The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 659

Chapter 659: Lucian Moon Said No

"Lucian, either you let go of me, or I am dragging you with me. But I am moving in the next three seconds regardless of which one you choose."

His hands released her arms. The loss of contact hit him like stepping out of sunlight into shade. The electricity vanished. The warmth vanished. His palms, which had been full of her and full of signal and full of the specific voltage that existed between a wolf and his mate, were empty.

"Lead the way."

She ran into a private room, then her hands came up. Pink magic split the air in a vertical line that expanded outward, widening into an opening that showed forest on the other side.

Lucian stopped dead.

"Since when can you make portals?"

He wasn’t bothering to hide his surprise. Making portals was not easy. Most Fae couldn’t. The list of impossible things that revolved around this woman kept growing.

"My first one," River breathed.

Lucian’s brain stalled for a full two seconds. Her first goddamn one. She was field-testing a portal on a rescue mission. Most people practiced on short distances. Empty rooms. Controlled environments.

River Aelindor had skipped the tutorial entirely. She was already running through it. Of course she was.

"River Aelindor, you are going to be the death of me," Lucian muttered, following her through.

✦✦✦

AELINDOR OUTER FOREST

She ran faster than Lucian had ever seen her run.

The speed was wrong. Wrong for a woman whose magic had been considered average until her wedding ceremony. Wrong for a Fae princess whose physical capability had never been her defining characteristic. Wrong in the specific way that everything about River had been wrong since the ceremony: too informed, too capable, too driven by knowledge she couldn’t explain and power she hadn’t known she possessed.

She was running as fast as a female wolf could in human form with zero training.

If her worry wasn’t bleeding through their matebond, he would have enjoyed this. But right now, his wolf was on alert. He was in protector mode, scanning their surroundings for threats as they ran. All clear so far.

Without warning, she stopped at the edge of a clearing and crouched down. Lucian dropped next to her, staying hidden in the trees. His body shifted into the posture it defaulted to when combat was probable: low, still, every sense amplified, his wolf running calculations behind his ribs at a speed his human brain couldn’t match.

Atlas was already walking towards someone on the field. Someone who Lucian knew. That was General Willow, Vesper’s father.

"Why would he come here if he knew..." River mumbled.

"If he knew what, River?" Lucian whispered.

General Willow was someone Lucian had dealt with on more than one occasion and someone that Lucian did not trust. But gut instinct and certainty were two different things. River was being too specific, and false parley would be crossing the line, even for someone like General Willow.

Through the matebond, her frustration pulsed. The frustration of a woman who had answers and couldn’t share them, who was watching a scene unfold that she’d already seen, who was operating from a playbook written in invisible ink that only she could read.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify