The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

SHADOWCLAW — ALPHA QUARTERS

The door closed. Serena opened her mouth, fully locked and loaded with the argument she had been polishing since the moment she realized the scale of the ’small celebration.’ Key phrases included ’four hundred wolves,’ ’casual my ass,’ and ’premeditated.’

Fin’s mouth found hers before the first word made it out.

The kiss was immediate and hungry, carrying every ounce of pent-up energy from three hours of watching his mate charm his kingdom in his colors. His patience had been rationed across four hundred handshakes, elder conversations, and a speech that made his chest ache with pride. The rationing was over. The patience was spent.

She tried to stay mad. The mad was justified. Exhibit A: the "casual" sapphire gown. Exhibit B: the surprise crowning announcement. Exhibit C: the speech she had been given enough time to blink twice before delivering. Exhibit D: the grin that said he would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

His lips found her jaw. The anger stumbled.

His mouth moved to her neck. The anger took a knee.

His teeth grazed her mark, and the anger packed its bags and left without notice.

"I’m mad at you, Finnick," she managed.

"I know." Kiss on her collarbone. "You’re gorgeous when you’re mad." Kiss beneath her ear. "You’ve been composing a lecture for the last hour. I could feel it through the matebond." Kiss on her throat. "The lecture had bullet points. I felt those too."

"It had three bullet points."

"I’m sure they were excellent." His hands found her waist. "You can deliver them after."

"After what?"

His answer was physical. He walked her backwards, mouth never leaving her skin, until the backs of his legs hit the bed. He sat, pulling her down with him.

She landed on top of him. His hands were already moving, fingers finding the lacing at her back, working the ties with a speed that suggested the lacing was an obstacle and the obstacle had been identified and the identification had produced urgency.

The lacing held.

Fin’s fingers fumbled on the second knot. The fumbling was foreign to hands that negotiated treaties and wielded blades and had never once encountered a knot they could not solve, and the knot was winning, and the winning was producing a sound from Fin’s throat that was equal parts frustration and disbelief.

"Who tied this?" he muttered against her mouth.

"I did."

"You tied it like you were securing a military tent."

"I tied it like a woman who wanted her dress to stay on."

His hands abandoned the knots. She felt the shift in his grip, the transition from untying to tearing, the specific tensing of forearms that preceded the destruction of fabric, and the tensing activated a reflex that had been building since the moment she put this dress on.

Oh hell no.

Serena moved.

She was across his chambers before his hands closed. Alpha speed.

One second on the bed, the next second against the far wall, fifteen feet of distance between them, the sapphire dress still intact.

Fin’s arms closed around air. His hands, which had been gripping the waist of a woman who was no longer there, completed the gripping motion on nothing.

He looked at his hands. Looked at the bed. Looked across the room.

Serena was standing against the wall with both hands behind her back, already working the lacing herself with unwavering focus. She was going to remove this dress safely if it was the last thing she did.

Fin was off the bed in a flash, the speed of a horny Alpha who wanted his mate naked but she was now across the room.

"Fin. Do not rip it." Her voice was stone. Granite. Load-bearing. "I love it."

His lips were against the mark on her neck before she finished ’I love it.’ He sucked, producing a sensation that traveled from her neck to her spine to every location south of her spine with the speed of a nerve impulse and the force of a detonation.

Serena’s fingers faltered on the knot. One second of lost focus. She recovered, then resumed with pure determination.

"Fin." Her voice was strained, operating at the intersection of aroused and resolute, which were two states that should have been mutually exclusive and were coexisting through sheer force of will. "I am removing this dress. You are going to wait."

He did not wait. His mouth moved along the mark, slow, deliberate, tracing the shape of it with his tongue while her fingers worked behind her back with increasing speed.

He was going to rip it.

She pulled away so quickly his arms were up again where she had just been.

His eyes flashed molten gold, his wolf surging. The frustration was clear.

He would survive.

From across the room, she pulled the second knot free.

Fin’s lips were back on her mark by the time she got to the third.

She twisted sideways to reach the fifth knot.

His mouth migrated from her mark to her collarbone to the hollow of her throat, and the migrating was following her with the magnetic commitment of a man whose lips had identified a target and whose target was moving and whose lips were adjusting trajectory in real time.

She turned her back to get better access to the sixth. He followed. She took two steps towards their closet.

He followed. Every step she took, he took. Every pivot she made, his mouth adjusted. The choreography was absurd, a woman navigating her chambers in a sapphire gown while unlacing it from behind while an Alpha trailed behind her with his lips permanently attached to whatever skin was available.

It would have been adorable under any other, less dire circumstances.

The dress was her mission and the mission was in progress and the mission did not accommodate distractions regardless of how warm the distractions were.

The final knot released.

She pulled the dress forward, sliding it off her shoulders, catching it before gravity could take it, lowering it with both hands to the floor with the careful, reverent handling of a woman placing a sleeping child in a crib. The silk pooled at her feet. She stepped out of it. Bent. Picked it up. Walked into their closet with Fin still attached to her.

He didn’t let her hang it up, already picking her up.

She tossed it on the closet floor. It physically pained her to do it.

He carried her to the bed.

"I love that dress," she said against his mouth, because the point required one final reiteration.

"I know you do." He pulled back. Looked at her. His eyes were dark, his breathing ragged, and the expression on his face was the expression of a man whose mate had just alpha-speeded across a room to protect a garment and whose feelings about the alpha-speeding were complicated and mostly composed of arousal. "I will buy you ten more. You can love all of them. Later."

"Promise you will never rip them."

"I promise nothing."

"Fin."

"I promise to try. Those are the terms."

She opened her mouth to negotiate the terms but his lips were back on hers and he was tearing the lingerie she had on. Typical.