The Alpha's Unclaimed Mate

Chapter 276: She Led. They Followed. No Questions.

Elara shook her head, her eyes scanning the canopy, the distant waterfalls, the dragons circling high above.

"No. But Frostborne is surrounded by a similar wall of ice." She paused, something shifting behind her expression. "I always thought ours was the only one."

Maelor turned to her so fast Gav thought his neck would snap. "There’s another ice wall?"

"There was," Elara said. "Whether it still stands is a question I can’t answer."

Maelor opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "How many hidden civilizations are you women casually aware of?"

Elara looked at him with the patience of a woman who had answered stupid questions her entire life. "More than your sources cover."

Maelor’s eye twitched.

The jungle pressed in around them, gold light cutting through the canopy. The sounds of distant waterfalls echoed ahead, and the warm air sat heavy, almost blistering. Unnatural for a place walled in by a thousand-foot prison of ice. freewebnøvel.coɱ

Serena lifted her hair, twisting it up off her neck.

"Damn, it’s hot," Elara said, taking off her cloak. Serena and Dexmon were the only people not wearing cloaks.

"I’ll take it," Serena said. She summoned a small pink portal the size of a window. On the other side was her and Dexmon’s chambers, specifically their bed. "If anyone else wants to drop their cloak too. Feel free."

Maelor stared at the portal. Then at Serena. His face shifted through three distinct phases of academic outrage before settling on grudging fascination. "I didn’t teach you that, Serena. Since when can you hold an open window portal with no anchoring ward?"

"Is that unusual?" Serena asked.

Aeron answered for him. "The word ’unusual’ is doing a tremendous amount of heavy lifting in that sentence."

Everyone else tossed their cloaks in without question, not batting an eye. It took Hale a moment to get his off due to the baby dragon refusing to let go. His was last.

Maelor huffed. Opened his own portal window to his study and threw his cloak inside.

Serena stopped, and held up her hand. The group stopped behind her on instinct.

The corner of Dex’s mouth pulled up as he watched her raise that hand. Every single person behind her stopped. He was unmistakably amused.

Next to him, Fin wore an identical expression.

Her eyes were green. Fully herself. She crouched, pulled a stone from the moss at her feet, and the instant her fingers made contact, a rune flared across its surface.

She exhaled softly and tossed it ahead.

The moment it crossed an invisible line, the earth in front of them shimmered, then collapsed downward into a churning pit of quicksand, swallowing the stone whole in less than a heartbeat.

The group froze.

Hale pulled Avalon tighter against his chest on instinct. The hatchling, still asleep, didn’t stir.

"Good gods," Gav muttered.

Maelor stared at the pit with the wide eyes of a man recalculating his life insurance. "How did you know that was there?"

Serena didn’t answer him. She lifted one hand in a flat motion, and pink light obeyed her immediately, shaping itself into a bridge suspended above the quicksand. It hummed softly, alive with energy, glowing bright enough to cast their shadows across the canopy.

She stepped onto it without hesitation.

The others followed. Fin first, then Dex, then Hale with Avalon, the rest filing behind. The bridge held firm beneath each step, steady and warm, reacting to weight as though it had been built for this exact group.

Aeron regarded Serena with a grave, measured stare. He waited until they cleared the pit before speaking.

"You’ve improved since the last time I saw you." He glanced at Maelor, then back towards her. "You’ve mastered Aether Fabrication in two types of magic. I dare say you are the best I have ever encountered. Present company included."

Serena reacted a heartbeat late, as though startled out of a distant thought. She flushed, caught off guard by the sincerity. "Thank you, Aeron. That is kind of you." A pause. "Hyran and Maelor deserve that praise. They laid the groundwork."

Hyran practically glowed, pride written across every line of his face.

Maelor looked away. Adjusted his cuffs. Adjusted them again. "Well," he said, and then didn’t finish the sentence.

Serena’s eyes swept the jungle. She was quiet, observant, processing everything with the terrifying speed of a mind that never stopped working.

But something inside her had dimmed.

On the surface she looked fine. Focused. Present. Inside, the weight of this place pressed against her chest. The familiarity of it. The ache of standing in a hidden world that felt closer to home than anywhere she had been since Frostborne fell.

Dex felt it through their matebond, sharp and immediate.

He surged warmth and calm through it, a deliberate pulse. She jolted, surprised, and looked up at him as if he had read her mind.

Fin felt the shift a fraction of a second later through his own matebond. The sadness hit him first, followed by the warmth Dex had already sent, and the combination made his chest tighten in a way he refused to examine.

They moved deeper into the valley, the jungle stretching endlessly, ancient stone paths guiding them forward.

Serena stopped mid-step. She spoke a single phrase in Glaciovox, and the trees around them ignited with ancient runes, glowing up their trunks in spiraling patterns. A path revealed itself, illuminated in silver light.

They were headed the right way.

"Aeron," Hyran said quietly, watching the runes climb the bark. "I change my mind. Are you documenting this?"

"Every glyph since the tunnel," Aeron answered without looking up from his journal.

"Good."

Maelor looked between them with the affronted energy of a man who had been excluded from a study group. "I am also documenting. If anyone is interested in the opinion of the most published ward scholar in Skardos."

"We aren’t," Elara said lightly.

"Noted," Maelor responded icily. "I’ll document anyway."

Hale glanced at Elara, and his brows knit. Then his expression changed into understanding. He fell into step beside her, interlocking their fingers, and kissed the top of her hand. Avalon chirped once from his chest, a small, sleepy sound, and Elara’s mouth curved for half a second.

The jungle thinned ahead, and shapes emerged through the canopy. Structures. Suspended platforms. Bridges laced between ancient trunks.

Then came the whispers.

Soft. Layered. Echoing like breath across glass.

Maelor slowed, every ounce of color draining from his face. "Impossible," he murmured.

Dwellings. Life. In a place every recorded archive declared barren and uninhabitable for thousands of years.

The whispers persisted. The structures above them swayed as though something unseen had slipped between the trees.

Serena stopped so abruptly that Fin and Dex both reached for their swords.

She held up one hand. The group stopped behind her.

"We’re being watched," she said quietly. "Left treeline, a hundred feet. Three archers. Same distance ahead, three more."

Fin and Dex’s gazes both swept the canopy. Neither had detected them first. The magical camouflage was dense enough to fool wolf senses entirely. She was reading energy signatures, parsing the jungle the way Hyran parsed wards.

Pink light vibrated in her palm, condensing from energy to solid in under a second. A bow. Fully formed, string taut, arrow already at the nock.

Her other hand opened and a pink arrow materialized between her fingers, humming.

She nocked. Aimed.

"There is absolutely no reason for you to be using pink instead of gold right now," Maelor snapped from behind her. "You are showing off."

"I am. You are proud deep down," Serena said, not looking at him.

Fin and Dex exchanged a glance that said the same thing: who is this woman?

Gav’s mouth was open. He closed it. Opened it again. Closed it. free𝑤ebnovel.com

Elara and Hyran caught each other’s eye. Elara grinned. Hyran exhaled through his nose, mouth twitching. They’d known. They’d always known.