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

permissio

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.