The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 165: Dex Dove In After Her

She woke up next to a lake in middle of a forest.

The air smelled like pine and wet earth and something she couldn’t name but felt in her chest like a homecoming. None of it was real. She knew that somewhere in her soul, the way you know you’re dreaming before you wake up.

A black wolf’s gold eyes locked onto her with an intensity that didn’t belong to an animal. The recognition was instant. Mutual.

"D-d-dex?"

The wolf bolted towards her, shifting right before reaching her. He pulled her into his arms and she wrapped her legs around him.

A sob escaped her before she could stop it. "I missed you, Dex."

He buried his face in her neck, breathing her in like he’d been suffocating without it. "Fuck. I miss you so goddamn much." His voice cracked on the last word.

His arms were shaking. Dex Drakenfell, who had never shaken in his life, was trembling against her.

The man who had faced dragons, armies, and his own mother without flinching was shaking because of her. She filed that information under ’things she would never recover from.’

He kissed the top of her head. Then her lips. Slow. Desperate. Like he was memorizing the feel of her in case this was the last time.

She tasted salt and couldn’t tell if it was hers or his. She didn’t care. She kissed him back with everything she had, her fingers gripping the back of his neck like she could anchor herself to him if she held tight enough.

"Baby. Why do I feel your panic in another continent? I haven’t been able to feel you since I left."

Serena blinked trying to remember.

"Something is happening right now but I don’t..."

Her brows furrowed. The thought kept dissolving before she could close her hand around it, like trying to hold smoke. Her brain was doing that fun thing where it refused to cooperate during an emergency.

Black tendrils shot from the lake next to them. They grabbed Serena violently.

She felt Dex’s grip tighten, felt his arms lock around her like iron, felt the exact second his strength wasn’t enough. One second she was pressed against his chest and the next the water swallowed her whole, and the scream that tore from her wasn’t sound by the time it left her mouth. It was bubbles.

The last thing she saw was Dex’s face, and the look on it wasn’t fear. It was fury. The kind that precedes kingdoms burning.

If she lived through this, if she survived the water and the emperor and whatever came after, she would remember the way Dex’s eyes burned gold in that final second, the way his jaw locked and his entire body coiled, the way he looked at the thing that took her like he was going to dismantle it molecule by molecule.

The lake sealed over her head like a lid, and the silence beneath was so absolute it felt surgical.

Dex dove in. No plan. Zero hesitation. No shirt, technically, because dream physics were generous like that.

His eyes lit gold, his voice changed, and he spoke underwater.

The words were muffled and she couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. She knew it was Draken-Vorah, and the tone was universal. The tone said: "I am Dexmon Drakenfell and you will release what is mine."

His syllables vibrated through the water like a second current, pressing against the dark magic holding her.

An energy flowed through her that she’d never channeled, but one she recognized instantly. Storm dragon energy. Electric.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was vaguely aware that her hand lifted. But she wasn’t the one lifting it. She knew innately, Dex was.

Her mate was puppeteering her hand from inside a dream while speaking an ancient language underwater without a shirt. She should not have found that attractive. She absolutely did.

The electric current shot through her body, like him giving it to her. It surged through her veins like swallowing lightning. Channels were opening. Channels that were there all along, but would have taken time and training. Because she needed it. And he knew.

He was giving her everything he had. From across a continent, through a dream he shouldn’t have been able to enter, he was pouring storm dragon energy into her like he could keep her alive by sheer force of will.

She felt it in her veins, electric and overwhelming, and beneath it she felt something else: his desperation. The kind that says "I will burn through every reserve I have, and if that isn’t enough, I will burn through myself."

He was not going to let her die in this lake. He was going to break the rules of distance and magic and dreaming if that’s what it took, and she felt that truth through every channel he was ripping open inside her.

The dark magic holding her spasmed. It met Dex’s storm energy and immediately decided it had somewhere else to be. Smart.

She felt the tendrils release her rapidly and Dex pull her against his chest.

Then she opened her eyes.

She realized she was still underwater, but in the underground lake. The water was dark, like the lake in her dream. Some swirls of her gold were there, but faded to less and less.

Dream over. Still underwater. Still in danger. The transition from "rescued by mate in dreamscape" to "drowning in real life" was not the upgrade she’d hoped for.

She looked down, and saw The High Emperor had released her ankle. He was staring at her with a mix of outrage and confusion.

She tried to swim. Kick. That was it. That was the plan. Kick and don’t die. She was really elevating the art of survival strategy.

He grabbed her ankle again.

Then she felt more storm dragon energy being pushed to her. She didn’t need to search for it and she wasn’t the one doing it. It was being shoved to her by the dragons.

They were force-feeding her lightning like overprotective grandmothers with soup. She didn’t ask. They didn’t care. It was happening.

Considering every single storm dragon she’d encountered had bucked her off, it was a pleasant surprise.

The lake flashed like lightning. The High Emperor recoiled, letting go of her leg. But stayed where he was, waiting.

She kept trying to kick and swim, but she was far from the surface. Her limbs grew heavy. She understood in that moment that he was waiting for her to pass out. The lightning would stop when she did.

She could feel it dimming, each pulse weaker than the last, the dragons’ energy running thin because she was the conduit and the conduit was failing.

The Emperor didn’t need to fight her. He needed to outlast her. And he would. She knew it with the same certainty she knew she was underwater, knew the gold was fading, knew that the next time her eyes closed, they might not open.

Then she saw a giant black wolf swimming. She wondered if she was hallucinating for a second. Drowning, electrocuted lake, ancient emperor lurking below, and now a massive wolf doing laps.

It cut through the electrified water without hesitation, stroke after stroke, gold eyes fixed on her like she was the only thing in the world that mattered.

It was swimming through lightning like it was an inconvenience and not deadly.

The realization hit her. She recognized it. She knew with certainty that she’d seen this wolf before.

She wanted to tell it to run. There were electric shocks in the water happening rapidly and that was the only thing keeping this emperor at bay.

But the shocks weren’t hurting him. He didn’t even seem to notice.

The wolf shifted back into the silhouette of a man, still under water. Her eyes closed. She felt a pair of arms go around her, even through the electric shocks.

Through every terrible thing that had happened today. Someone had come for her, and he was holding her like the electricity was irrelevant, because to him, it was.

He grabbed her, pulling her to his chest, and torpedoed up.

His heartbeat slammed against her back. Even through the water, even through the chaos, she could feel it. Steady where hers wasn’t. Certain where hers had stopped being.

A metronome in a hurricane.

Fin.

Two fated mates. Two black wolves. Both with gold eyes. Both completely insane. She was starting to think the Moon Goddess had a type.