The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 574

Chapter 574: The Asshole Had A Point

Every king needed a room where shit could shatter without consequence and Garrett didn’t so much as blink at the glass in Fin’s hand.

That was what studies were for.

He stood, pulled a fresh glass from the cabinet, poured three fingers, and handed it to Fin along with a small towel from the side table. The towel was there because Garrett kept towels in his study the way other kings kept decorative swords. Function over aesthetics. Darkhowler to the bone.

"Breaking it would kill her. There’s an ancestor fire situation, long story, different whiskey. But even without that, I’d never break a fated matebond. I’m not that man."

As far as Finnick Shadowclaw was concerned, the ancestors could go fuck themselves for even making that a mechanical possibility.

Garrett collapsed back into the chair. "I’ll take that as another story for another whiskey."

At the rate Fin was generating stories that required whiskey, he was going to need a second cabinet.

"So if breaking it is off the table," he continued. "Option two. You keep the matebond but end the relationship with her. Find someone less complicated."

Fin’s stomach lurched. The lurching was violent, immediate, the physical rejection of a concept his body found so fundamentally repulsive that his organs staged a walkout before his brain could process the suggestion. A full-body hell no.

His jaw tightened hard enough to make the tendon jump.

He didn’t say anything.

Garrett was watching him. The watching was the watching of a man who had offered a terrible option on purpose because the reaction to terrible options told you more about a man’s priorities than the reaction to good ones.

"Option three," Garrett continued, voice steady. "You put things on hold with her temporarily and figure it out. Doesn’t mean you’re ending it. Just space to think. There’s nothing wrong with that." He tilted his glass toward Fin. "Sounds like what you’re doing currently."

"It’s been a day," Fin snapped. "And yesterday wasn’t my night with her."

As if thinking was the goddamn problem. Thinking was all he’d been doing.

Garrett raised both hands in surrender, whiskey still in one without spilling. The man had the drink-holding instincts of someone whose mate produced at least three dramatic situations per week that required steady hands and raised palms.

"Option four." He lowered his hands. "You accept that your mate is complicated and share her, but find another mate in the meantime. Crown the other mate. Have a life with that other mate. Eventually, you’ll move on from Serena."

Fin let out a dark laugh.

"Does that sound like something I would do?"

Rhetorical.

"No. Obviously," Garrett answered without hesitation.

"Then why did you say it?"

"Because I needed you to hear yourself say no to it. You walked in here not knowing what you wanted. Now you know a few things you don’t want. That’s progress, Shadowclaw. You’re welcome."

Fin looked at him for a long, loaded second that somehow still managed to call him several different kinds of asshole while also admitting, with extreme bitterness, that the asshole might have a point.

"But hear me out on this," Garrett continued. "You would have every right to. She has two other mates. You take another mate. It’s only fair. It might crush her and it would almost certainly destroy your relationship, but she couldn’t argue with the logic."

Garrett had just offered the most fucked option in his entire arsenal and said it like he was announcing a light chance of rain.

"Next option."

Two words. Carrying the full weight of "if you finish that sentence I will break another glass and this time I’ll aim the son of a bitch."

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify