prayer he already knew wouldn’t be answered.

Then the Emperor’s hand closed around her arm, and the last thing she saw before the water took her was gold light pulsing behind the barrier, Fin’s fists still hitting it, still fighting, still refusing to stop even though the wall would not move and his hands were destroyed and the outcome was already written. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

The cold hit. Then the dark.

Then the genuine, pure, undiluted terror. Because she was going to drown and had no way to fight it.

He slid her gold cuff off her wrist with a smirk she could barely make out. Only the one wearing the cuff can remove it, so it shouldn’t have been possible. That was the rule. One that’d saved her more than one time. Yet, it didn’t apply to him.

His voice sounded in her mind.

"Your magic can’t tell the difference, sweetheart."

Calling her sweetheart while drowning her. She was adding that to the list of things she detested about this man. Right under ’excessive monologuing.’

The last thing she felt wasn’t pain. It was the weight of the water closing over her like a hand, and the strange, exhausted surrender of a body that had run out of ways to say no.