The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

Seven people stumbled out of a hostile jungle into a peaceful clearing.

It was beautiful. Open. Sunlit through a break in the canopy.

Dotted with low-hanging branches bearing bright orange fruit that glowed faintly at the edges, pulsing with a rhythm that was almost hypnotic and should have been a warning.

Serena looked at the clearing. At the orange fruit. At the low branches.

She plucked one.

Hyran’s soul visibly left his body. His composure, which had survived the cliff, the steam, the vines, and the quicksand, broke on the sight of Serena Frostborne picking an unidentified glowing fruit in an artifact environment on a hostile continent.

"SERENA! DON’T."

She screamed. High-pitched, startled, the involuntary shriek of a woman whose Master Mage had just shouted at her at maximum volume while standing four feet away. She tossed the fruit out of pure fight-or-flight panic.

It exploded.

A sharp crack blasted through the grove, showering Hyran in glowing orange pulp. The detonation was immediate, comprehensive, and cosmetically devastating. Orange covered his face, his chest, his hair, and the front of his thermal weave suit in a thick, luminous paste that smelled like citrus and bad decisions.

Hyran blinked. Once. Slowly. The blink of a man standing in the aftermath of a fruit explosion he had caused by startling the woman holding the fruit and whose startling had produced the exact outcome his shouting was designed to prevent.

Nobody moved.

Dex’s mouth twitched. Fin turned his head away. Gavriel bit down on his own fist. Aeron closed his eyes with the specific expression of a man adding this moment to his burn book later. Maelor studied the orange pulp on Hyran with the fascination of a mage observing a colleague’s humiliation and finding it satisfying.

Hyran bent down. Calmly. Deliberately. He plucked a fruit from a low branch with the measured precision of a man whose retaliation had been calculated before his hand made contact with the stem.

He threw it at Serena.

It detonated midair, splattering her in bright orange luminescence. Her white hair turned tangerine. Her face dripped.

"HYRAN!"

"We’re even," he said, lifting his chin. "Consider that a practical lesson in why we don’t touch things without asking. Remember, Serena? That was the rule."

Serena wiped orange from her eyes. Looked at the nearest branch. Looked at Hyran.

"Don’t," Maelor warned, his voice dangerous. "Do not engage. We are on a retrieval. We are professionals. We are—"

Gavriel plucked a fruit and tossed it sideways at Dex who was facing forward.

Dex caught it on reflex. Military training. Instinct. His hand closed around the fruit before his brain could send the message that the fruit was a bomb and the bomb was now in his palm.

He looked down.

It exploded.

Orange pulp covered his face, his chest, and the front of his thermal weave suit. Dex stood in the grove wearing a mask of luminous citrus paste, blinking through the orange, his jaw locked.

His head snapped in Gavriel’s direction.

Gavriel pointed at Fin. "This guy."

Fin didn’t even blink. The man had just been framed for a fruit assault he had zero involvement in and his face communicated that he had expected the framing.

Dex locked onto Gavriel with the specific focus of an Alpha identifying a target.

He plucked a fruit. Then he threw it at Gavriel’s chest.

Direct hit. Gavriel doubled over, orange coating his thermal weave suit and his hair. He came up grinning, which was the worst possible response because the grinning was contagious and the contagious was spreading.

The grin said: this is the most fun I’ve had since waking up from a coma, and the fun is contagious, and the contagion is spreading to people who should know better, and the knowing better has been suspended indefinitely because the fruit is right there and the fruit is free.

Aeron plucked a fruit. Studied it for one second. Weighed it in his palm. Then lobbed it in a high arc at Maelor.

The trajectory was flawless. The arc peaked directly above Maelor’s head and detonated three inches above his skull, coating him from the crown downward.

Maelor stood very still.

"Those were Nightspire silk," he snapped. "Hand-woven. Commissioned. Irreplaceable."

He plucked two fruits. One in each hand.

"All of you are going to regret this."

Maelor had been pushed past the threshold. The robes were ruined. The dignity was gone.

He threw both simultaneously. One hit Aeron’s in the shoulder. One hit him in the chest. Both exploded. Twin detonations that showered the immediate area in double the orange pulp.

"MAELOR. I WAS MAINTAINING ORDER," Aeron said, voice clipped.

The maintaining was bullshit.

"You were NOT just standing there watching."

The grove descended into chaos.

Any military strategist observing this engagement would have classified it as a complete goddamn breakdown of command structure. There was no chain of command. There was no strategy. There was no formation.

This was against every protocol in the book.

Fruit flew in every direction. Detonations cracked through the clearing at a rate that made the vine attack look organized. Alliances formed and broke within seconds. Dex and Fin united briefly against Gavriel, then Gavriel recruited Hyran, then Hyran defected to Serena, then Serena went rogue and targeted everyone simultaneously.

"ARE WE CHILDREN?" Maelor bellowed from behind a tree, orange dripping from his hair. "ACTUAL CHILDREN? Because if so, I expect a formation, I expect accountability, and I expect every single one of you to run laps when we return to civilization!"

Every single one of them froze.

Serena’s hand hovered inches from another fruit. Her white hair was orange. Her face was orange. Her thermal weave suit was orange. She looked like a tangerine with combat training.

"We’re absolutely children," Gavriel whispered.

Aeron dragged both hands down his face, smearing orange across his forehead in the process. The smearing undermined the authority of the reprimand by approximately one hundred percent.

They pushed forward through the grove, dripping luminous citrus, seven people who had just conducted a fruit war in the middle of a combat retrieval on a volcanic continent and whose fruit war was going to be omitted from every official report filed about this mission.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!