The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 248

The thread

The thread

(Caius)

The page beneath wasn’t blank.

Small, careful handwriting covered it from top to bottom. The ink had faded with age but remained

legible, each word placed with the precision of someone who understood that whatever they were

committing to paper would outlast them by generations.

I read the first line aloud.

“The child was brought to us by the Elder himself. We were told she was the last of her line and

that her survival depended on no one knowing what she was.”

Isla went very st

e me.

I kept rea

“We

the record. We agreed to say nothing. What we didn’t agree to was what

er didn’t want the child hidden. He wanted her gone. When we refused he

ay.”

d was still over mine on the table.

going,” she said.

rned the page.

The handwriting changed here. A different hand. Another Alpha King continuing where the first had stopped, the way the earlier journal had been passed forward.

“The child was moved before we could intervene. We were told she died. We didn’t believe it then. I

don’t believe it now. If you’re reading this it means the seal held and the right person finally came looking. Find the

ivate correspondence from three hundred years ago. The truth is there.

We didn’t

w one day someone would need it.”

I set

or a long moment before looking at me.

ars,” she said.

C

גור

KIZA

O

The thread

“Yes,” I said.

“This didn’t start with Evander,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Evander was just the most recent one willing to carry it forward.”

She looked at the shelves.

“The Elder’s private correspondence,” she said. “Do you have it?”

I thought about it.

Wraithbone’s archives went back further than most packs bothered to preserve. My father had impressed that on me early. Keep everything. You never know what becomes relevant.

“If it exists anywhere,” I said, “it’s here.”

1 stood and crossed to the far end of the library where the oldest correspondence was stored. Not ledgers. Not journals. Letters. Sealed and catalogued by date and sender going back as far as the pack’s records reached.

Three hundred years.

I found the section and ran my finger along the spines until I found the right decade. I pulled a bundle of correspondence tied with a cord that had dried and darkened with age and carried it

back to the table.

Isla watched me untie it carefully.

The letters inside were fragile. I handled them the way I handled everything that required care, without rushing, without forcing anything that wasn’t ready to give.

The third letter in the bundle stopped me.

The seal on the outside was broken. Someone had read this before and resealed it badly, the wax pressed down unevenly, the impression incomplete.

Someone had been here before us.

Not recently. The damage to the seal was old. But someone had read this letter and put it back

and said nothing.

I opened it.

The handwriting inside was different from anything else in the bundle. Formal. The kind of hand that belonged to someone accustomed to writing things that would be carried a long distance and read by people who hadn’t been present for the original conversation.

The thread

I read it once.

Then I set it down on the table between us and looked at Isla.

“Read it,” I said.

She leaned forward and read it slowly. I watched her face as she did. I’d learned to read her the

way I read most things that mattered, carefully and without rushing to conclusions.

Her expression didn’t change until the final paragraph.

Then something moved through it that I hadn’t seen before. Not grief exactly. Not anger. Something underneath both of those things that didn’t have a clean name.

She sat back.

“She didn’t give me up willingly,” she said.

“No,” I said. “She didn’t.”

“She fought it.”

“According to this, yes.”||||||

Isla looked at the letter on the table between us.

“And the Elder told her I died,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“She thinks I’m dead.”

The words landed between us and neither of us reached for them immediately. Some things needed a moment before they could be handled.

I watched Isla sit with it.

She didn’t fall apart. She didn’t reach for me through the bond. She sat with both hands in her lap and looked at the letter and let the information settle into her the way she let most difficult things settle. Fully. Without flinching.

After a while she looked at me.

“She’s still alive,” she said. “The journal said so.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Which means she’s spent however long believing her child is dead.”

“Yes,” I said.

375

The the rad

Isla looked at the letter one more time.

Then she looked at the shelves.

“We need to find her,” she said.

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I said. “We do.”

I looked at the letter one more time before folding it carefully and setting it aside.

“Zeron is already in Ashcrest,” I said. “If this Elder’s network stretched that far he may be able to

find a thread worth pulling.”

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify