The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 26

Nothing left behind 2

Nothing left behind–2

+25 Points

Sera considered. “If you go carefully and she’s kept warm and comfortable, yes. Pushing her hard

wouldn’t be wise but a steady journey should be manageable.”

“We won’t push,” I said.

Sera nodded. She started to move and then stopped.

“Alpha King,” she said. “The rib. The fingers. Those injuries are old. They happened when she was

young. Before the shack.”

I looked at her.

“I know,” I said.

She held my gaze for a moment and then she nodded again and walked back toward the east

wing.

I stood in the corridor alone.

I put one hand flat against the wall and I stood there and I breathed and I let the cord hold for a few

more seconds while I got everything back behind it. The rib. The fingers. Injuries that had

happened to a child and been left to heal on their own because nobody had thought to treat them.

I thought about the family that had been in this pack for two decades, the warrior father, the mother, the siblings, and I thought about a girl growing up in that house before the shack existed

and what that had looked like.

Then I pushed off the wall and opened the door.

Isla was sitting on the edge of the bed Sera had examined her on. She looked up when I came in

and her expression did the thing it always did, that quick assessment, reading me before I’d said a

word.

“We’re leaving tonight,” I said. “As soon as you’re ready. You’ll come to Wraithbone with me.”

She looked at me for a moment.

“What about the investigation?” she said.

“My head of counsel will stay and oversee it,” I said. “He’s thorough and he answers to me. Nothing

will be missed.”

She nodded.

“Is there anything in the shack you want to take with you?” I said.

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Nothing left behind 2

+25 Points

She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “There are a few things. Behind a loose board in the

wall.”

I didn’t ask what they were. I simply picked her up and carried her back across the grounds to the

shack for the last time.

I carried her through the door and set her down carefully and she crossed to the far corner and

crouched down and pulled a loose piece of wall board away from the base of the wall.

I looked at what she brought out.

A small folded stack of worn clothing. Two pairs of undergarments that were barely holding together. A handful of pads she’d clearly collected carefully over a long period, each one preserved like something valuable because to her they had been. A worn down toothbrush. A tube of /

toothpaste squeezed nearly flat.

She held them against her chest and looked up at me like she was waiting for me to react to what

they were.

I looked at her.

“Leave them,” I said.

She went still.

“All of it,” I said. “Leave it here. You won’t need any of it.”

She looked down at what she was holding. I could see her working through it, the instinct to keep

what little she had fighting against whatever she was starting to understand about what was being

offered to her instead.

“I’ll get you everything you need at Wraithbone,” I said. “New. Everything new. You won’t leave that room looking for anything because it’ll already be there.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she set it all down on the floor of the shack. The worn clothes and the carefully saved pads

and the worn down toothbrush, set them down in the dirt where they’d come from, and she stood

up with nothing in her hands.

She didn’t look back at them.

I picked her up again and carried her out of that shack and once she was safely across the

grounds and back inside I turned and walked back to it alone.

I stood in front of it for a moment. The rotting walls and the broken roof and the ring still bolted to the floor inside. Five years of wolfsbane soaked into the wood. Five years of everything that had

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< Nothing left behind–2

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