The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 431

Chapter 431: A Queen Saves Herself. Obviously.

Onyx’s head emerged from the blanket. He chirped once, bright and questioning, checking on his person.

"I am fine," Bellatrix said. She picked him up. Settled him on her lap. His purring resumed immediately, the relief of a dragon whose person had returned and whose person smelled like violence and victory. "There was a man. There was smoke. The man is asleep now. We are leaving."

Avalon emerged from his blanket, looked at Bellatrix, and climbed into her lap beside Onyx.

The dragon who had been too shy to approach the orphan children without a palm introduction had just voluntarily climbed into the lap of a woman who smelled like she had recently mauled a person, and the climbing was the climbing of a creature who had chosen his pack and his pack was a queen and a tuxedoed dragon and an attendant with blankets.

Bellatrix looked down at two baby dragons in her lap.

"Petra."

"Your Grace."

"When we return to the castle, we are having a very large glass of wine and we are telling no one about this. The mage, the shifting, the clawing. None of it."

"Of course, Your Grace."

"If Tiberon asks why we are late, the road was muddy."

"Understood, Your Grace."

The carriage began to move.

Her wolf settled back into her chest. Satisfied. Ready to wait another few years.

Bellatrix patted Onyx’s head.

"I still have it," she said to the carriage.

Petra did not argue. Petra had just watched a queen tackle a dark mage and knock him unconscious in under four seconds. Petra was never going to argue with Bellatrix Drakenfell again.

✦✦✦

TEN MINUTES LATER

Behind the carriage, a portal tore open on the eastern road and Archibald came through it at a speed that his knees were going to invoice him for tomorrow.

Archibald was too old for emergency portal deployments. He was too old for combat formations. He was too old for every goddamn thing happening today, and yet here he was, because the Crown Prince had said "find her" with a face that made "no" a career-ending answer, and Archibald’s career was the only thing his knees hadn’t fucking quit on yet.

Four mages followed. Combat-ready. Wards up. Hands lit with gold light that painted the tree line in sharp, moving shadows. They fanned out in a tactical spread that covered the road in both directions, scanning for threats, scanning for dark magic, scanning for the queen whose absence had put fear on the face of a king who did not do fear.

Archibald adjusted his spectacles. Scanned the road. Processed the scene.

The dark smoke had dissipated to a thin haze that clung to the ground like morning fog with commitment issues.

He stood. Adjusted his spectacles again, because the spectacles needed adjusting when his brain needed processing time, and his brain was currently processing the conclusion that the Queen of Drakenfell had encountered a dark mage on a forest road and had handled the encounter personally, physically, and with her claws.

No distress signal. No call for help. No waiting for the rescue party that four mages and one wheezing senior mage had scrambled through a portal to provide. She had handled her shit.

He turned to the nearest mage. "Bind him. Full suppression wards. Transport him to the castle for interrogation."

"And the queen, sir?"

Archibald looked west. The carriage tracks were heading home. The pace was brisk. The queen was alive, unharmed, and approximately ten minutes ahead of them, which meant she had dealt with the threat, returned to her carriage, and resumed her journey without waiting for the rescue that had been dispatched to save her.

"The queen," Archibald said, removing his spectacles and cleaning them on his robe, "does not appear to require our assistance."

The understatement of the century. The queen had not required their assistance the way a hurricane does not require a gentle breeze.

He put his spectacles back on.

"Bind the mage. Search the road for additional hostiles. I will report to the king."

The report was going to be interesting. Archibald had delivered hundreds of intelligence briefings to Tiberon Drakenfell over the course of his career. He had reported troop movements, enemy positions, assassination attempts, and diplomatic crises. He had never reported that the king’s wife had clawed a dark mage unconscious on a forest road.

He was going to need to adjust his spectacles several more times before delivering this one.