The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 568

Chapter 568: Meet The Fucking Drakenfells

DRAKENFELL — DRAKEN FORCES TRAINING FIELD THE NEXT MORNING

The routine had been established.

Every morning, the Queen of Drakenfell would walk across the castle grounds to the juvenile dragon training field. Right on cue, Onyx would spot her from whatever corner of the field he had been pretending to participate in drills from, say "fuck this" in dragon, and rocket towards her at a velocity that made the senior handler develop a nervous tic.

Today was no different.

Onyx launched himself off a training platform mid-exercise, ignored two verbal commands from Handler Caelum, cleared a juvenile dragon who had the misfortune of being in the flight path, and landed at Bellatrix’s boots with a chirp so loud it echoed off the armory walls.

Bellatrix scooped him up with one arm and settled him against her chest in the practiced cradle of a woman who had been carrying this dragon for days and whose carrying technique had achieved a competence that her actual parenting never reached.

"Good morning, darling. Did they bore you? Of course they did. Look at your scales. Dull. Unacceptable. We will fix that."

Avalon, who had spent the entire morning pressed against the fence nearest the castle path, perked up the instant Petra’s boots hit the grass. The blue-silver dragon scrambled over two training dummies and a very startled cadet to reach her, his tail wagging with the desperate enthusiasm of a creature who had been counting the minutes since yesterday’s bath and had arrived at a number he found personally offensive.

Petra picked him up without breaking stride. "Hello, Avalon. Yes, I missed you too. Your claws need trimming."

Handler Caelum stepped forward. The stepping was brave. The stepping was also futile, and the futility was a lesson Caelum had been learning daily and retaining poorly.

"Your Majesty, Onyx has a scheduled formation drill at—"

"He is excused."

"The drill is mandatory for all juvenile—"

"He is excused, Caelum. His schedule has been revised. By me. Just now. The revision is effective immediately and the effective is permanent until I decide it is temporary, and I have no plans to decide that. Avalon is also excused. Both dragons will be returned when I determine they have been adequately enriched, and adequate enrichment is defined by me and involves oils, lamb, and an environment that does not smell like wet dog and failure."

Caelum’s mouth opened. His mouth closed. His mouth had learned, over the course of several mornings, that the open-close cycle was the only exercise it was going to get in these interactions.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Wonderful. Petra, we are leaving."

They walked back toward the castle with the unhurried pace of two women who owned the grounds and the morning and every blade of grass between the field and the parlor. Onyx’s chin rested on Bellatrix’s shoulder, his gold eyes aimed at the training field with the contentment of a creature leaving a job he hated with a woman who spoiled him rotten. Avalon was already purring in Petra’s arms, his silver eyes half-closed, his entire body communicating the full-body relief of an animal who had been rescued from exercise.

Neither dragon looked back.

Behind a stone column near the armory entrance, Tiberon Drakenfell stood with his arms crossed and watched his wife steal two military assets for the fourth consecutive morning.

He said nothing. His face offered nothing. He was a man whose wife had shifted into a wolf and clawed a dark mage unconscious days ago, visited an orphanage, commissioned a giant mural, and was currently restructuring the Draken Forces juvenile training schedule based on her personal grooming preferences for baby dragons.

He found it interesting.

The interesting was a word that Tiberon used the way other men used "alarming" or "concerning" or "what the fuck." Interesting was the classification he assigned to phenomena that warranted observation before action, and Bellatrix had been reclassified from "predictable" to "interesting" approximately seventy-two hours ago, and the reclassification was holding.

He watched them disappear into the castle. Then he walked toward his study, because a king had things to do and watching his wife kidnap dragons was an indulgence he permitted himself exactly once per morning.

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