The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 144: Closeted With The Enemy

Neither of them had a plan. They had legs and adrenaline and that was going to have to be enough.

Serena and Elara sprinted through the service corridor, their footsteps echoing off the narrow stone walls.

Behind them, two guards gave chase, their armor clanking and their boots pounding against the stone.

Two guards. For two women. The Fae were either respecting their threat level or deeply understaffed. Serena chose to believe the former.

The corridor forked ahead. They hadn’t agreed on a direction since they arrived and Serena didn’t want to break the streak now.

Her instincts said right. Elara’s said left. Both were probably wrong.

The guards split to follow.

Serena ran until her lungs burned, taking corners blindly. She could hear her pursuer gaining, his heavy breathing getting closer with every stride. She spotted a recessed doorway and threw herself into it, pressing flat against the wood, holding her breath.

She heard it before she saw it. And what she heard was so profoundly stupid that she almost stepped out of hiding to watch it happen.

First came the crash. Then came two identical yelps of surprise. Then came the sound of metal hitting stone, followed by the softer sound of skulls hitting metal, followed by absolute silence.

The kind of silence that either meant the problem was solved or was about to get significantly worse.

She crept back to the junction and found both guards flat on their backs, unconscious, their helmets having apparently bonked together like coconuts.

Elara appeared from the opposite corridor.

Serena stared at the guards. Elara stared at Serena.

Neither spoke for three full seconds. Which, between them, was a record.

Serena nudged one of the guards with her foot. He didn’t stir. "Should we tell people we planned that?"

Elara nodded. "The truth dies here."

"Coordinated ambush. Textbook execution." 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

"Exactly."

They left the guards where they lay and continued through the tunnels. Serena had a vague idea of where they were going based on Orosian architecture. The fortress likely had multiple dungeons, and all would be underground.

They made it for another minute before boots echoed in the corridor behind them. And it wasn’t two or three this time.

The sound multiplied, bouncing off the stone until it was impossible to tell if there were five or fifty.

"In here," Serena hissed, grabbing Elara’s arm and pulling her through the nearest door. Elara made a noise like a cat being picked up unexpectedly but didn’t resist.

The room beyond was dark, lit only by the faint glow of dying embers in a massive fireplace. Serena pressed her back against the wall, heart pounding, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

Slowly, the shapes in the room began to take form. Her blood ran cold.

A bed. An enormous bed, easily twice the size of any bed she’d ever seen, draped in dark silk and piled with furs. A weapons rack that held seven decorative axes and a collection of blades that looked like they had been forged in nightmares.

And a desk, covered in maps and documents, with a seal stamped in red wax. No one who filed paperwork at this volume was low-ranking. This was management. The killing-people-and-keeping-records-about-it kind of management.

"Serena," Elara breathed. "I don’t think this is a guard’s quarters."

"What gave it away? The bed that could sleep ten, or the wall of swords?"

"The banner with the serpent eating a crown, actually."

Before Serena could say anything else, a pair of footsteps stopped in front of the door.

She grabbed Elara and dove for the closet. They tumbled inside, pulling the door shut behind them just as the main door swung open. The timing was either divine intervention or catastrophic luck.

The closet smelled like leather, iron, and something floral that had no business being in a warrior’s wardrobe. Someone in this fortress used bath oils and Serena was not going to unpack that right now.

Through the slats in the closet door, she watched as the biggest Fae warrior she had ever seen entered the room.

Not just tall, but broad, with shoulders that barely fit through the doorframe and arms thicker than Serena’s entire torso. His skin was the color of ash, and his eyes glowed a faint yellow in the darkness.

He wore black armor etched with silver runes.

But what made Serena’s heart stop was the medallion hanging around his neck.

A black serpent devouring a crown.

The same crest on the banner.

This wasn’t just a high-ranking officer. This was the second-in-command of the entire fortress. The High General’s right hand.

And they were hiding in his closet.

He moved through the room with the casual ease of someone completely at home.

Because he was at home. They were the intruders. Serena had to keep reminding herself of that because the indignation of being trapped kept overriding the logic of the situation.

He removed his gauntlets and tossed them onto the desk, humming a song as he went. The kind of tune someone hummed while cooking dinner or feeding their dragon. Not the kind associated with a man with a wall of nightmare swords.

He then poured himself a glass of something dark.

"He’s having a nightcap. We’re going to die because he wanted a nightcap," Elara whispered.

Serena’s hand covered Elara’s mouth before any other sounds left her throat. Because Elara’s whisper was not a whisper. It was a whisper the way Thor’s "inside voice" was an inside voice.

Elara licked her palm. Serena let go instantly. Disgusting. She wiped her hand on her leg.

He drank the contents in his glass in three long gulps. Serena wondered, briefly and insanely, what he was drinking. Then she remembered they were about to die and refocused.

He set the glass down with the satisfied exhale of a man who had earned his evening drink, then turned towards the closet

Elara grabbed Serena’s hand and gave it a squeeze. The universal hand-squeeze of if we die, I need you to know this was your idea.

Serena stopped breathing, her pulse thudding in her ears. Every muscle in her body coiled.

Beside her, she felt Elara go completely still, the way prey goes still when the predator is close enough to feel its breath.

He took a step closer.

Then another.

His hand reached for the closet door.