Chapter 406 Open The Damn Portal

“Portal. Shadowclaw. Now.”

Dexmon Drakenfell was walking at a pace that suggested the destination was non-negotiable and the timeline was shorter than the sentence he had used to announce it.

“This is a terrible idea,” Hyran said flatly.

“Noted.”

“Your father removed you from her training for a reason.”

“Also noted.”

“The reason was biological, tactical, and correct, and you agreed to it four hours ago.”

“That was four hours ago. That was also eleven shifts ago. The agreement had an expiration date and the expiration date was shift number twelve, and we are currently at fifteen, and the agreement is dead, and I am attending its funeral, which is located in Shadowclaw, where I will be in approximately ninety seconds.”

Hyran matched his stride without breaking his own composure, because matching the stride of an agitated Alpha while maintaining composure was a skill Hyran had developed over a decade of advising men whose emotional states moved faster than their decision-making.

“To accomplish what, exactly?”

Dex stopped walking. Turned. Looked at Hyran. His eyes were full molten gold, his wolf had been screaming at him for four consecutive hours, and his ability to keep his wolf contained was operating on the final reserves.

“To hold her, Hyran. To put my arms around her and tell her she is doing well and be present for the next shift so that when the pain comes through the matebond, it comes through at close range instead of four hundred miles away where I am useless and bleeding on documents that my officers are too afraid to ask me to replace.”

He resumed walking.

“You will be useless at close range as well,” Hyran observed. “The proximity will make it worse.”

“I am going to Shadowclaw, and I am going to see my mate, and this conversation is now over.”

Hyran exhaled through his nose. “I will open the damn portal. But I want it recorded that I objected.”

“Recorded. Ignored. Open it.”

Hyran raised his hand. Gold light bled through the air, the seam widening into a doorway that opened onto a Shadowclaw corridor Hyran had memorized during his last seventeen visits.

Without hesitation, Dex stepped through. He turned left toward the training arena because the direction was instinct and the instinct was matebond and the matebond was a compass that pointed at Serena regardless of geography.

Hyran stepped through behind him. The portal closed.

They made it fourteen steps before Dex heard voices around the corner.

“—already told you, this is a terrible idea.”

“And I already told you, the idea is happening regardless of its quality, so your assessment, while accurate, is decorative.”

Aeron Lancaster came around the corner first. His expression was the expression of a Master Mage who had spent four hours making the same argument Hyran had been making and had achieved the same result, which was nothing.

Finnick Shadowclaw was one step behind him.

He looked like hell. His jaw was set, his eyes were flickering gold, and his stride carried the identical rigid determination that Dex’s did.

Both Alphas stopped.

They stared at each other.

The staring lasted three full seconds, which was long enough for both men to register the identical blood stains, the identical gold irises, the identical jaw tension, and the identical expression of a mate who had reached the end of his tolerance for receiving pain at a distance and was now here to do something about it.

Behind them, Hyran and Aeron made eye contact.

The look between the two mages carried an entire conversation. It carried the specific, weary solidarity of two professionals who had spent four hours advising two different Alpha Kings to stay away from the same woman and had both failed in the exact same way at the exact same time. The look said: You too? The look answered: Me too.

Dex looked at Fin. “You look terrible.”

“You look worse.”

“I have been through fifteen of her shifts today.”

“So have I.”

“Fifteen shifts that are twelve seconds each. That is one hundred and eighty seconds of pain that belongs to a body that is in a different kingdom. I am done.”

“I was done at shift nine,” Fin said. “I stayed until fifteen because I was in a meeting with Garrett and leaving before the meeting concluded would have been diplomatically inappropriate. The meeting concluded. I left. I am here. The diplomatic appropriateness of my presence in this corridor is a concern I am prepared to address after I see my mate.”

Dex looked at him for two more seconds. The look was evaluative, because even in mutual misery, Dexmon Drakenfell evaluated Finnick Shadowclaw on reflex, and the evaluation was always competitive. The competition was always about Serena, and the competition was currently suspended because both competitors were bleeding from the same matebond and the matebond had made allies out of them through the shared experience of being tortured by a woman who was training and had no idea she was destroying two men in two different kingdoms simultaneously.

“Did your mage try to talk you out of it?” Dex asked.

“For four hours.”

“Mine too.”

They both looked at their respective mages. Hyran’s expression was flat. Aeron’s was resigned. Two of the most powerful mages on the continent, reduced to chaperones for Alpha wolves who had stopped listening three hours ago.

“For the record,” Aeron said to the corridor at large, “I advised against this. Emphatically. Repeatedly. With reasoning that was both sound and ignored.”

“For the record,” Hyran echoed, “I said the exact same things in the exact same order and received the exact same result, which was the result of talking to a wall.”

Fin resumed walking. Dex fell into stride beside him. The two Alphas moved down the corridor together, which was a visual that would have been remarkable to anyone who knew their full history.

Finnick Shadowclaw and Dexmon Drakenfell walking side by side with matching blood stains and matching urgency toward a shared destination was the kind of unity that war summits failed to produce and matebond pain achieved in an afternoon.

Aeron looked at Hyran.

“Do we follow them?”

Hyran was already walking. “We follow them, we document the damage, and we prepare a report for Tiberon that will be unpleasant to write and worse to deliver.”

“He is going to be furious.”

“He is going to be correct and furious, which is the most dangerous combination Tiberon produces, and he produces it frequently.”

Tiberon was against the far wall. His eyes moved to the doorway.

He saw his son. He saw Finnick. He saw the blood. He saw the gold irises. He saw, behind them, two Master Mages whose body language communicated “we tried” with the eloquence of men who had given up and were now managing consequences rather than preventing them.

His expression did not change. He pushed off the wall and crossed the arena floor, passing between Serena and the doorway, blocking her sightline to the entrance.

“You will sit against the far wall. You will remain silent. You will control your wolves. If either of you shifts, disrupts her training, or enters the floor, I will have Hyran sedate you. Am I understood?”

Dex opened his mouth.

“That was rhetorical, Dexmon.”

Dex closed his mouth.

Fin nodded once. He did not like being told what to do in his own Keep, but he understood it.

Both Alphas walked to the far wall and sat. Hyran and Aeron positioned themselves on either side of the two. Sentries. Handlers. Babysitters. Now spectators.

Tiberon returned to his position against the opposite wall.

“Continue,” he called to the arena floor.