The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 166: A Massive Failing At Basic Operculum

Water poured from Serena’s lungs in violent, retching coughs. She was on her side, but she didn’t remember being moved.

Someone’s hand was on her back, firm and constant, holding her through each convulsion like they’d hold her through a thousand more if that’s what it took.

Fin’s arms went under her, picking her up.

She had been many things tonight. Brave. Terrified. Defiant. Drowning. But she had not been held. Not until now. And the difference between fighting alone and being held by someone who would rather die than drop you was so vast she didn’t have a word for it.

Her eyes closed and when they opened, she was being carried through a portal.

Portal travel while semi-conscious: zero out of ten. Would not recommend. The light hurt, the transition made her stomach flip, and she was fairly certain her soul arrived three seconds after her body.

She blinked slowly a few times. But the noises were all muffled. Voices layered over each other, urgent and hollow, like hearing an argument from the bottom of a well.

Fin was upset. She could feel him through their matebond, and it wasn’t subtle. In fact, their matebond was delivering Fin’s emotions with the grace of a battering ram. Every feeling arrived pre-amplified, unfiltered, and several degrees past what any reasonable person would broadcast. He wasn’t leaking. He was full-on flooding.

It was sharp, fractured, the kind of distress that bled through without restraint and turned into anger. She could hear his voice but she couldn’t figure out what he was saying.

She caught fragments. "Now." "Move." Something that might have been a name and definitely sounded like a threat. The Finnick Shadowclaw method of communication: half directive, half promise of consequences.

Gav’s voice cut in somewhere in the blur. He was either providing a status update or making an inappropriate comment. Possibly both.

She felt Fin kiss her head. Her forehead pressed into the crook of his neck.

"I’ve got you, baby. I’ll take care of this."

His voice cut through the noise the way it always did. Not louder than anyone else’s. Just more certain. Like he’d already decided how this ended, and the universe was welcome to disagree but wouldn’t.

He kissed her head, and her forehead fell into the crook of his neck.

Her eyes closed, relaxing into him. The tension left her body in stages, like a building deciding to stop standing.

First her shoulders. Then her spine. Then whatever was left of her dignity. She never let herself be small. She hadn’t been small since she was twelve.

But Fin’s arms were around her and his heartbeat was under her ear and for ten seconds, she decided the world could carry itself.

When they opened, she saw mismatched orbs staring down at her. Maelor.

She didn’t recognize the ceiling. It was vaulted, inscribed with runes in arrangements. Wherever she was, it was built to keep things out.

Then she realized she was in Fin’s lap, being held.

His distress flooded through their matebond, then she blinked again and saw his face. His eyes were red and he looked like a wreck. Rage tangled with relief tangled with something that tasted like guilt, and underneath it, a fear so raw it didn’t have words.

She reached up touching his cheek with concern for him.

Her thumb brushed under his eye where the skin was raw and damp, and something in his expression fractured further at the contact. As if her concern for him, after everything she’d just survived, was the thing he couldn’t handle. He looked at her like she’d done something cruel by being gentle with him.

He grabbed her hand, kissing it. She tried to sit up on his lap. He pulled her up forcefully, lips on hers, then on her temple, then ear.

Thorough. The way a man checks for damage after a disaster, except his method was his mouth and every point of contact was a confirmation that she was still here, still breathing, still his.

She shoved calm into him through their matebond because somehow she had it and he needed it.

He jolted, but this time she pressed a kiss to his temple and held him.

"Where are we?" she rasped. Her voice came out worse than it felt if that was possible.

Fin stiffened under her and Alaric immediately handed her a white liquid.

She took it, but her limbs were heavy and hands shaking. Fin helped her without word, and it reminded her of Dex. Two different men. Same instinct.

Her body was staging a revolt against her dignity. Shaking hands, ruined voice, sitting in someone’s lap in an unknown room. Peak composure.

"We’re in my study," Maelor answered. "In Nightspire."

Serena kept her expression neutral, but she was a bit shocked. Pun intended. Internal humor while concussed. She was either healing or getting worse. Hard to tell.

"I have wards built to prevent dark Fae magic. Drakenfell’s are limited. And you had a cocktail of dark magic, a shadow-tether, and a massive failing at basic operculum."

Serena swallowed. She knew this was coming.

"Any ideas on why Sterling could see him?" Hyran asked from a dark corner in the room. Definitely asking a question he already had four theories about. Classic.

Serena blinked, making out his face. She didn’t realize he was there.

"You’re okay," she rasped, relieved because he screamed.

Hyran’s expression hardened. She wondered if he wasn’t okay and she struck a nerve, or if he was upset at her for failing operculum. She looked down, feeling nothing short of bad. There was nothing she could say that would fix it.

Fin shot Hyran a glare, and pressed a kiss to Serena’s head. It was him trying to make her feel better. The two of them were taking turns evidently.

"He could see him last time too," Serena added. Every word felt like glass on her vocal cords.

Fin’s eyes darkened. He tipped the glass back into her mouth for her to drink, until she finished it. She didn’t argue.

"Not like this time, Serena. he could see him clearly." Hyran said flatly, ignoring Fin. "And to say he’s rattled would be an understatement."

Serena’s stomach dropped. Gavriel Sterling. Rattled. That’s how bad it was.