The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate-Chapter 158: Tiberon Held Pink Swords And Didn’t Say A Damn Word
Serena looked up at the king. "I come in peace."
’I come in peace’ felt like something a person said right before everything stopped being peaceful. She was aware of the irony.
She looked at the woman, who had already pivoted and was circling back with both blades raised, murder written in her eyes.
Serena understood what this was. That woman was a pawn in a game they were all meant to play. She could feel the woman’s emotions bleeding through the Fae energy that saturated the room, and what she felt was duty, iron-hard and unyielding.
"I will not hurt her."
Serena said it with the calm certainty of someone who had absolutely no backup plan if the woman didn’t stop.
The Fae King ignored Serena, his eyes fixed on her with the patient, calculating stillness of a predator who has decided to watch his prey run before he decides whether it’s worth chasing.
The woman lunged toward Serena again, aiming to kill, her double blades carving parallel arcs through the air.
Serena felt Fae energy flowing into her, more than she’d realized she could take. It was pouring in from every direction as if the room itself were feeding her, as if the marble and the water and the living vines in the walls were all conducting something ancient directly into her bloodstream.
Flame still ran through her too, coiled at the base of her sternum like an ember that never went out.
Then she felt something else.
Tiberon.
He hit her senses like a flare in the dark. Through her Hidden Flame mark, she knew she was close enough that she could channel into him.
That was unexpected. She hadn’t sensed him at all earlier and would’ve had no idea he was anywhere near here.
She didn’t hesitate. She shoved flame into him immediately. Then she pushed her pink magic. As soon as it flooded into him, she could feel his pain fully. She was about to have a very cranky, very opinionated passenger on this rescue mission.
She imagined him in whatever cell he was in, suddenly flooded with pink magic, and the look on his face was worth every drop of energy it cost her.
The woman threw a blade at her heart.
And just as before, Serena felt the blade call to her, the metal singing through the air with a frequency that resonated somewhere deep in her chest, as if the weapon itself were asking to be caught.
She moved at Alpha speed, grabbing it from the side, her fingers closing around the grip.
Right when she pushed her flame into it, runes carved into the floor and the torches flared pink.
The woman froze in stunned shock, her remaining blade still raised, her chest heaving, her eyes wide and locked on the burning sword in Serena’s hand as though she were looking at something out of a story she had been told as a child and never believed.
Another blade came for Serena, from a guard or warrior somewhere to her left, thrown hard and aimed at the space between her shoulder blades.
She felt it. The air shifted, the metal hummed, and her body moved before her mind had time to form the thought.
She spun, catching it by the handle mid-rotation like a dance, her other hand still holding the burning blade, her body completing the turn with the kind of grace that she evidently only had on this continent.
The pools that wound through the throne room floor lit up beneath the surface, their clear water flooding with soft, luminous pink light that spread outward.
The water turned pink. Her blades were on fire. And ancient runes were glowing. Serena was one dramatic wind gust away from starting a religion by accident.
Other warriors looked as if they were going to throw their blades.
King Kaelith held up one hand, and the warriors froze.
"Why did you enter the way you did if you could do this all along?" King Kaelith’s voice was measured, but the edge beneath it was unmistakable. "Most would consider that deceptive."
Serena wanted to say, Your queen tried to kill me twice before I lit anything on fire, but she was being diplomatic today.
"I entered the way your protocol requested. When I go to a new place, I treat their rules and customs with respect, even if they differ from my own," Serena answered, her voice carrying across the throne room with the clarity of someone who had decided that this was not a conversation she intended to have quietly.
The King didn’t beat around the bush. "What do you want?"
"Bring the prisoner to me, unharmed, now." Serena was unsure where the boldness came from, but she rolled with it.
The emotions of the Fae in the room reverberated through their magic and into her, and it was strengthening her. The ones in this room believed her, and they wanted her to not be harmed.
Even the warriors who had drawn their blades had done so from duty, not conviction. Those were the ones she wanted to not be punished for any of this.
Tiberon was dragged up from somewhere beneath the palace moments later, looking worse than Serena had imagined. He looked like he’d been through a war, a bar fight, and a bad divorce, in that order.
His face was gaunt, his wrists raw, and he moved with the stiff, careful gait of a man whose ribs had been broken more than once and healed wrong each time. But his eyes still carried their sharp edge. And he had the distinct energy of a man who was already planning his next three moves and yours.
King Kaelith spoke. "Orders of the High Emperor."
He said it the way a man does when he wants you to know the paperwork is someone else’s problem.
Serena nodded. "I understand. You will not speak of this encounter. When he asks, the prisoner escaped or was killed. Use your imagination."
"And why would I listen to you?" King Kaelith tilted his head, his black eyes carrying the exact expression of a man who finds you entertaining enough to keep alive for now. "A little girl who doesn’t know what to do with the power inside her because she doesn’t understand it."
"Bold words for a king who just ordered his guards to stand down and delivered to me exactly what I asked for, wouldn’t you say?" Serena answered.
Tiberon was brought forward at that moment, close enough that she could see the dried blood in his silver hair and the bruising that wrapped around his throat like a collar. He made eye contact with her. No words needed to be spoken. He understood.
King Kaelith tilted his head, "I was warned of the effect your energy would have on us." He stood, waving his hand over the dais. "You could have killed my queen. But instead, you tried to reason with a Fae King."
He took a step forward. "Haven’t you heard Fae are known for tricks?"
"You don’t want to trick me." Serena tilted her chin to the guards flanking him. "And neither do they." A power move she learned in the last Fae throne room she rescued hostages in and the plagiarism felt delicious.
King Kaelith laughed and clapped his hands like she’d performed a parlor trick at a dinner party, which, in fairness, was not entirely inaccurate. "You don’t want to fight either. I feel you too."
Serena tilted her head and gave him a soft smile. "If that is true, then you’ll also feel that I am stubborn and will do whatever it takes, even if I don’t want to."
She took a step forward and flared both swords with flame dramatically, just as she had in the last throne room she was in.
Tiberon blinked. Momentarily stunned. Even he fell for it.
"Interesting." King Kaelith’s lips curved into something that was almost a smile, almost a dare. "Alright. You have my attention." He lifted his arm for his guards to stand down. Even though all of them had been standing down.
"You’ve captured your one piece. The board is still mine. What is your next move, sweetheart?"
Sword still in hand, she extended her arm, and a pink portal formed. The air split open with a sound like tearing silk.
She aimed for Drakenfell, praying it landed there.
Tiberon twisted out of the grip of the guards holding him, his body already moving faster than it should have been able to, because Serena’s magic was healing him.
Pink blades formed in both of his hands, flames erupting out of the top of each one like torches that burned with her fire.
The most feared king in Skardos was wielding pink blades. He would take this to his grave.
He moved through the portal without looking back, because looking back was not something Tiberon Drakenfell did. Also because looking back would mean acknowledging he’d just been rescued by his daughter-in-law and he was going to need at least an hour to process that.
Serena held Kaelith’s gaze for one final moment. "Next time we meet, it will be on better terms."
She was raised polite and it was a disease. She dipped. Then immediately remembered she was supposed to be intimidating, which was the most Serena thing that had ever happened.
The clock was ticking and she booked it through the portal. Every Fae in that room felt her annoyance for accidentally dipping. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢
The portal snapped shut behind her, and the pink light drained from the room like a tide pulling back from shore, leaving nothing but the faint smell of smoke, two pools of melted silver on the marble floor, and a throne room full of Fae who had just watched a woman walk in cuffed and walk out with her prisoner.
King Kaelith sat back on his throne. His High Queen stood beside him, both blades sheathed, her expression unreadable.
"Well," King Kaelith said quietly, to no one in particular. "That was unexpected."
✦✦✦
Serena walked through the portal right after Tiberon, and to her relief, it was the underground chamber.
She felt like she was going to sneeze, then saw red blood dripping on the floor. Gods again. What was with this Fae magic? The world tilted, darkening at the edges.
"Serena!" Fin’s voice was the last thing she heard.
