The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 156

Without trying

(Caius)

Pryor had left an hour ago, and the office had gone quiet. I usually liked it quiet. Today it just left more. room for the same thought to circle,

She’s fine. Nothing in the bond said otherwise. I would have felt it if something had gone wrong, the same way I felt everything else about her now, without trying.

It wasn’t enough today.

Vorak finally spoke.

“You’re not actually working.

‘I’m trying.‘

‘You’re failing.‘

‘Then say something useful,‘ I said.

‘Useful would be you remembering she’s not the girl from that shack anymore.

I didn’t answer right away.

‘She’s the one who stood in front of sixty wolves and made them bow without asking for it,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t need us deciding she can’t manage a morning without us there.”

That landed somewhere I didn’t like.

‘I know,‘ I said.

‘Then prove it. Sit still. Stop checking the bond every few minutes like she’s going to vanish from it.‘

I picked up the pen instead of the report, mostly to give my hands something to do.

‘A pen,’ Vorak said. ‘Bold.‘

‘Quiet‘

‘I’m simply noting the effort.”

The fire popped once in the hearth and I glanced toward it without meaning to, grateful for an excuse to look at literally anything else in the room.

‘It’s not going out, Vorak said. ‘You don’t need to manage that too.”

‘I wasn’t going to!’

‘You were considering it.”

I set the pen down again.

Without trying

For a while neither of us said anything. The quiet stretched out, the kind that usually didn’t bother me, Today carrying more weight than it should have.

‘You could speak to her Vorak said eventually. ‘Through the mind link.

‘I’m not interrupting her morning over nothing.”

Claim

‘I wasn’t suggesting you interrupt anything. Just reach for the bond. See how she’s doing without saying al word.‘

I thought about that for a moment, then did it.

Warm. Present. Nothing in it forced or strained.

‘See, Vorak said. ‘She’s not worried.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘She isn’t.‘

I picked the report back up, and this time the words actually went in.

The report turned out to be about grain stores along the southern border, the kind of thing that should have taken me ten minutes to read and respond to. I finished it properly this time, made a note in the margin for Pryor, and set it aside for the next one.

The next one was easier than the last. Not because the content was simpler, but because I’d stopped fighting my own attention every few seconds to drag it back to the page. Reaching for the bond had done something the window never managed. It had given me an answer instead of just a question.

I turned the next page and made myself actually read it, and somewhere underneath the words I kept circling back to the same shape of thought, turning it over from a few different angles to see if it held up any better than it had the first time. It didn’t, not really. The conclusion stayed the same no matter which direction I came at it from.

This wasn’t about Isla. It had never been about Isla, not really. It was about me, about a habit built over years of being the only person standing between Wraithbone and whatever threatened it, a habit that had calcified into something I rarely examined because examining it had never been useful before. I’d spent most of my life as the variable other people accounted for, not the one doing the accounting around someone else’s safety.

ľ Isla had changed that without either of us deciding it on purpose. She’d simply existed in a way that made every protective instinct I had reorganize itself around her, quietly, without asking permission.

That instinct wasn’t wrong. It had kept her alive more than once. But it had limits, the same way every instinct did, and one of those limits was this: she did not need it pointed at a bread stall and a string musician and a woman selling carved foxes.

She needed it pointed at actual threats, the kind that required a king’s attention and a king’s resources, not a morning she’d been looking forward to since Sera first mentioned it.

I thought about her face when she’d asked about food stalls. The way her whole expression had opened up at the idea of fresh bread and roasted meat and pastries, things most wolves took entirely for granted. things she’d never once had the chance to simply want out loud without bracing for the answer to be no

I thought about the settlement itself, streets I’d walked a hundred times without noticing them, and how

<Without trying

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