The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 177

Something good

(Caius)

Her stomach gave a small sound against my side.

I looked down at her.

“You really are hungry,” I said.

“I told you I was.”

“I thought you were making conversation.”

“I don’t make conversation about food,” she said. “If I say I’m hungry, I’m hungry.”

I looked at the window. The fire had burned down while we lay there and it was full dark

outside, the deep dark of the middle of the night with the mountain quiet around us.

“There’s no food here,” I said.

“I know. That’s what I’ve been saying.”

I was quiet for a moment, thinking.

“I could hunt,” I said.

She lifted her head off my chest and looked at me.

“Now?”

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“Now,” I said. “There’s game close to here. I know where it moves this time of night. I could bring something back and cook it. There’s a pit outside for that.”

She studied my face like she was checking whether I meant it.

“You’d go out there and catch us dinner,” she said.

“If you’re hungry, yes.”

Something moved through her expression. Not quite surprise. Closer to the look she got when I did something she wasn’t expecting and had to fit it into what she already knew about

1. me.

“You don’t have to,” she said.

“I know I don’t have to.”

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Something good

“Then why offer?

I looked at her. “Because you’re hungry and I can fix it. That’s reason enough

She was quiet for a moment. Then she put her head back down on my chest

“I don’t want you to go,” she said.

“You just said you were hungry.”

“I am. I still don’t want you to go.”

“Those two things don’t work together,” I said.

“I know.” She pressed closer. “But if you go it means getting up, and getting cold, and being alone in here while you’re out there. I’d rather be hungry a little longer.”

I ran my hand along her back and didn’t say anything for a moment.

This was still new to her. Before me, no one had ever offered her anything without wanting something back. I could see her feeling the newness of it even now.

“I could be fast,” I said.

“How fast?”

“Fast enough that you’d still be warm when I got back.”

She thought about it.

“And you’d cook it out there?”

“Yes.

“So I’d have to get up anyway. To eat.”

“You’d have to get up to eat either way,” I said. “Unless you planned to stay in this bed forever.”

“I did plan that, actually.”

“You’d get hungry.”

“You keep bringing that up.”

I laughed, and I felt her smile against my chest.

We stayed there a while longer. The fire was almost gone now and the cold was starting to

some into the room from

from the edges, the way did when the hold back could feel her deciding She got quiet is the working through something and let

“Alright she said finally

right wher?

work through without putting

Hunt. Bring back dinner? She lifted her head and looked at me But you but m back up first. So it’s warm when you get here

“I was going to do that any.”

se

“I know. I’m saying it so know I want it done

u

I looked at her. “You ving me orders now

“I’m telling you want,” she said. “You told me I could

I had told her

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plain and

warm.

rlier tonight, back at the pack house, I’d told her she never had to something, that all she had to do was say it. And here she was

ere she was saying pology, telling the Alpha King to build up the fire before he

a

I did

liked it more than I knew how to tell her

The fire, then the hunt.”

er.”

down and kissed her once, then got up before I talked myself into staying

was cold under my feet. I built the fire back up the way she’d asked, feeding it until

and held and the light of it

e blanket pulled up to h

he long,” she said

ain, Isla watched me from the bed

waiting

then.”

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shift

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Something good

I looked at her over my shoulder. “You’re very particular about dinner for someone who fo to bring any.”

“That was both of us. You said so yourself.”

I had said that.

I went to the door. Behind me the fire was going strong and Isla was warm in the bed and cabin was exactly what she’d wanted it to be, just us, nothing else, nowhere we had to be.

I stood at the door a moment before I opened it.

Behind me she was already settling back into the blankets, her eyes half closed, warm in a way that had nothing to do with the fire. I looked at her longer than I needed to.

There was a time I came to this cabin to be alone. To think, to breathe, to be somewhere n one wanted anything from me. I never once pictured someone in that bed while I hunted. I never pictured coming back to anyone at all.

Now there was Isla, waiting for me to bring her something to eat, giving me orders about th fire, telling me not to be long. The cabin felt different with her in it. Not smaller. Fuller.

Vorak stirred at the thought of the run.

‘She’ll be here when we get back,‘ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She will.‘

That was the part I kept turning over. Not the hunt. Not the cold. Just the plain fact that whe

I came back through that door, she’d still be here.

I’d spent years learning to need no one.

She’d undone that without trying.

“I’ll be back before you miss me,” I said.

“I already miss you,” she said. “Go so you can come back.”

I opened the door to the cold night and Vorak came forward in me, ready to run, ready to hunt ready to bring something back for her.

Then I stepped out and let the shift take me.

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Built for this

(Calus)

The shift took me between one step and the next.

The cold that had been on my skin turned into nothing. Vorak came up through me the way he always did out here, without being called, glad to be let out. My feet hit the ground as paws and the clearing changed around me. The dark that had been dark to the man wasn’t dark to the wolf. I could see the tree line, the gaps between the pines, the shape of the ridge past the clearing, all of it clear in shades of grey and silver like the night had thinned out just for me.

This was the part I never got tired of.

The world opened up. Sound came first. The wind moving through the high branches. Something small shifting in the brush near the porch. Water running somewhere off to the east, the stream that cut down the mountain and pooled below the ridge. I knew that stream.

Game came to it at night.

Iran.

Vorak stretched into it and the trees started moving past faster than any man could take them. This was mine in a way almost nothing else was. Not the crown, not the pack house, not the weight of every decision that waited for me there. Just this. The ground under me and the speed I was built for and no one to hold it back from.

I didn’t have to hold it back tonight.

When I ran beside Isla I kept Vorak slow, matched her stride, let her set the pace while she learned what her legs could do. There was no shame in it. She was new to her wolf and I would run at her side as long as she needed me there. But she wasn’t here now. She was warm in the cabin, waiting. Out here alone there was no reason to keep anything in check.

So I let go.

The forest opened ahead of me and I took the slope down toward the stream at full stretch, dodging the trees without slowing, reading the ground three strides ahead of where my feet landed. A root here. A dip there. A fallen branch I cleared without breaking pace. My body knew this mountain. I’d run it a hundred times alone and it had never once caught me out.

Halfway down I caught the scent.

Deer. Two of them, maybe three, moving near the water. The wind was coming up the slope

toward me, which meant they hadn’t caught mine yet. Good. I slowed and let Vorak drop low, and the speed folded down into something quieter. This was the other half of it. Not just running fast but knowing when to stop running. The hunt wasn’t only legs. It was patience.

I moved through the trees without sound.

The dark helped me and hid them not at all. I could see them now through a gap in the pines, two of them, a doe and a young buck, heads down at the edge of the stream where the ground went soft. They didn’t know I was there. I held still and watched and let them settle, let them believe they were alone at the water.

I picked the buck.

The doe was closer but the buck was bigger and there was more meat on him, and I wasn’t out here to bring back the easy one. Isla wanted something good. I’d bring her something good.

I circled.

The wind was still with me and I used it, working around to come at him from the side where a fallen pine would break his line of sight until the last moment. Every step went down without a sound. Vorak knew this. He’d done it more times than I could count, and the two of us moved as one thing, patient and low and getting closer with the buck none the wiser.

Ten strides out I stopped.

The buck lifted his head. Something had reached him. Not me, not yet, but some warning that lives in prey, the thing that tells them the night has changed. His ears turned. His body went still. He was about to bolt.

I didn’t give him the chance.

I came out of the dark at full speed and the distance closed before he finished the turn. He was fast. Deer are fast. But nothing on this mountain is faster than me and he learned that in the last second of it. I took him down clean at the edge of the water, one hard drive of weight and teeth, and it was over quicker than it takes to tell. No drawn out thing. No suffering strung out longer than it had to be. My father taught me that too. You hunt clean or you don’t

hunt.

The doe was already gone, crashing up the far bank and into the trees. I let her go. I had what I came for

I stood over the buck for a moment, breathing, Vorak satisfied in the way he only ever was after a run like that. The stream ran past. The cold came off the water. Above the tree line the sky was black and full of stars, the kind you never saw from the pack house with its lamps

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and its windows all lit.

I thought about Isla back in the cabin.

She’d be warm under the blankets by now, the fire d built going strong waiting for me the way she said she would. The thought pulled at me to get back to her. But there was work first. You didn’t drag a whole carcass through the trees if you didnt have to and wast going to bring it into the cabin to deal with in front of her

1 shifted back.

The cold hit me at once, the man’s skin bare against the mountain night, but didn’t feel it much. I never did right after a run. There was a stone shelf near the stream used before flat and clean, and I worked there in the dark. The wolf’s eyes were gone but mine had adjusted enough, and there was starlight and the pale line of the water to work by look what we needed and left the rest for the mountain. Nothing went to waste out there. Whatever I left, something else would come for before morning.

By the time I finished the sky hadn’t changed. Still deep night. I’d been faster than told her

1. be.

I stood and looked back up the slope toward the cabin, though I couldn’t see it through the trees. Somewhere up there was a fire and a bed and a woman whold told me to bring back something good and not to be long.

I’d managed both.

I gathered what I’d taken, shifted one last time with the meat held safe, and started back up the mountain toward her. Vorak ran easy now, unhurried, the hunt done and nothing left to

prove.

Just the climb, and Isla at the end of it.

For years this mountain had been the place I came to be alone. Tonight it was just the thing standing between me and her.

I ran toward her.

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