The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 167: His Sulk Was Kind Of Adorable

The door to Maelor’s study opened without a knock.

Gavriel Sterling walked in like a man who had been holding himself together with duct tape and sarcasm for the last twenty minutes and had officially run out of both.

His eyes were red. Not the kind of red that came from being tired. The kind that came from seeing something that rewrote your understanding of what was possible, and none of the new information was good.

He locked onto Serena and moved.

"Frostborne," Gav said, voice rough, reaching for her. "Come here."

Fin’s arms locked around Serena’s waist before the words finished landing. He pulled her tighter against his chest, and for three full seconds, he did not let go.

Then he caught himself.

His arms loosened enough that Serena could stand.

She stood, legs still unsteady, and Gav closed the distance in two steps. He pulled her into him hard enough that her boots left the ground for half a second, his arms wrapping around her with the kind of desperation that didn’t care about witnesses.

His face buried in her hair. He didn’t say anything and the silence was more unsettling than anything he could have said.

"I’m okay," Serena said against his shoulder.

"You were underwater. Your eyes were closed. And he was standing over you like he owned you." Gav’s voice cracked on the last word, and he cleared his throat like that would fix it. "So forgive me if ’I’m okay’ doesn’t really land right now."

"Gav." She pulled back enough to see his face. His jaw was tight, his eyes still red. "Don’t be afraid of him."

Gav’s face cycled through three distinct emotions, all of which translated roughly to: Woman, I am begging you to have normal problems.

He let out a breath that was trying very hard not to be a laugh. "You’re unbelievable. You know that, right?"

His eyes then cut to Hyran. The look could have stripped paint.

Hyran put both hands in the air. "I said nothing that wasn’t accurate."

He had the moral high ground of a man standing in a ditch, and he would defend it with vigor.

"You said something."

"You looked rattled."

"In front of people, Hyran."

"In front of mages. We gossip."

Gav opened his mouth. Closed it. Decided that murdering Hyran in Nightspire was a headache he didn’t need tonight.

Fin pulled Serena back into his lap without a word, resettling her against his chest. He locked his arms around her waist with the decisive finality of a man reclaiming territory he had been unreasonably generous in lending.

If he had planted a flag in her, it would have been less subtle. Conversation over. Dibs restored.

She glanced up at him. His jaw was set, his eyes were fixed somewhere past Gav’s left shoulder. He radiated the quiet, dignified sulk of a man who had just performed an act of extraordinary emotional charity and wanted everyone to know he would not be doing it again.

It was kind of adorable, and she fought the urge to grin. He’d earned the sulk.

His hand rested on her thigh, fingers drawing absent circles. A grounding habit she’d noticed he did when his mind was working faster than the room was moving.

A grounding habit, or a territorial one. Possibly both. Fin’s subconscious didn’t do anything without layers.

Maelor broke the silence with the precision of a man who had never once in his life read a room.

"You touched something in Orosia with a dark Fae signature."

Serena’s brow furrowed.

Fin spoke behind her. "She stopped a blade laced with dark magic with her pink magic. And she was sucked into a sinkhole in a lake that was questionable."

Serena blinked. She had forgotten about both of those things. In her defense, the rest of the day had been a lot. The blade was maybe the fourth most alarming thing that had happened. The sinkhole in the lake didn’t even make the list.

"That’s likely the trigger," Maelor said. "Fae magic is more fluid than mage magic. It doesn’t behave like a wall. It behaves like water. You don’t stop dark Fae magic with Fae magic. You stop it with your non-Fae magic, or you move out of the way."

"She didn’t know that," Fin clipped, like he knew. He was right, but it was cute how defensive he was being of her. She gave his arm a squeeze.

"No," Maelor agreed. "And the dark magic exploited the contact. Her Fae signature touched it, and it followed her home like a parasite riding a current."

The room absorbed that.

Gav looked at Serena with an expression that very clearly communicated: You brought home a magical parasite. I am not surprised.

Maelor continued. "You wielding Fae magic with zero training is the most absurd thing I’ve heard. Irresponsible and stupid. You weren’t anywhere near that six weeks ago." He paced like a man personally offended by the timeline and it was all rhetorical. He paused thinking, and Serena opened her mouth.

"If it helps, I was just as surprised as you are."

Maelor spun around, and she couldn’t tell if that took the wind out of his sails or made it worse. His robes did something dramatic on the turn. Serena was fairly sure that was intentional.

"I hadn’t used it before Orosia. When I called for my gold, pink came instead. Magic poured in from other Fae in the room. More than I could even use."

Maelor’s eyebrows rose, studying her for a moment. "Don’t repeat those words in that way ever again if you value your life."

Serena wanted to laugh but held off. She wondered how he’d respond if he knew they were bowing too.

Hyran shot Serena a warning look clearly saying, Please stop poking the dramatic Fae-mage.

He was about to step in when Maelor spun on his heels dramatically.

"I see it now," he shot a look at Hyran. "I will train her."

He said it like he was accepting a destiny foretold by the stars.

Aeron snorted. "How noble of you Maelor. You will take one for the team and train the prodigy of the millennium."

Maelor absorbed the sarcasm the way marble absorbs rain: completely unbothered and slightly shinier for it.

Serena’s face went red. "Oh I’m not—"

Maelor held up his hand, cutting her off. "Was there a significant stressor beforehand? Dark Fae tethers feed on heightened emotional states."

"She stormed two throne rooms and rescued hostages," Gav answered flatly. "In the same day."

Serena swallowed. She didn’t comment. That wasn’t the stressful part of her day.

But Aeron’s eyes landed on her, and the look in them was quiet and knowing. He wasn’t thinking about the throne rooms. He was thinking about catching her in the hall with a rash on her neck. The way she’d asked him for a portal back to Drakenfell without saying goodbye to Fin.

She held his gaze for half a second, then looked down at the floor. Heat crept in her cheeks for no reason.

Maelor turned to Hyran. "The first cloak failed."

He announced it the way a chef might announce a soufflé collapsed. Clinical disappointment. No accountability.

"We are aware," Hyran said dryly.

"I have theories on why. None of them are confirmed. We are still working through it." Maelor’s tone suggested that ’working through it’ meant ’I’ve been working on this for six weeks and I am not pleased.’

"I can do a second cloak tonight. It will hold longer than the first. But I want to be transparent, the tether is unique, and every layer I add is a bandage that will make it worse until I understand the full architecture."

"Then what’s the permanent solution?" Fin snapped.

"Time. Research. And ideally, a setting where I can work on her without interruption." Maelor paused. "Drakenfell tonight is not safe. Their wards are limited against this type of magic. Nightspire is purpose-built for it."

Fin’s grip tightened. The matebond translated his feelings in real time, and the current headline was: Over my dead body.

Aeron, who had been quiet long enough that Serena had nearly forgotten he was there, cleared his throat.

"You’re forgetting Shadowclaw has wards, Maelor." His voice was mild. The mildness of a man about to make a point. "And that you and I studied this together."

Maelor looked at him. His left eye twitched. Barely. But Serena caught it.

"Under the same masters. In the same program." Aeron tilted his head. "Where, if I recall correctly, I ranked one position above you in applied ward theory."

"One position," Maelor repeated. "In a single discipline. Out of forty-seven."

He said "forty-seven" the way someone plays an ace they’ve been holding for a decade.

"Funny how you remember the exact number of disciplines but not the ranking."

Hyran pinched the bridge of his nose. "Can we focus."

Maelor turned back to Serena. "I’ll do the second cloak now. It will be stronger. Brace yourself."

Serena nodded. She sat up straighter in Fin’s lap and met Maelor’s gaze the way she met everything: with the quiet, infuriating composure of a woman who had survived worse.

Maelor raised his hand towards her forehead.

Fin’s arms tightened. She felt the surge of his alarm through their matebond before his mouth opened.

She put her hand over his where it gripped her hip and squeezed. A silent, I know. It’s okay.

It was not okay. He was not okay. But she squeezed, and he held, and for three seconds, the matebond carried nothing but her steadiness into his chaos.

Maelor’s fingers touched her skin.

Fin roared.

The sound tore through the study, raw and wolfish and so full of fury that the runes on the walls flickered. The way a teacup receives a hurricane.

Maelor, to his credit, did not stop. He had either expected the roar, or he was the kind of man who finished what he started regardless of whether an apex predator was screaming two feet from his ear. Both options were equally terrifying.

Because watching it happen, watching her go limp, watching her eyes roll shut and her head fall back, was something Fin Shadowclaw could not endure quietly no matter how many times he was warned.