The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate novel Chapter 554

Chapter 554: Row, Row, Row Your OH SHIT

SNNRRGHH.

The sound ripped through the stillness like a knife through silk. Wet, violent, the guttural sucking noise of something inhaling through a nose designed for blood and darkness, a sound that belonged to no wolf and no shark and no creature that had any business existing above water.

Then came the wails.

A chorus of them were layered on top of each other, the sound burrowing past eardrums and settling directly into the part of the brain that handled fear and did a shit job of managing it.

Tiberon’s grip tightened on his sword. His knuckles went white. The King of Drakenfell, who had heard screams on a hundred battlefields and slept soundly after every single one, adjusted his stance toward the sound with the grim recalibration of a man who recognized a threat that belonged in a different category than anything he’d faced before.

Fin’s heartbeat lurched. He could feel it hammer against the inside of his ribs, a staccato that matched the rhythm of the wails, and his wolf surged to the surface so hard his eyes flashed gold before he shoved it back down. He couldn’t shift. He had Serena.

Gavriel’s green magic flared bright, re-snapping around all of them in that moment.

The wails grew louder.

The source materialized a second later.

Miles across the flat basin on the other side, the crater wall moved.

At first it looked like shadow, like the rock itself was shifting because they were so far away. But then the shadows separated into shapes like ants and the group collectively understood that the vampires were running down the inside of the basin the way water runs down a drain.

Mountain feeders. Jungle variants. Different breeds, different habitats, united by the universal decision to ruin everyone’s afternoon.

Every single one of them was absolutely fucking disgusting.

Fin didn’t wait.

He scooped Serena off the stone in one motion, one arm under her legs, the other bracing her shoulders, lifting her as though she weighed nothing because adrenaline and terror had a way of making physics negotiable.

Serena’s eyes cracked open. Her hand lifted, trembling so badly the fingers couldn’t stay steady.

Gold magic erupted from her shaking palm.

Behind her, Gavriel glowed gold in answer.

The color change registered in both Alphas simultaneously. Green to gold. It was less of a surprise for Fin, who had already seen Gavriel’s wolf turn gold.

But for Tiberon, it was a surprise. Neither Alpha acknowledged it. Neither Alpha missed it.

For Gavriel, the moment hit different.

It hit like a key sliding into a lock. She was channeling from him. He could feel her pulling from him and knew the sensation at this point. But it finally clicked that the default for her was gold, which confirmed what he already suspected, that everything green was all him. She hadn’t been fabricating or controlling it.

He was still processing that revelation when the boat appeared.

A gold, transparent vessel erupted directly on the frozen shoreline of the lake, conjured from Serena’s borrowed magic.

Its sides were smooth and curved, its shape aerodynamic, designed for speed by instinct rather than engineering. As Serena pushed more magic into the construct, a dome-like bubble shimmered over the top, sealing itself with a faint harmonic hum that vibrated through the stone beneath their boots.

No tentacle could pierce it.

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