The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 145: Two Banshees & A Battle Axe Walk Into The Wrong-Ass Bedroom
The closet doors burst open.
They screamed at the top of their lungs like banshees being murdered. The noise made by two people who had fully accepted that they were about to die and wanted the entire fortress to know about it.
He let out a shout of his own, stumbling backwards. Whatever he had expected to find in his closet, two screaming women clearly wasn’t it.
Serena’s hands found a travel bag on the floor, and she flung it at his face with all her strength.
He caught it. A pure reflex.
He looked down at it. Then looked back up only to find an empty closet.
He dropped the bag and spun towards them, immediately reaching for the massive sword strapped to his back. Serena and Elara were already mid-sprint, halfway across his chambers.
He lunged. They split in opposite directions. Elara ran left. Serena ran right. The room was large enough that this actually worked for about four seconds.
Serena knocked over a large chair and slid across a table covered in maps, sending every piece of parchment flying.
Elara made it to his giant bed, vaulting on top of it like high ground would save her.
He zeroed in on Elara first.
Serena snatched a goblet from a side table, and hurled it. It pinged off his shoulder, then clattered to the floor.
He stopped, glancing at the goblet. Not angry. Baffled. Then turned slowly towards Serena, who was already running.
Elara used that half-second to grab a pillow the size of a small child and launched it at the back of his head.
He didn’t go down.
"WHY WON’T YOU FALL," Elara screamed.
Just as he turned back towards Elara, she catapulted another giant pillow. This one hit him square in the face.
In any other world, it would have been funny. In this one, he was barreling toward her with murder in his eyes.
Elara scrambled off the bed, which took five full strides.
"SERENA. HELP ME."
Serena grabbed one of the pillows that had fallen on the floor. She must’ve fallen out of the stupid tree this morning and hit every branch on the way down. Because she ran straight towards him instead of the exit, and whacked him on the back of the head with it, so hard feathers came out.
By the time he turned to face her, Elara had another pillow in hand and clobbered him again.
Serena moved to strike him again from the other side. But he caught her pillow mid-swing with one hand, looked at her, and pulled it gently out of her grip.
He grabbed Elara’s calmly with the same hand his sword was in.
They both stared at him. He stared at them. Feathers drifted between the three of them in the silence.
He walked to his bed, setting them down.
Elara’s eyes widened. "He’s putting them back."
Just as the words left her mouth, he pounced towards Serena with a velocity no Fae had a right to possess. They both screamed. Serena made a dash towards the door, but her boot caught on the edge of a fur rug.
She went down hard, pulling Elara with her. They landed in a heap at the base of the weapons rack.
The rack wobbled.
"I’ll make you a deal. You take her, and I’ll walk myself out," Elara offered, tone dead serious.
He paused momentarily, tilting his head. Either he was confused by that statement or he was actually considering it, Serena didn’t know.
He then continued charging towards Serena, blade raised.
The rack wobbled again.
A massive battle axe at the very top of the rack began to tilt forward.
Serena saw it happening in slow motion. The axe sliding free from its hooks. The blade catching the firelight as it fell. The arc of its descent perfectly aligned with the Fae warrior’s neck.
His eyes were focused on Serena, and he didn’t see it coming.
The axe completed its arc.
His head separated from his body with a wet, meaty sound that Serena knew she would hear in her nightmares for the rest of her life.
The head flew forward, propelled by the force of the blow, and landed directly in Serena’s lap.
She looked down.
The yellow eyes blinked up at her once.
Serena screamed. Elara screamed. They kept screaming.
The headless body stood there for a long, horrible moment, blood fountaining from the stump of its neck.
Then it swayed once, twice, and collapsed forward, directly towards Elara. She scrambled out of the way just in time, and the body crashed to the floor where she had been sitting, twitching once before going still.
Serena was still screaming. Her lungs burned, but she couldn’t stop. The head was still in her lap, and she couldn’t make her arms work to move it.
Elara grabbed the head by its hair and flung it across the room with a shriek of disgust.
It bounced off the wall.
They screamed for another ten seconds.
Maybe fifteen.
Possibly twenty.
Serena’s lungs ran out of air, and she switched to hyperventilating instead. Her vision swam, and black spots danced at the edges of her sight. She bent over double, hands on her knees, gasping for breath.
"What— how— what—" She couldn’t form complete sentences. Her brain had apparently vacated the premises.
Elara had gone completely pale. She stared at the headless body, then at the head, then at her own hands as if checking to make sure she hadn’t somehow done it.
"I didn’t—" Elara started.
"I know—" Serena wheezed.
"He just—"
"I saw—"
"His head—"
"I know—"
Elara clamped a hand over her mouth and made a sound that suggested her stomach was considering a violent rebellion.
"Bathing chamber," she managed, and then she was gone, disappearing through a door at the far end of the room.
Serena heard retching a moment later.
She stayed bent over, forcing herself to breathe slowly, in through the nose, out through the mouth, exactly like Alaric had taught her privately.
She was fairly certain he hadn’t anticipated the panic being caused by a severed head in her lap, but the breathing still worked.
In through the nose.
Out through the mouth.
Don’t look at the head.
In through the nose.
Out through the mouth.
Definitely don’t look at the head that is still staring at you with those horrible yellow eyes.
In through the—
She looked at the head.
The eyes were still glowing. They were definitely, unmistakably, still glowing. Faintly, but glowing. Which meant either he wasn’t fully dead, or Fae biology was even more horrifying than she had been led to believe.
Serena screamed again, kicked it across the room on pure instinct, and immediately felt guilty about it.
The head rolled into the travel bag on the floor.
"Sorry," she gasped at it, which was absurd, because it was a severed head and couldn’t hear her and also had probably been planning to kill her.
She needed to get a grip. "Actually, I’m not sorry," she corrected to no one.
