The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 489

Chapter 489: Don’t Touch Things Without Asking

Seven people stumbled out of a hostile jungle into a peaceful clearing.

It was beautiful. Open. Sunlit through a break in the canopy.

Dotted with low-hanging branches bearing bright orange fruit that glowed faintly at the edges, pulsing with a rhythm that was almost hypnotic and should have been a warning.

Serena looked at the clearing. At the orange fruit. At the low branches.

She plucked one.

Hyran’s soul visibly left his body. His composure, which had survived the cliff, the steam, the vines, and the quicksand, broke on the sight of Serena Frostborne picking an unidentified glowing fruit in an artifact environment on a hostile continent.

"SERENA! DON’T."

She screamed. High-pitched, startled, the involuntary shriek of a woman whose Master Mage had just shouted at her at maximum volume while standing four feet away. She tossed the fruit out of pure fight-or-flight panic.

It exploded.

A sharp crack blasted through the grove, showering Hyran in glowing orange pulp. The detonation was immediate, comprehensive, and cosmetically devastating. Orange covered his face, his chest, his hair, and the front of his thermal weave suit in a thick, luminous paste that smelled like citrus and bad decisions.

Hyran blinked. Once. Slowly. The blink of a man standing in the aftermath of a fruit explosion he had caused by startling the woman holding the fruit and whose startling had produced the exact outcome his shouting was designed to prevent.

Nobody moved.

Dex’s mouth twitched. Fin turned his head away. Gavriel bit down on his own fist. Aeron closed his eyes with the specific expression of a man adding this moment to his burn book later. Maelor studied the orange pulp on Hyran with the fascination of a mage observing a colleague’s humiliation and finding it satisfying.

Hyran bent down. Calmly. Deliberately. He plucked a fruit from a low branch with the measured precision of a man whose retaliation had been calculated before his hand made contact with the stem.

He threw it at Serena.

It detonated midair, splattering her in bright orange luminescence. Her white hair turned tangerine. Her face dripped.

"HYRAN!"

"We’re even," he said, lifting his chin. "Consider that a practical lesson in why we don’t touch things without asking. Remember, Serena? That was the rule."

Serena wiped orange from her eyes. Looked at the nearest branch. Looked at Hyran.

"Don’t," Maelor warned, his voice dangerous. "Do not engage. We are on a retrieval. We are professionals. We are—"

Gavriel plucked a fruit and tossed it sideways at Dex who was facing forward.

Dex caught it on reflex. Military training. Instinct. His hand closed around the fruit before his brain could send the message that the fruit was a bomb and the bomb was now in his palm.

He looked down.

It exploded.

Orange pulp covered his face, his chest, and the front of his thermal weave suit. Dex stood in the grove wearing a mask of luminous citrus paste, blinking through the orange, his jaw locked.

His head snapped in Gavriel’s direction.

The grin said: this is the most fun I’ve had since waking up from a coma, and the fun is contagious, and the contagion is spreading to people who should know better, and the knowing better has been suspended indefinitely because the fruit is right there and the fruit is free.

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