The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 30

Through the gate–1

(Isla)

I smelled the territory before I saw it.

+25 Points

Something different in the air, cleaner than Ashcrest had ever been, the kind of forest smell that

came from land that was well maintained and well kept, where the trees were old and the borders

were secure and nothing within them had been neglected for a long time. I noticed it without

meaning to, the way you noticed things when your body had spent years reading environments for danger and was always paying attention even when your mind was trying to rest.

The sun was up properly by the time we crossed the border.

There were guards at the Wraithbone boundary line. Two of them, well built and alert, who

straightened when they saw us coming and then immediately stepped aside without a word. They

didn’t ask questions. They didn’t check anything. They simply saw who was at the front of the

group and moved and that alone told me something about what kind of pack this was and what

kind of man led it.

We rode through.

The territory opened up as we came through the tree line and I understood immediately why it was

called what it was. The land was vast, more land than I’d expected, stretching out in every

direction with the mountains visible in the distance and the forest running along the edges of it like

walls that had been placed there on purpose. Everything about it was built with scale in mind. The

training grounds were three times the size of Ashcrest’s. The outer buildings were solid and well

maintained, no patched wood, no leaning fences, no sign that anything here had ever been allowed

to fall into disrepair.

And then I saw the pack house.

It sat at the highest point of the land, which itself was already elevated above the surrounding

territory, and it was the largest building I had ever seen up close. Not just large the way impressive

things were large. Large in a way that felt like a statement, like something that had been built specifically to make clear to anyone who approached it exactly what kind of power lived inside.

Three stories. Wide enough that I couldn’t see both ends of it at the same time from where we

were on the road. Windows lit even in the morning light.

I stared at it.

I had spent five years in a shack with rotting walls and a hole in the roof.

The size of the distance between those two things was not something I had words for

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< Through the gate–1

+25 Points

We rode up the main path toward the pack house and I became aware of people. Not a crowd, not all at once, but pack members appearing at doorways and along the edges of the path, drawn out by the sound of horses and the return of their king. They came out the way pack members always came out when something was happening, quietly and watchful, positioning themselves where they could see without being obvious about it.

They were looking at me.

I felt it before I confirmed it, that particular awareness of being observed that I’d spent twenty

years developing into something close to a sixth sense. Their eyes weren’t on him. He was their

king and they knew him and his return was not what was pulling their attention. I was. The girl

sitting in front of him on his horse, wrapped in a borrowed cloak, who had clearly not come from

anywhere nearby and had clearly not been expected.

My head went down.

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