The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 175: No Threesome Survives A Blood Oath

Fifty warriors across Drakenfell simultaneously grabbed their arms, swore, and started running in the same direction.

Thor Crushturn was having the best, most lucky, lightning-strikes-only-once night of his life. He was staring at his own reflection, mid-thrust in a redhead omega, trying to convince her brunette friend that his bedroom ceiling was "mirrored for strategic purposes," when his mark went off.

He pulled out, then shoved them both off of his bed.

"Duty calls."

The redhead smacked first, her friend second. Neither believed him the mirror was strategic.

On the castle’s west lawn, a golden dragon landed with a roar that rattled the windows. An unconscious Alpha Prince lay across his back, one arm hanging limp over his side, muttering the same word over and over like a prayer.

"Serena... Serena..."

The dragon roared again, louder this time, trying to get the attention of the guards. Three of them spilled their drinks. One dropped his sword.

Velkaris shifted his weight impatiently, as if their processing speed was a personal insult.

Directly under them, three alphas and three master mages were trying to save a girl’s life.

Maelor grunted, finally able to push his green magic into her, breaking through the barrier of darkness.

✦✦✦

She didn’t know when the running had started or how long it had been going on. Time didn’t work here. Direction didn’t either.

A dark tendril cracked like a whip, catching her with a sting and wrapping itself around her.

It yanked her back towards what looked like a pool of black water. More tendrils wrapped around her legs.

Her gold magic sat behind a wall she couldn’t break. She reached for pink, but her insides burned and none came.

The tendrils dragged her faster, and then the ground dropped out from under her. She was waist deep in the black water before she could scream.

In the distance, a black wolf saw and sprinted towards her with everything he had.

Dexmon shifted back mid-stride, his body reforming from wolf to man without slowing down.

He slid, arms locking around her, then lowered himself and began to use his weight as leverage to pull her up.

The tendrils wrapped around his ankle and leg, but it wasn’t enough to move him yet.

"Dex, I don’t have any magic to break it. You should run." She said it with the calm of someone who had stopped hoping and started calculating how long she had left.

Her acceptance bled through their matebond, and his insides twisted.

"No. I’m not going anywhere," he said firmly. "Hold onto me, baby."

She wrapped her arms around his neck, a sob escaping her mouth. "I don’t want to pull you under, D-D-Dex."

"I’m not letting go," he said in her ear, his voice raw and steady.

Her whole body shook against him, and Dex felt the exact weight of her trust land on his shoulders like an anvil wrapped in silk. It was the heaviest thing he had ever carried, and he would have died before he dropped it.

"Channel Velkaris into me."

Velkaris didn’t give her a moment to find him. The dragon’s fire slammed into her through whatever tether connected them, hot and golden and furious, flooding through her body.

She pushed it into Dexmon and the black magic touching them began to melt, hissing and recoiling from the heat like a living thing that had finally touched something it couldn’t consume.

It wasn’t enough to kill it or completely stop it. But the tendrils let go of Serena’s legs and Dexmon pulled her out and away from the blackness.

"Wrap your legs around me," he said in her ear, which, under literally any other circumstances, would have gone in a very different direction. "Don’t stop channeling."

She wrapped her legs around him and he moved them through the darkness, as far away as possible from the source.

When it was out of sight, he stopped, a circle of golden flame burning outward from where they stood. She tried to stand but his arms tightened around her. There was no universe where he was going to let her down.

He pushed his forehead against hers, and breathed her in.

"Let’s problem solve. Fire gets this stuff back away from us. What do we need to get out?"

"My gold magic is blocked. My pink magic ... I need more." Her voice broke. She was emotional because she’d just seen Dexmon tortured and almost die. And she stupidly forgot she could channel Velkaris, Flaeron, and potentially storm dragons in her fear from not thinking clearly. And now they were stuck here.

Dexmon’s voice broke her out of her spiral."If you cry, I’m going to cry, and then we’re both crying in a dark magic hellscape."

A wet laugh came out of her. She pressed her face into his chest to muffle it because laughing in a nightmare felt like breaking a rule.

Dexmon pressed his lips to the top of her head.

"I love you, Dex," she whispered. "I’m sorry I ended things the way I did. You were acting so strange. I should have known."

"Serena, it’s not your fault. It’s okay," Dex said, caressing her cheek with one of his thumbs, while his other arm still held like iron around her.

Serena shook her head and looked away from him, covering her face with both hands. Her mind went to Fin and her heart split open.

She’d never been this distraught over something in her life. Fated matebonds were a blessing, but nobody ever talks about what happens when fate points in two directions. The weight of loving two people who loved her, and knowing she was the blade that would cut one of them open no matter which way she turned.

The guilt was corrosive. It ate through every wall she’d built and settled into the hollow spaces like something that intended to stay.

Her grief flooded into him, and he stiffened, alarm bells ringing. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to take it from her immediately. To carry it for her.

"Hey... what’s wrong, baby?" he asked. "I’ll fix it."

Wrong thing to say. That seemed to make it infinitely worse.

She tried to take a steadying breath but it turned into a sob. Her body began to glow pink.

Pink wasn’t something he’d seen until tonight when he escaped. But at this point, if Serena had sprouted wings, he’d have noted it, adjusted his grip, and continued the conversation. His threshold for surprise had been shattered within the first twenty four hours of knowing her.

Suddenly, her hands moved from covering her face to the sides of her head. Pain lanced through her skull.

"Serena, what’s—"

He didn’t finish.

Pink magic detonated out in all directions, the darkness disintegrating on impact.

✦✦✦

Dexmon sat up on Velkaris, gasping for air, his hands gripping the dragon’s scales, his chest heaving, as the waking world slammed back into him with the subtlety of a war hammer.

"Prince Dexmon?" Captan Halvek called.

He wore the face of a man who had sprinted across the castle grounds because his arm was on fire and arrived to find his prince draped across a dragon like laundry. He was processing it exactly as well as expected.

Dex swung his leg over Velkaris and stood, swaying once before steadying himself. His first coherent thought was: Where is she?

He moved at Alpha speed, not paying Halvek any attention. Velkaris groaned, and shot Halvek a look that said, You deal with him. I’m done.

Halvek turned on his heels, just in time to see the others pouring in.

Every Hidden Flame member’s mark had been burning, blood oaths pulling them towards the castle where Serena was.

Fifty grown warriors, yanked out of their lives like fish on a line, all heading to the same girl. Again.

The heat stopped and blood oaths released .

Nobody moved for a full five seconds. This was the second time this week. Same damn distance. Same timing. And the same damn warriors.

Halvek exhaled through his nose and looked at the group. They stood, some barely dressed, on the west lawn, breathing hard, having abandoned everything from dinners to debriefs to, in one notable case, two omegas and a strategic mirror.

"Go home," Halvek called. "If it goes off again, we run again."