Chapter 233: Dropping A Naked Alpha Half Way In A Portal

Somewhere in the castle, a war council was in session. The King of Drakenfell was discussing threats and the future of the realm with his inner circle. And somewhere between the two, Serena Frostborne was trying to wrestle an unconscious Alpha into a pair of shorts and losing.

Twenty minutes prior she was butt naked in a cave straddling him.

"Dex." She shook him. His head lolled to the side, slack and heavy. "Dex, wake up. Please."

He looked peaceful. Offensively peaceful. Like he’d cum inside his mate three times and was taking a nap peaceful.

Her hands were still shaking. His blood was on her mouth, her chin, her fingers. The taste of iron sat on her tongue and refused to leave.

She pressed two fingers to his pulse. Steady. Slow. Too slow.

Serena: Aurelia, what did you do to him.

Silence. The kind of silence that had weight to it, deliberate and unapologetic.

Serena: If you hurt him, I will never forgive you. Do you understand me?

Still nothing. Aurelia had retreated so far back into her mind that reaching for her was like shouting into a well.

Serena wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and forced herself to think.

She grabbed her training suit from the moss and pulled it on, fingers fumbling with the zipper. The cold hit harder now, biting into every inch of exposed skin as the adrenaline drained from her system.

His training suit lay crumpled a few feet away. She grabbed it, knelt beside him, and tried to work his arms through the sleeves.

Dead weight.

Two hundred and twenty pounds of unconscious Alpha male with the cooperative flexibility of a stone column. She got one arm in before the other slipped free. Tried again. His shoulder rolled the wrong direction and she lost her grip entirely.

"How do you dress me when I’m unconscious."

Aurelia: He’s very heavy.

Serena: Oh, NOW you want to talk.

She balled the suit up and tossed it aside, exhaling hard through her nose.

A portal. She needed a portal.

"You’re going naked."

Serena held up her hand and focused. Gold magic crackled from her fingertips, sputtering twice before the tear stabilized. The edges shimmered, and through them she could see his quarters: the bed, the stone walls, the window where moonlight cut a silver line across the floor.

Holding it open while carrying him was going to be the problem.

She hooked her arms under his, locking her hands across his chest, and heaved.

He moved. The Alpha venom in her blood surged through her muscles, lending her strength that had no business belonging to a woman her size. She dragged him upright, his back against her chest, his head falling against her shoulder.

His mouth fell open slightly, and he looked drunk. Royally, magnificently drunk, which was at least an explanation she could give people if someone walked in.

She hauled him toward the portal. Every step was a negotiation between gravity, his weight, and the venom burning through her arms. Halfway through the shimmering tear, her grip slipped.

He dropped.

His body hit the stone floor of his quarters with a dull, graceless thud, legs still dangling through the portal on the cave side.

"Shit."

The sound of his body slapping onto stone would haunt her for at least a week.

She grabbed his ankles and pulled. The rest of him slid through, and the portal snapped shut behind them.

Dex lay sprawled on the floor of his own quarters, completely nude, unconscious, with two puncture wounds still wet on his throat.

This was fine. Everything was fine.

She crouched, got her arms under him again, and dragged him the remaining distance to the bed. Her muscles screamed. The venom pushed back against the strain, holding her together by sheer biochemistry. She hauled him onto the mattress with a sound that was half grunt, half prayer, and his body landed on the furs with about as much grace as a felled tree.

"Shit. Fuck."

She stared at him, chest heaving, arms shaking.

He would never know how close he came to spending the night on the floor. She had considered it. Seriously considered it. The bed was high and he was heavy and the floor was right there.

Then she remembered her blood.

Her blood healed. She had healed Elara, Gav, Fin, open wounds and dark magic alike. If anything could pull him out of this, it was that.

She focused, and a dagger vibrated into existence in her hand, forged from gold magic. She sliced her palm without hesitation, hissing at the sting, and gold blood welled up immediately.

She opened his mouth and pressed her palm against his tongue.

His jaw was slack, and his throat did nothing.

"You are the most stubborn man alive," she groaned. "Even unconscious."

The blood pooled against his teeth and sat there, unswallowed, going nowhere.

"Come on." She squeezed her hand harder, letting more drip in. "Come on, Dex."

His chest rose and fell. His heart beat under her other palm, slow and steady. Everything about him was alive except the part that was supposed to be awake.

She pulled her hand back and stared at the gold smeared across his lips.

"Okay. Think. Think, think, think."

She was talking to herself. She was aware of this. She did it anyway.

His body was exposed and the room was cold. She crossed to his wardrobe, yanked open a drawer, and grabbed the first pair of shorts she could find.

Getting them on him was its own war.

A war she was losing on multiple fronts. She lifted one leg, threaded it through, then the other. Pulled the waistband up to his thighs before his weight became the enemy again. She rolled him, tugged, rolled him back, tugged harder. The shorts caught on his hip, and she wrenched them the rest of the way up with a noise of pure frustration.

The noise she made was not dignified. It was not becoming of a future queen. It was the sound of a woman who had been tested by the Gods and found the test stupid.

"There." She was breathing hard, standing over him, hands on her knees. "You’re welcome."

He would never thank her for this. He would never know about this. And if she had her way, no living soul would ever hear about the twenty minutes she spent wrestling the Crown Prince of Drakenfell into shorts while he was unconscious because she bit him while riding him.

Aurelia: You could have just put a blanket on him.

Serena: What did we do to him and how do I fix it?

She looked at the fang marks on his neck. The blood had slowed to a thin line, already beginning to clot. She thought about draining the remaining blood from the wound and putting a towel over it. Then realized how stupid that was. He was a wolf. He would heal.

She opened his mouth again, pressed her bleeding palm back against his tongue, and held it there.

"D-Dex?" Her voice cracked, eyes burning red. "Can you hear me?"

His pulse pressed against her fingertips where her other hand rested on his jaw. Steady. Present.

He did not wake up.

She pulled her hand free, wiped the blood on her thigh, and sat on the edge of the bed. For ten seconds, she let herself break. Her shoulders curled inward, her breath hitched, and two tears tracked down her face before she shoved the rest of it back behind her ribs where it belonged.

She had cried more tonight than she had in the last three years combined. She was putting a cap on it. The cap was now.

Serena: Hyran.

She pushed the mindlink as hard as she could. The urgency bled through, raw and unfiltered. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Serena: I need to speak with you. Immediately. Please answer.

Five seconds of silence. Ten. The mindlink equivalent of a read receipt with no reply.

Serena: Hyran, please.

Nothing.

Of all the nights for Drakenfell’s most powerful mage to be unavailable, he had chosen this one. She was going to have a conversation with him about response times.

She was on her feet before the silence could settle. Alaric never answered her mindlinks. He never answered anyone’s mindlinks, as a rule and a personality trait. She would have to find him in person.

She moved at Alpha speed through the corridors, the castle blurring around her. The infirmary was empty. His study was dark.

The war room.

She rounded the corner and saw the doors standing open, torchlight spilling into the hall. Voices carried, low and serious.

She stopped in the doorway.

Tiberon stood at the head of the table, a map unrolled in front of him. Gav was leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, his expression missing its usual irreverence. Hyran sat to the King’s right, face carved from granite, and the look he wore told her this was the wrong time to interrupt. Bellatrix occupied a chair to Tiberon’s left, spine rigid, chin elevated. Elara sat across from Gav, her posture deliberately still. Hale stood behind Elara’s chair with his arms folded, taking up more space than any single person should be allowed to occupy.

She had just mindlinked Hyran, but the look on his face stopped her cold. Whatever was happening in this room had been happening before she arrived, and it was serious.

"Serena." Tiberon’s voice cut through the room. He had seen her before she decided whether to enter. "Come in."

She stepped through the doorway and took the nearest open seat, her heart still hammering from the sprint.

Her hair was still damp from the waterfall and she had just sat down at a war council looking like she’d been dragged through three separate emergencies. Which she had.

Gavriel’s eyes tracked her as she sat down. He didn’t open his mouth.

Tiberon was also watching her.

"Where is Dexmon?"