The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

The carriage stopped.

The stopping was wrong. Bellatrix knew the difference between a scheduled stop and an unscheduled one, because she had been riding in carriages for thirty years and the rhythm of a planned halt involved deceleration, the coachman’s call, and the gentle rocking of a vehicle coming to rest. This halt involved none of those things. This halt involved the horses screaming, the carriage lurching sideways, and a sound from outside that was neither wind nor weather.

Dark smoke poured through the tree line from both sides of the road.

The smoke was thick, chemical, carrying the acrid signature of magic rather than fire. It rolled across the road with the deliberate speed of a substance that was being directed rather than dispersed, which meant a mage, which meant an attack, which meant Bellatrix Drakenfell’s day had just taken a turn she had failed to budget for.

She looked at Petra. Petra looked at her. Both women arrived at the same assessment simultaneously, because Petra had worked for Bellatrix long enough to read her employer’s face the way navigators read stars, and the face was saying danger in a language that required no translation.

"Stay in the carriage," Bellatrix said. Her voice had changed. The theatrical register, the performative warmth, the divorce-campaign delivery she had been using all day was gone. What remained was command. She had run a castle for three decades and her ability to issue orders under pressure was a skill she had never stopped using. "Lock the doors. Hide both dragons."

Onyx was on his feet immediately. His gold eyes were bright, alert, locked on the carriage door with the focused intensity of a creature whose protective instincts had activated and whose instincts were saying go with a volume his small body could barely contain.

His wings flared. His tail went rigid. He moved towards the door.

"No." Bellatrix’s voice hit him like a wall. She loved this goddamn dragon and was telling him no because the no was the thing that kept him alive. "You stay with Petra. You stay hidden. That is final."

Onyx’s head fell. The falling was immediate, full-body, his wings tucking, his tail curling, his entire posture collapsing from combat readiness into the devastated compliance of a creature who wanted to protect his person and was being denied the protection and the denial was breaking his heart in real time.

Avalon was already under the seat. The blue-silver dragon had processed the smoke, the screaming horses, and the tone of Bellatrix’s voice, and had arrived at the conclusion that the seat was the safest location and the conclusion required zero additional discussion. His silver eyes watched from the shadows, wide and frightened.

Petra scooped Onyx off the floor and placed him beside Avalon. She pulled two blankets from the supply crate and covered both dragons, tucking the edges around their bodies with the fast, practiced hands of a woman whose job had expanded from attendant to dragon concealment specialist over the course of a single day.

Two small lumps beneath two blankets. Silent. Hidden. Onyx’s purring had stopped entirely, which was the most alarming thing Petra had experienced today, because Onyx’s purring was constant and its absence meant the dragon was frightened and a frightened dragon was a dragon who might do something brave and stupid.

Bellatrix opened the carriage door and stepped out.

The smoke was thicker on the road. The horses were stamping, wild-eyed, their harnesses straining against the weight of a carriage they wanted to drag away from whatever was producing the darkness on both sides of the road. The coachman was standing in front of the horses, blade drawn.

His blade was steady. His face was grey. He was outmatched and he knew it, and the knowing was in his eyes, and the eyes were saying please let this be a robbery because a robbery I can survive.

Bellatrix moved in front of him.

"Your Majesty, get back in the—"

"Stay behind me, Ronald."

The coachman’s mouth closed, because the queen had used his name, and the queen using his name meant the queen was serious, and the queen being serious meant the hierarchy had been established and the hierarchy put the queen in front.

The smoke parted.

A figure emerged from the dark. Male. Tall. Wearing the kind of cloak that announced its owner’s profession before its owner opened his mouth, because only dark mages wore cloaks that moved independently of the wind and produced their own atmospheric effects. The cloak was theatrical. The smoke was theatrical. The entrance was theatrical. Everything about this man was designed to intimidate, and the design was effective on most people and was about to be profoundly ineffective on Bellatrix Drakenfell.

The mage stopped. His eyes found the carriage. Found the crest on the door. Found the woman standing in front of it with no weapon, no guard detail, and an expression that was migrating from concern to irritation at a speed that was unusual for a woman being ambushed on a forest road.

"Interesting." His voice carried the practiced menace of a man who rehearsed his threatening sentences before deploying them. "The Queen of Drakenfell. In her carriage. With no guards."

Bellatrix rolled her eyes.

The eye roll was comprehensive, full-rotation, covering both eyes and involving a head tilt that communicated a level of disdain that the common tongue lacked sufficient vocabulary to express.

"Oh, for fuck’s sake."

She stepped forward towards the mage.

She had been dealing with problems all day, problems that included a mural, a divorce, an orphanage, curtains, a mage’s schedule she needed to avoid, children she could not remember the names of, and a baby dragon in a tuxedo.

Her tolerance for additional problems had been exhausted somewhere around the time Jorin told her she was going crazy and she had agreed.

"Let me save you some time," she said. "You are a dark mage. You have produced smoke, which is dramatic and unnecessary. You are wearing a cloak that is doing most of the work your personality should be doing. You have stopped my carriage on the one day, the ONE day, that I decided to do something generous with my time, which I never do, because I am a selfish woman and I am aware of it and the awareness is the only self-improvement I intend to make."