The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 587

Chapter 587: Seduction By Chainsaw

DRAKENFELL — EASTERN FOREST CLEARING, DUSK

Bellatrix Drakenfell did not merely prepare for a pack run. She art-directed one like a goddamn professional, running a seduction op with the tactical precision of a siege and the emotional detachment of an assassin.

The moon had been doing its job for millennia. Tonight, it reported to Bellatrix, and right now, the moon was wrong.

She stood at the edge of the eastern clearing with her arms crossed, her chin tilted upward, and her expression communicating irritation.

"It is too far left, Petra."

Petra looked at the moon. Then at Bellatrix. Then at the moon again, because her employer had just critiqued the orbital position of a celestial body and Petra needed a second to determine whether she was expected to fix it.

"Your Grace, the moon’s position is determined by—"

"I am aware of how the moon works, Petra. I am saying its current trajectory will place it behind the northern tree line by the time the pack reaches this clearing, which means the light will be obstructed by approximately forty percent canopy coverage, and forty percent is the difference between breathtaking and adequate, and I have never been adequate a single day in my life."

She pointed at the tree line with the authority of a general indicating an enemy position. The oak tree had been growing undisturbed for two hundred years. It had forty-five minutes left.

"That oak. The one with the thick branch extending southeast. It blocks the angle entirely. Have it trimmed."

"The branch, Your Grace?"

"The branch, Petra. I want it removed. Cleanly. Before the pack run."

"That branch is approximately three feet in diameter, Your Grace."

"Then it will require a large saw. Write it down."

Petra wrote: Trim oak. Southeast branch. Large saw.

Bellatrix walked further into the clearing. Her boots left clean prints in the grass, each step calculated, her path tracing the route she had mapped for the pack run with the systematic focus of a woman whose romantic strategy depended on forestry management.

"And that cluster of pines on the western edge. They are too dense. The moonlight will scatter before it reaches the ground. Thin them."

"How many trees, Your Grace?"

"Enough to create a corridor of unobstructed light approximately fifteen feet wide. The purple requires direct illumination, Petra. Diffused light washes it out. Scattered light makes it grey. Direct moonlight at the correct angle produces a violet-silver luminescence that will make every wolf in the pack stop and stare, and the stopping and the staring are the objective."

Petra wrote: Pine corridor. 15 feet. Violet-silver luminescence. Pray.

"The path curves here." Bellatrix gestured at a bend in the natural trail. "I will slow at the curve. Allow the pack to see me in profile. The profile is my strongest angle, and the strongest angle deserves the strongest light, and the strongest light requires that birch tree to be pruned back by at least two feet on its lower branches."

"Your Grace, you are asking me to reshape a forest."

"I am asking you to shape a forest into a stage, Petra. The forest is my venue. The moonlight is my lighting. And the audience is a king who has functioning eyes and a pending divorce and a wife whose wolf is about to remind him exactly what he is walking away from."

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