The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 133

The hardest hour

(Isla)

The document in front of me had stopped making sense ten minutes ago but I kept reading anyway. Not because the information wasn’t useful. Because stopping felt like admitting I’d reached the end of what I could absorb and I wasn’t ready to admit that yet. I turned another page and read the first line three times without taking it in.

Caius set his pen down. “Are you hungry?”

I looked up. “Yes,” I said. More than I’d realized.

He didn’t get up himself. He reached through the mind link and I felt it move through the bond between us, a brief exchange with someone on the other side of the pack house. He looked

at me.

“Food’s coming,” he said.

I nodded and looked back at the document. The first line still wasn’t making sense. I moved

to the second and had slightly better luck.

After a few minutes he said, “If you need a break take one.”

I looked up. “I’m fine.”

“That’s not what I said,” he said.

I held his gaze for a moment. Then I closed the document. “Ten minutes,” I said.

He nodded once and went back to his work.

I pushed my chair back and went to the bathroom and stood at the basin and looked at my reflection for a moment. Whatever was moving through me wasn’t visible from the outside yet. I ran cold water over my hands and dried them and stood there for another few seconds

and then went back.

I sat down.

The bond hit the moment I did.

Not like Ashcrest. Not the tearing pressure of something waking up for the first time with nowhere to go. This was quieter and more specific and I recognized it immediately because I’d felt versions of it before, near him, when the bond was close to the surface and Vaela was

paying attention.

The hardest hour

But it was stronger now.

+25 Points

It moved through me in a low steady wave, not painful, the opposite of painful actually which was somehow worse because it made it harder to treat as something to push through rather than something to move toward. I kept my face still and reached for my cup and took a slow drink and set it down and told myself it was manageable.

Vaela stirred.

‘The bond,‘ she said.

‘I know,’ I said.

‘It’s been building since this morning,‘ she said.

I didn’t answer that because she was right and acknowledging it out loud even internally felt like giving it permission to get worse.

Across the table Caius had gone very still.

Not the controlled stillness he used when he was managing something difficult. Different. The stillness of someone who’d felt something and was deciding what to do about it before it made the decision for him. His pen was flat against the table and he wasn’t looking at anything in the room.

He was looking inward.

Which meant Vorak was already aware.

I picked up the nearest document and looked at it without reading it. The bond pulled again, slower this time, spreading through my chest. I kept my eyes on the page.

Caius exhaled once through his nose.

I looked up.

His eyes met mine across the table and I understood immediately that whatever he was managing right now was costing him considerably more than it had in Ashcrest. His jaw was set. His hand was flat on the table. Everything about him was controlled and contained and

working harder than usual to stay that way.

“Isla,” he said.

His voice came out careful in a way it wasn’t usually careful.

“I feel it,” I said before he could ask.

The hardest hour

“How long?” he said.

“Since I sat back down,” I said.

He looked at the table for a moment. Then back at me. “We should stop for today.”

“We’ve still got work to do,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “We’re still stopping.”

+25 Points

I held his gaze. The bond pulled again and I saw the exact moment he felt it through his expression shifting, his hand pressing harder against the table. Vorak wasn’t being quiet about any of it.

“Caius,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. His voice was rougher now.

“Are you alright?”

He looked at me for a long moment.

“No,” he said. “Not particularly.”

That was honest enough that it pulled a smile out of me before I could stop it. He stood from the table and I understood immediately that the distance was deliberate, that he was putting space between us because the alternative was not putting space between us and he was choosing to be in control of that.

I stayed where I was.

Vaela moved inside me, warm and certain and not helping at all.

‘He’s trying,’ she said.

‘I know,’ I said.

‘Vorak isn’t,‘ she said.

‘I know that too,‘ I said.

I looked at Caius standing at the far side of the room with his back to me and his hands at his sides and I thought about Ashcrest and the rules and what I’d said about the mark and what he’d said back and none of that was what I was thinking about right now.

“Caius,” I said.

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