The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 201

< Trust the gift

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Trust the gift

(Isla)

Caius stepped closer.

“Try something,” he said.

I looked at him.

“Don’t wait for the light,” he said. “Just reach for it.”

I looked at my hands.

“Reach how?”

“The same way you reach for Vaela,” he said. “Not by thinking about it. By knowing she’s there.”

I understood that.

I stopped waiting and simply knew.

The light answered immediately, spreading to my elbows before I even registered it had started. I watched

it move without reacting to it and for the first time it didn’t fade the moment I noticed it.

It stayed.

Not long. But longer than before.

When it finally faded I looked at Caius.

“That was different,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “That was you.”

I stood there for a moment after it faded.

“It didn’t disappear when I noticed it,” I said.

“No,” Caius said.

“Yesterday it did.”

“Yesterday you were watching for it,” he said. “Today you were just letting it be there.”

I thought about that.

“So the gift doesn’t like being watched.”

“The gift doesn’t respond well to doubt,” he said. “There’s a difference.”

I looked at my hands again.

“So every time I doubted it yesterday, I was the one making it fade.

Trust the gift

“Yes,” he said.

“Not the symbol. Not the lesson. Me.”

“Yes.”

I stood with that for a moment.

Ofaim

That was a different kind of realization than I’d expected. I’d been thinking about the gift as something I had to coax or earn, something that depended on the right conditions. But it had always been part of me. I was the condition.

I reached for it again without stepping out of the symbol.

V

It came immediately, spreading to my shoulders before I even thought to track how far it had gone. I kept my eyes forward instead of looking down at my hands and it kept going, moving down my back and across my chest before it settled back into whatever place it lived when it wasn’t being called.

I let out a slow breath.

“Further,” I said.

“Much further,” Caius said.

“I wasn’t looking at it.”

“No.”

“That’s why.”

“That’s part of it,” he said. “The other part is that you stopped asking whether it would come and started assuming it would.”

I looked at him. “Is there a difference?”

“All the difference,” he said.

I stepped out of the symbol and looked at it from outside again. The lines in the dirt hadn’t changed. They were the same marks I’d drawn an hour ago, imperfect copies of something in an old journal that had been waiting longer than either of us had been alive.

But something about standing outside it now felt different from standing outside it an hour ago.

I knew what it did now.

Not because Caius had explained it. Because I’d felt it.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“Yes.”

“The first Alpha who used these symbols,” I said. “Do you think they felt what I just felt?”

He was quiet for a moment.

< Trust the gift

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think they felt something,” he said. “Whether it was the same, I don’t know. You’re not the same kind of wolf they were.”

“Because I’m Celestial

“Yes.”

“So the symbols might work differently for me.”

“They already do,” he said. “No wolf in that journal’s history reached their shoulders on the second day.”

I looked at him.

“You’re sure?”

“The journal notes progress,” he said. “I read it before we started. The fastest recorded progression reached the wrists by the end of the first week.”

I looked at the symbol again.

“And I reached my shoulders on day two.”

“Yes.”

I didn’t know what to do with that information. It didn’t feel like something to celebrate exactly. More like something to sit with, to let settle before drawing any conclusions from it.

Vaela stirred inside me.

‘Don’t overthink it,’ she said.

‘I’m not,’ I said.

‘You are, she said. ‘I can tell.’

I almost smiled.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘A little.

‘It’s faster because we’re Celestial,’ she said. ‘That’s all. it doesn’t mean anything except that we were made for this!

I held that for a moment.

Made for this.

I hadn’t thought about it that way before. I’d spent so long thinking about what had been done to me, the suppression, the wolfsbane, the years of being told there was nothing there, that I hadn’t spent much time thinking about what I’d been made for in the first place.

I looked at the symbol in the dirt.

Maybe this was part of it.

Not the only part. But part.

Trust the gift *

I stepped back inside the lines.

“One more time,” I said.

Caius didn’t tell me to stop. He just watched.

Claim

I reached for the light the same way I’d reached for it before, without waiting, without doubting, just knowing. It came immediately and this time I didn’t track it. I didn’t watch where it went or measure how far it reached. I just let it move and stayed out of its way and stood inside the symbol I’d chosen for a reason I still didn’t fully understand and let the morning be what it was around me.

When it faded I stood still for another moment before looking at Caius.

He was watching me the way he watched things that mattered to him.

His expression hadn’t changed much.

It didn’t need to.

I could see the pride in his eyes without him saying a word.

“Was that better?” I asked.

“It was.”

“How much better?”

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