The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 588

Chapter 588: Classified Fuck-Me Lighting Says Flexboy

Every queen has a secret weapon. Bellatrix thought it was Petra. Petra also thought it was Petra.

But tonight, the title was up for grabs because a six-foot narcissist with a coconut fetish was about to give his opinions about lighting angles.

She straightened her shoulders. Looked at Petra. Looked at Thor. Looked at both of them with the imperious focus of a woman about to do something she found personally distasteful and was going to make goddamn sure nobody remembered it.

"This never happened. Neither of you saw this. If anyone asks, we were inspecting trail conditions for a routine land survey. Petra, you will take that to your grave. Thor, you will forget this entire evening."

"Yes, Luna," Thor said, still flexing.

"Stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"The muscles."

Thor looked down at himself, genuinely confused by the instruction, because Thor’s relationship with his own muscles was the relationship between a man and his autonomous nervous system. Being told to cease was like being told to stop having a pulse.

"Luna, with all due respect, you can’t turn these off. This is factory default."

"Then face the other direction. I do not need your factory in my field of vision."

Bellatrix shifted.

The purple wolf stood in the clearing. Large. Magnificent. The coat catching what remained of the dusk light and turning it into something that lived in the space between violet and silver, the specific color that predated modern bloodlines and carried a resonance that most wolves had forgotten existed.

She walked the curve. Slow. Deliberate. Each step placed with the spatial awareness of a woman who had choreographed this exact moment in her head four hundred times and was now executing the rehearsal with a body that was designed for forests and a mind that was designed for warfare.

She stopped at the apex of the curve. Held the position. Profile to the clearing.

Then she shifted back.

"Thor."

"Luna."

"From that angle. Was it flattering?"

Thor considered the question with the focus of a man who took aesthetics seriously, which he did, because Thor Crushturn believed that physical presentation was the cornerstone of civilization and honest feedback was a sacred duty.

"Luna, I’m gonna level with you."

Six words that, in retrospect, should have come with a warning label and a head start.

"I asked you to be."

"From that angle, the haunches looked bloated."

The word BLOATED hit Bellatrix Drakenfell the way a cannonball hits a temple.

"BLOATED?"

"The moonlight’s coming in at like a forty-degree thing, right? It’s hitting the shoulders and the ribs great, that’s your money zone, total bad-bitch energy, and then it widens on the hips and by the time it reaches the rear flank, it’s adding like twenty pounds visually. It’s the angle, Luna. The angle is a liar."

"My wolf does not have a weight problem, Thor."

The sentence was delivered at a temperature that could have frozen the clearing. Thor, who was immune to temperature and subtext, continued.

"For her age, she looks great. I’m not saying weight problem. But light has opinions, Luna, and the light’s opinion at forty degrees is ’thicker than intended.’ You want the full violet-silver pop? That rock." He pointed at a flat stone near the edge of the clearing, elevated three feet above the trail, catching the last of the dusk light on its surface. "You stop there. Elevated. The moonlight hits you from above instead of the side. Side light adds mass. Top light creates definition. You want cheekbones, Luna. Not muffin top."

Bellatrix stared at him with an expression that was simultaneously murderous and genuinely considering the advice.

"Muffin top," she repeated. Each syllable was a separate indictment.

"It’s a lighting term."

"It is absolutely not a lighting term."

"Also," Thor continued, because self-preservation was a concept he had never successfully internalized, "shimmer lotion."

Petra wrote: Shimmer lotion. Rock (elevated). Avoid 40-degree angles. Consult Thor re: lighting.

She looked at her parchment, then at the bottom, where she had written Consult Thor re: lighting, she added a second line:

Petra: everything else.

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