The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 184

Just a little longer

(Caius)

I woke to her watching me.

She didn’t look away when my eyes opened. She just lay there on her side with her head on the

pillow and looked at me the way she looked at things she was thinking about, directly and without apology.

“How long have you been awake?” I asked.

“A while,” she said.

“Doing what?”

“Watching you sleep.”

I looked at her. “And?”

“You look different when you sleep,” she said. “Less like you’re running something.”

She smiled slightly. “I meant it as a compliment.”

“I know,” I said.

Vorak was content in a way that didn’t ask for anything or push toward anything. Just settled.

I turned onto my side to face her.

She didn’t move back. She stayed where she was and let the space between us close and I put my hand on her face and she turned into it without thinking about it.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” I said.

We stayed like that for a while.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “But I don’t want to move yet.”

“Then don’t,” I said.

She looked at me. “We should probably head back soon.”

“Soon” I said. “Not yet.”

She settled back against the pillow and looked at the ceiling.

Just a little longer

“Tell me something else,” she said.

“About what?”

“About you,” she said. “Last night we got distracted.”

“What do you want to know?” I asked.

“Something you haven’t told me yet,” she said. “Not the crown. Not the territory. Something else.”

“When I was seventeen,” I said, “I made a decision that cost someone their position in the guard Someone who had been loyal to my father for years. I was wrong about what they’d done and I moved too fast and by the time I understood that the damage was already done.

She turned her head to look at me.

“What happened to them?” she asked.

“They left Wraithbone,” I said. “I tried to make it right afterward but they didn’t want anything from me by then.”

“Did you ever see them again?”

“Once,” I said. “Years later. I apologized. They accepted it. But it didn’t change what the decision had cost them.”

She was quiet for a moment. “How old were you again?”

“Seventeen,” I said.

“That’s young to be making decisions that size,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “I didn’t know that at the time.”

“What did you learn from it?”

“That moving fast and being right aren’t the same thing,” I said. “And that an apology after the fact

is worth less than the caution you didn’t use before it.”

She looked back at the ceiling.

“Is that why you’re so careful now?” she asked.

“Partly,” I said. “My father taught me caution. That taught me what it cost when I didn’t use it.”

She was quiet for a moment. “You were harder on yourself about it than anyone else was.

I looked at her. “What makes you say that?”

“Because that’s how you work,” she said. “You hold yourself to a standard nobody else is applying.

Just a little longer

I didn’t answer that.

She turned her head and looked at me. “I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m just saying I noticed.”

“When did you notice that?” I asked.

“Early,” she said. “Before I understood most things about you, I understood that.”

Outside the birds had started and the light through the window had shifted.

“We should head back,” she said eventually.

“Yes,” I said.

She didn’t move immediately. Neither did I.

After a while she sat up and pushed her hair back and looked at me.

“Is there a shower here?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Small but it works.”

She got up without another word and I followed her in.

The shower was small enough that there wasn’t much room between us and neither of us tried to

create any. She washed her hair and I washed mine and the water ran hot longer than I expected it

to for a cabin that hadn’t been used in months.

She looked up at me at one point while the water was still running

“You really did think of everything when you built this place,” she said.

“My father built it,” I said.

She looked around the small space. “Then he thought of everything.”

“He usually did,” I said.

We finished without rushing and she wrapped herself in the one towel I found under the sink and looked at me while I used the other.

“We should come back in summer,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “We should.”

We got dressed and moved around the small cabin without getting in each other’s way, the ease of two people who had stopped needing to think about where the other one was.

Isla appeared beside me at the window.

Just a little longer

“I like it here,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

She looked up at me. “I had fun last night.”

I looked at her. “Which part?”

She smiled. “All of it.”

“So did I,” I said.

She picked up her bag and I followed her out.

We started down the trail together.

After a few minutes Isla looked over at me.

“Do you think anyone noticed we were gone?”

“Probably.”

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