The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

Serena: Gav, if there are more of those—

Gavriel: Then I’ll cut those too. Anyways, rivers are fine. Bathtubs. Puddles, even. But lakes are off the list. I’m drawing a firm personal boundary with lakes.

He swam towards the statue using the fading glow of her arrow to guide him, the gold light pulsing like a heartbeat in the distance, growing brighter with every stroke. He moved at speed with Serena against his chest, his green blade raised in his free hand, eyes scanning the dark water around them.

The lakebed rumbled. The vibration traveled through the stone and up through the water and into his teeth, a low, grinding tremor that communicated a single piece of information: the thing he had just cut a tentacle off of was bigger than the tentacle suggested. Something enormous shifted in the abyss beyond the statue’s light, something that displaced enough water to create a current, something with more than one spiked limb and very fresh opinions about the man who had severed one of them.

Serena: There are more.

Gavriel: And if they come near you, then they will face an aggressive green glowing Gamma named Gavriel.

Serena: Why do I have a feeling you have been waiting to say that?

Gavriel: It really rolls off the tongue.

A second tentacle shot from the darkness.

Gavriel was ready.

The swing was faster this time, cleaner, his body learning the weight and reach of the green blade in real time, and the tentacle split apart three feet from Serena’s body. The severed end recoiled, dissolving into ink-black silt before it hit the lakebed, and the creature retreated again with another grinding vibration that sounded less like pain and more like patience.

It was learning too.

He didn’t waste a second. Arm still locked around Serena, he kicked toward the statue with everything he had, the green light flaring brighter around them as if his magic understood the urgency and was pouring more fuel into the shield.

Serena reached out and her fingers brushed the dragon’s carved head.

Gold light erupted from the point of contact like a sunrise detonating underwater.

The blast radiated outward in a sphere of steady, pulsing brilliance that swallowed the dark in every direction, filling the lake from floor to frozen ceiling with a glow so total and so absolute that the shadows didn’t retreat so much as cease to exist. The lakebed was illuminated in its entirety for the first time in however many centuries the statue had been sitting here, and the world beneath the ice was suddenly, stunningly, terrifyingly visible.

Ancient stone stretched in every direction, carved with runes and symbols that pulsed in response to the gold light. The lakebed was a floor, engineered and intentional, and the statue stood at its center like a monument to whatever civilization had built this place and submerged it.

In the distance, something gold glimmered.

A token was resting in a second dragon statue’s mouth.

The statue was identical in size to the first.

Serena’s stomach dropped. That was too far for the amount of air they had left.

Gavriel didn’t let the doubt settle long enough to grow roots.

A green bow fabricated in his free hand the same way the sword had, Fae magic compressing into a shape his instincts designed and his conscious mind rubber-stamped half a second later.

His other hand was already reaching for her quiver, pulling an arrow free with the practiced efficiency of a man who had watched Serena nock a thousand times and absorbed the mechanics through osmosis and obsession.

He let go of her for one second to load.

He aimed past the statue and fired.

The arrow streaked through the water faster than any arrow had a right to travel in a medium that should have slowed it to a crawl, ancient magic overriding fluid dynamics with the indifference of a system that had been doing this longer than physics had opinions.

A gold rope burst from its tail a moment later, snapping taut the instant the arrow embedded in the lakebed beyond the statue.

Gav: Hold onto me, not the rope.

Serena’s arms locked around him without question. His hand grabbed the rope and it yanked them forward, pulling them through the water in a sweeping arc that curved upward as it approached the statue, the trajectory bowing like a pendulum swing.

He let go at the apex.

The top of the arc deposited them at the dragon’s head instead of the lakebed, right at mouth-level, right where the token sat. If he’d aimed at the statue, the rope would have pulled them to its base and Serena would have had to swim upward to reach the mouth. Firing past it turned the rope’s trajectory into an arc whose peak aligned with the dragon’s head.

Physics. Geometry. The kind of thinking that happened in fractions of seconds when you’d been trained for combat since you were old enough to hold a blade and had spent the last three hours watching magic ropes behave like grappling hooks.

Serena: Smart.

Gav: I have my moments. They’re rare. Appreciate them.

Serena grabbed the token from between the dragon’s stone teeth and wrapped the chain around her wrist in one fluid motion, the metal cold against her skin, the magic inside it pulsing in recognition the instant it touched her.

Last time, the token had been the thing that got them inside the chamber to get the artifact from the ancestors. There was no question in Gavriel’s mind that this was a repeat.

He yanked her back against his chest and launched upward.

He kicked hard, swimming with every ounce of Alpha strength his body owned, driving them towards the surface with the singular focus of a man whose lungs were screaming and whose matebond was delivering Serena’s identical desperation directly into his own chest.

The spike in her leg was still pulsing. He could feel the dark magic broadcasting through the water like a homing signal, and every second it stayed embedded was another second the thing in the dark knew exactly where they were.

They needed air. His lungs burned white-hot, and hers were spasming against him, her ribcage hitching in the involuntary rhythm of a body trying to inhale and being denied. The pressure squeezed them from every direction, fists of water compressing their bodies as they fought upward.