The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 10

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The silence between us

(Isla)

He did not move.

That was the first thing I noticed after the initial shock of the light and the size of him settled enough for

me to think at all. He was standing in the doorway and he was not moving, not coming in, not reaching for me, not doing anything except looking at me with those dark eyes that I could not read no matter how

hard I tried.

I had been looked at in this shack before. Rodan looked at me the way someone looked at something they

owned and were satisfied with the condition of. Maren looked at me the way someone looked at something they found unpleasant but useful. My father looked at me when he had to and stopped as quickly as he could. Brent looked at me when he wanted to remind himself that there was someone below

him.

This man was not looking at me any of those ways.

I could not figure out what way he was looking at me and that alone was enough to keep me frozen in the

corner with my back against the wall and my knees to my chest. The things I could not predict were always the most dangerous. Rodan in a predictable mood was survivable. Rodan when something had

shifted in him that I had not seen coming was when the worst things happened.

I did not know this man. I did not know his moods or his patterns or what the wrong movement or the

wrong sound would cost me.

I dropped my eyes to the floor.

That was the right thing to do. It was always the right thing to do when you did not know what was coming. You made yourself smaller, you took your eyes down, you waited, and you let whoever was in the room make the first move and you responded to that instead of giving them a reason to act before they

had decided to.

The silence stretched out between us and I counted my own breathing to keep myself from doing anything

that would draw attention. In and out. In and out. As quiet as I could make it.

He still did not move.

The seconds kept passing and he kept standing in the doorway without speaking and without moving and I did not understand it. Every person who had ever come through that door had done something within the first few seconds of being inside it. There was no precedent in my experience for someone who simply

stood and looked and did nothing else.

I risked a glance up.

He was still watching me. His face had not changed. Whatever that expression was it had been there from the moment the door opened and it was still there now, this unreadable thing that I could not put a name

The silence between us

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te, and his eyes were on me with a focus that I felt the same way you felt heat from a fire before you were close enough to be burned by it.

I put my eyes back down

My hands were pressed flat against the wall behind me. I was aware of every point where my body was in contact with something. I pressed harder into the wall like it might have something useful to offer and

waited for him to do what people did when they came in here.

He did not do any of those things.

He took a breath instead.

It was not a sound most people would have noticed. A slight change in the air of the room, an intake that was more controlled than natural breathing, like someone choosing to breathe rather than just breathing. I

noticed it because I had spent years in a small room learning to read the sounds of people who were

deciding things.

And then he spoke.

“How long have you been in here.”

His voice was quiet. That was the first thing about it. Not soft, quiet was a different thing entirely, quiet

was a choice, the choice to keep something contained, and the control in it was so complete that it made

the words land harder than if he had shouted them. It was the voice of someone who was managing

themselves very carefully and the fact that he needed to manage himself at all made the back of my neck go cold in a way that Rodan’s loudest moments never had.

I had heard angry men shout. I had heard Rodan’s voice go cold the way it did right before something bad happened. I had heard Maren’s particular tone that meant she had decided something and it was not

going to go well for me.

I had never heard anything like this. This was something different. Contained the way a fire was contained

before it was let out and not after.

I did not answer him.

୮

Not because I was choosing not to. Because my voice had gone somewhere I could not immediately

access and the question itself had surprised me. Nobody who came into this shack asked me questions. They told me things. They did things. They did not ask.

“Look at me,” he said.

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