The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 20

Call it what it is–2

I looked at my hands in my lap.

I’d heard this before. Not directed at someone who could do something about it, but I’d heard the shape of

1. it. The way my existence had always been framed as a problem the pack had been forced to manage

rather than a person the pack had failed.

“The decision to house her separately was not made lightly,” Maren continued. “It was a collective decision made with the pack’s best interests in mind. The wolfsbane was a precautionary measure recommended by our healer at the time given her unpredictable behavior in the early period. The

separation was meant to be temporary while a longer term solution was discussed.”

I looked up at that.

Unpredictable behavior. I’d been fifteen years old and I’d cried for three days when they first chained me

and tried once to pull the ring from the floor. That was the unpredictable behavior. That was what had

warranted a wolfsbane chain.

He was still looking at Maren. His face hadn’t changed. He hadn’t moved or made a sound and Maren was

reading that stillness as patience, as an invitation to keep going, and I could see from where I was sitting

that it wasn’t either of those things.

“Over time the temporary arrangement became the established one,” Maren said. “Not out of cruelty but

out of practicality. The pack had found a structure that worked and changing it required a conversation

that kept being deferred. I want the king to understand that nobody in this pack woke up each morning

and chose to make Isla’s life difficult. These were institutional decisions made over a long period by multiple people and.”

“Stop,” he said.

Maren stopped.

The word had not been loud. It had not been sharp or sudden. It had come out the same way everything he said came out, controlled and even and with a weight behind it that had nothing to do with volume. But

it landed in the room like something dropped from a height and every person at that table felt it.

He looked at Maren.

“You should’ve stopped talking two sentences ago,” he said.

Maren went white.

Not pale. White. The color left her face the way water left a cloth when you wrung it out, completely and all at once, and what was left behind was something I’d never seen on Maren’s face in twenty years of

watching it.

She didn’t speak.

Call it what its 2-

Claim

“Institutional decisions,” he said. “Made over a long period. By multiple people.” He looked at her. “You’ve just described a system. A deliberate, maintained, multi year system designed to keep a person chained in

a shack and you’ve called it a deferral of conversation.”

Maren’s folded hands had gone very still.

“The wolfsbane recommendation,” he said. “Which healer made it?”

A pause.

“Our previous healer,” Maren said. “She’s no longer with the pack.”

“Convenient,” he said. “I’ll want her name and her current location.”

Maren’s mouth opened slightly and then closed again.

“The unpredictable behavior you mentioned,” he said. “Describe it.”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“She was distressed in the initial period,” Maren said carefully. “She resisted the arrangement.”

“She was fifteen years old and she was being chained to a floor,” he said. “What you’re calling unpredictable behavior most people would call a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation.”

Maren said nothing.

I was watching her and I was thinking about every time she had come to my shack with that composed

face and those folded hands and that particular tone of voice she used when she wanted me to

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