The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

Welcome back to Lake Fun! Tonight’s headliner: a king picks up a bow and arrow and reminds the boat why he’s the goat.

But first, let’s observe the vampires in their natural habitat.

A horde hit the frozen lake where the golden bubble boat had been thirty seconds prior.

Hundreds strong sprinted onto the ice. The sprint lasted about four seconds before the ice cracked and swallowed half of them. The other half kept running across the backs of the ones that fell through because teamwork.

To the right, an enterprising vampire tried crawling flat on its stomach to distribute weight. Smart. The twelve vampires who sprinted over it were not. It survived the ice. It did not survive the stampede.

The third wave watched the first two waves drown and die and said "our turn" with the enthusiasm of a group that had learned absolutely nothing and wasn’t planning to start.

A particularly large one punched through the ice with its fists, deciding to go under instead of over. It dove through it triumphantly and was immediately eaten by something beneath the surface that was bigger than it was. The food chain in this lake was not on anyone’s side.

There were so many of them, that they were gaining on the boat.

Serena raised another arrow.

Her vision was already swimming, the edges of the crater smearing into watercolor, and she could feel the gold magic guttering in Gavriel’s chest like a flame in a draft. They were both on borrowed time.

"Whatever you’re thinking, Frostborne, I’m going to need you to stop. I’m fine," Gav said immediately.

She did not dignify that with a response.

Her aim held anyway because her aim always held. The muscles in her arms had been trained since childhood, and muscle memory operated on a different power grid than the rest of her body, a grid that kept the lights on even when the main generator was shutting down.

She fired.

The gold arrow punched through the dome and struck a vampire dead center. The creature detonated into ash, the kill clean and instant, and the chain reaction rippled outward from the point of impact like a shockwave in a powder magazine.

A third of the vampires surrounding the kill zone erupted with it, bodies disintegrating in cascading bursts of ash and gold light that turned the ice and dark lake beneath into a strobe of destruction.

The vampires that survived closed the gaps their dead left behind without slowing.

They kept coming. Of course they did.

Serena fired again.

Another vampire detonated along with a cluster of fucks around it.

Tiberon stared at the ash, then at the arrows, then at the girl responsible for both. His expression didn’t change. But his eyes tracked the chain reaction the way a commander’s eyes tracked an asset being deployed at full capacity while also swaying on her feet and needing a nap.

Before Serena could draw another breath, the squid made its opinion known.

"This fucking bastard again," Gav sighed before remembering Tiberon was right there. Bellatrix might be able to talk like a sailor but Gavriel was the Gamma. "With respect, Alpha, fuck this squid."

Tiberon considered it. "Agreed."

Massive spiked tentacles exploded through the ice on every side of the boat, erupting upward in black columns of barbed flesh that slammed against the golden bubble with impacts that reverberated through the hull and rattled their teeth.

One wrapped around the boat’s midsection. A second coiled over the top of the dome, spikes dragging across the gold surface with a shriek that sounded like metal on metal.

CRACK.

Ice cracked. The boat groaned. The bubble held. The trajectory was becoming a problem.

"It’s pulling us under," Gavriel observed.

"I noticed," Tiberon said.

"Do we have a plan?"

"She’s the plan." Tiberon nodded at Serena, who was already aiming at the floor of the boat.

She was about to shoot through her own boat, through ice, into a squid, from a standing position, while half-conscious. Nobody questioned this because questioning Serena’s aim and methods was like questioning gravity.

She fired.

The arrow passed through the bottom of the vessel as cleanly as it had passed through the dome and punched through the ice sheet below them into the black.

BOOM.

The squid fucked around. The squid found out.

Gold lightning erupted beneath the frozen surface. The entire lake lit up from underneath like a storm cloud viewed from below. It was pretty in the way a nuke that falls in a lake full of monsters would be.

Then the light went out.

Serena saw spots. Her breath hitched, a wet, stuttering sound that belonged in a hospital and not on a battlefield. Her vision greyed at the edges, the crater narrowing to a tunnel, and she swayed on legs that had been lying about their structural integrity for the last three minutes.

Her knees buckled.

Tiberon reacted before Fin could shift his grip. The King’s hand closed around the green bow as it fell from her fingers, his other hand snatching an arrow from her quiver in the same motion, the transfer so seamless it looked rehearsed.

He raised the bow, nocked the arrow, and drew with the practiced fluidity of a man who had trained and mastered with every weapon Drakenfell produced.

Fin caught Serena the instant she collapsed, pulling her against his chest, his arm banding around her shoulders, her head falling against his collarbone. Her body was boneless, spent, the strings cut on a marionette that had been performing on willpower alone for the last forty minutes.

"Got you, baby," he whispered, fierce and low, his mouth against her hair, his eyes locked forward because tenderness was a luxury and the battle was still very much happening around them.

Tiberon fired.

A tentacle surged toward the bubble and the arrow met it mid-lunge. The limb exploded in a burst of ash.

For one illuminated second, the lake showed silhouettes under the ice of a zoo curated by a psychopath and funded by dark magic. Then the lights went out and ignorance was a blessing again.

"You can shoot, Alpha." Gavriel gave a nod of approval. "Is there anything you can’t do?"

"Tolerate stupid questions during combat. Next."

Gavriel received the answer with the acceptance of a man who had been verbally executed by better and was still alive to be stupid another day.