The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 349

Chapter 349: A Prince Who Should’ve Been Dead

River felt it.

She was holding Tristan’s hand, when something tore through her chest so violently she screamed.

Her hand flew to her heart. Her pink eyes flared, the magic surging in response to a grief she couldn’t name yet, a loss she couldn’t identify yet, a severing she couldn’t see but could feel in every cell of her body.

Atlas’s Fae blood-sense had tied him to her the day he signed the adoption decree. The connection flowed both ways. She had felt his emotions for twelve years as any fae daughter could with her father.

It became a quiet presence in the back of her awareness, the steady, warm signal of a father who was always there even when he was miles away.

The signal went dark.

"Father." The word came out of her at a whisper. Then louder. "Father."

She was running before the healers could stop her. Through the corridor, through the great hall, toward the eastern gate, because the signal had been coming from the east and the signal was gone and the absence of it was an answer she refused to accept.

✦✦✦

Tristan was already moving.

The prince who had been dying in a bed five minutes ago was on his feet, dark veins covering half his face, his magic unstable and dangerous and eating him alive, and none of it mattered because a messenger had just arrived at the healer’s wing with blood on his boots and the particular expression of a man carrying news that would end a kingdom.

"The King has fallen under a false parley. General Willow’s forces hold the eastern field."

Tristan heard the words. The words rearranged the world.

His Fae combat armor formed around him through sheer force of will, the magic answering his fury even as it consumed his body, gold and white plating materializing across his shoulders, his arms, his chest.

The full ceremonial battle raiment of the Prince of All Fae was worn in this moment by a man whose veins were black and whose eyes were gray and whose father was dead on a field that should have been sacred.

He moved toward the eastern gate at a speed that should have killed him.

Halfway there, a guard intercepted him. The guard’s face was white.

"Your Highness. The princess. She left through the eastern gate ten minutes ago. She was running toward the field."

The sound that came out of Tristan Aelindor was beyond language.

✦✦✦

THE EASTERN GATE

Lucian Moon arrived with three hundred wolves.

He rode south on instinct alone, the wolf inside him screaming a warning he couldn’t articulate, a pull toward Aelindris so violent it had overridden every obligation his kingdom demanded. His battalion was behind him, running in wolf form, covering ground at a pace that only wolves driven by their Alpha’s desperation could sustain.

THE FIELD

The field was a slaughter.

Twelve guards had stayed back because their king told them to. All slaughtered trying to retrieve his body after a false parley.

Atlas lay at the center. His crown was on the ground beside him. His sword was still in his hand.

General Willow’s forces had expanded into the forest, augmented soldiers sweeping the tree line, hunting.

River had been captured a hundred yards east of the clearing while running toward her father’s body.

Tristan came through the tree line with his magic detonating in every direction.

Green fire, corrupted, unstable, flickering between the bright emerald of Fae power and the sickly black of the corruption eating it, tore through the first line of Willow’s soldiers.

Three went down. Four more turned to engage. Tristan killed them with the specific, vicious efficiency of a dying man who had decided that the manner of his death was the last thing he controlled and intended to make it count.

He fought toward the clearing. Dark Fae soldiers engaged him in waves, their augmented speed matching his fury, their dark magic clashing with his corrupted Fae power in explosions that tore craters in the forest floor and sent shrapnel through the canopy.

His people were dying around him. Men who had served his father and intended to serve his son were falling in a forest that should have been safe, in a war that should have been impossible, against an enemy that had been their ally twelve hours ago.