The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 546

Chapter 546: Had To Be Close. Had To. Fuck.

They were halfway to the surface when the water ahead split open.

Something enormous barreled towards them from the dark above, descending at speed, and Gavriel’s blood went cold the instant his Fae senses registered what it was.

Shark-like, but warped. Mutated. Built wrong on purpose, the way dark magic built everything, functional and nightmarish in equal measure. Its jaw was hinged too wide, hanging open at an angle that shouldn’t have been anatomically possible, and inside that jaw were rows of jagged teeth that spiraled inward like a funnel designed to ensure that anything that entered never came back out.

It was headed straight for Serena’s leg.

The spike. The goddamn spike still embedded in her leg, still pulsing dark magic, still broadcasting her blood into the water like a dinner bell that had been ringing since the tentacle put it there. Mr. Shark had tasted her and was coming to collect.

He should have pulled it out right away. Should have ripped it from her leg the second he saw it, pain and blood loss and all, because a wound heals and a beacon doesn’t stop. He’d made the wrong call. He’d chosen speed to avoid more tentacles and now every creature in this lake knew exactly where she was, and the knowledge sat in his stomach like a stone he was going to carry long after they left this water.

They couldn’t stop now. She needed air.

A new sword materialized in Gavriel’s hand and he swung in a single, savage arc that connected with the creature’s snout before it reached her. The blade split flesh and cartilage, and the thing reeled backward, shrieking through the water in a frequency that vibrated in his teeth and tasted like copper.

Mr. Shark wasn’t dead. Gavriel knew it wasn’t dead because nothing built by dark magic died from one hit, and the shriek it made as it spiraled back into the black wasn’t pain.

It was surprise. It hadn’t expected him to fight back, and the three seconds it took to recalibrate were the only three seconds he was going to get from this dark magic horror fish, and he was going to spend every damn one of them swimming his ass off. Gratitude later. Velocity now.

He pulled her flush against him, one arm banded across her chest, her spine locked to his torso, and drove them upward. His sword arm swept behind them in slow arcs, the blade’s green glow painting the water in strobing emerald as it moved.

Every shadow looked like a jaw and every jaw looked like a death sentence and he was so fucking sick of water that if he survived this he was never going swimming in a lake again and anyone who had a problem with that could go fuck themselves.

His Fae senses were screaming data at him faster than he could process, pressure changes and temperature shifts and the faint, rotten taste of dark magic trailing behind them from Serena’s leg like a blood trail he couldn’t stop.

He could feel it circling. A dark magic apex predator was taking fucking notes, and Gavriel Sterling, who had graduated top of his class in combat strategy, was the damn curriculum.

Fantastic. A goddamn smart shark. Because what this situation really needed was an aquatic nightmare with a fucking learning curve.

Gavriel: Almost there. Stay with me, Serena.

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