The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 202

Vorak doesittare

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Vorak doesn’t care

(Caius)

We stopped at the edge of the training ground to let the session settle.

Isla was looking at her hands the way she’d been looking at them all morning. I was about to suggest we go inside when I heard footsteps behind us.

I turned.

Kael was crossing the training ground toward us. Twenty four, one of the stronger wolves in the rotation, broad across the shoulders, the kind of wolf who moved through the world without ever having had reason to second guess himself.

He was looking at Isla.

“Alpha King,” he said with a nod toward me before his eyes moved to Isla. “Luna. I saw some of that from the far side.” He nodded toward the symbol in the dirt. “That was impressive. I’ve never seen anything like

it.”

Isla looked at him. “Thank you,” she said.

“How long have you been training, Luna?” he asked.

“Not long,” she said.

“Could have fooled me.” He smiled. “You’re a natural.”

He took a step closer.

I watched him do it.

Then he reached out and touched her arm.

The growl came out before I could stop it. Before I’d even finished deciding whether to stop it. Low and immediate and coming from somewhere so far underneath my usual control that by the time I registered what I’d done it was already in the air between us.

Kael’s hand dropped from Isla’s arm instantly.

He looked at me.

Whatever he found there made him take a step back. Then another. His chin dropped in the instinctive submission of a wolf who had just understood on a level below thought that he was standing in front of something that outranked him in every possible sense and was not, at this moment, being remotely

reasonable about it.

Vorak was fully at the surface.

Not forward. Not in control. But right there, pressing against every boundary I had with the single minded focus of a wolf who had one objective and was not interested in my reservations about how to pursue it.

I took a step toward Kael.

< Vorak doesn’t Care

I didn’t plan to. My body simply moved and I let it move one step before I stopped myself because two steps would have been a different conversation entirely.

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Kael didn’t move. He couldn’t. His wolf had pinned him in place the way prey went still when something larger locked eyes with it

“She is your Luna,” I said. My voice came out quiet. That was worse than if it had been loud and I knew it and so did he. “You will address her as such. You will not touch her. You will not stand closer to her than you are standing to me right now. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Alpha King,” he said. His voice came out even but his hands weren’t.

“Good,” I said. “Leave.”

He left.

Not at a walk this time. Close enough to a run that the distinction was academic.

I stood where he’d been standing and breathed through it. Vorak pulled back slowly, the way he pulled back when he’d been given enough and not everything he wanted, reluctant and present and still watching the direction Kael had gone.

Isla was very quiet behind me.

I turned.

She was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t read. Not fear. Not anger. Something between careful and something else I didn’t have a name for yet.

“I have somewhere to be,” I said.

“Caius.”

“I’ll be back,” I said. “Go inside.”

She opened her mouth.

“Please,” I said.

She closed it. She looked at me for one more moment and then she turned and walked toward the pack house and I watched her go and didn’t move until she was through the door.

Then I went to find Sera.

She was in the medical wing. She looked up when I came through the door and whatever she saw on my face made her set down what she was holding and gesture to the chair without a word. I sat. She looked

at me for a moment.

“What happened?” she asked.

I told her. The training session. Kael crossing the ground. The compliments. The step closer. The hand on Isla’s arm. The growl. The step I’d taken toward him before I stopped myself. Vorak at the surface wanting things I hadn’t let him have.

Sera listened to all of it without interrupting

< Vorak doesn’t care

When I finished she was quiet for a moment,

Then she said, “You’re jealous.”

I looked at her.

“That’s it?” I said.

“That’s it,” she said.

“Vorak nearly came forward over a wolf touching her arm for two seconds,” I said.

“Because you’re jealous,” she said again. “And Vorak is territorial in a way that has no interest in being

reasonable about it.”

I sat with that.

“I don’t get jealous,” I said.

Clainy

Sera gave me the look she reserved for statements that didn’t require a response because the response was self evident.

“The bond is complete,” she said. “The mating is done. Vorak has what he’s been waiting for and now anything that comes near Isla registers differently than it did before. A wolf touching her arm isn’t just a wolf touching her arm anymore. To Vorak it’s a challenge whether the wolf intended it that way or not.”

“Kael wasn’t challenging anything,” I said. “He was being friendly.”

“I know,” Sera said. “Vorak doesn’t care.”

I took a step toward him,” I said.

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