The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 33

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On the table near the window there was food. Proper food, more than enough of it, bread and fruit and cooked meat still warm and a pot of broth that Sera had instructed the kitchen to make specifically for someone whose body needed rebuilding rather than just feeding. Water and tea and juice and more than she could eat in one sitting because I wanted her to understand that there would always be more, that the concept of running out did not exist in this room.

Along the far wall the staff had done exactly what I’d asked. The wardrobe was full. Not with one or two practical sets of clothing but with enough that she would not wear the same thing twice in two weeks if she chose not to. Day clothes and warmer things for the colder mornings and softer things for evenings and all of it in her size and none of it the kind of worn borrowed thing she’d arrived in. On the shelves beside the wardrobe there were undergarments, several sets, and a full supply of pads, enough that she would never have to think about running short.

On the dressing table everything else had been arranged. Perfumes, four different ones, the kind that came in proper glass bottles. Lotions for her skin, a rich one for her face and a thicker one for the rest of her, both chosen by Sera who knew what a body recovering from years of neglect and wolfsbane exposure needed. Hair products, a wide brush and a finer one and oils for the ends and something to help with the tangles that five years of limited washing had left behind. Soaps that smelled like things that grew in forests and fields. A new toothbrush still wrapped, a full tube of toothpaste, everything arranged neatly on the surface like it had always been there and always

would be.

On the small table beside the bed there was a phone. Brand new, already set up by one of my pack members who handled such things, with the basics loaded and ready. She didn’t know how to use it yet, I understood that, but one of the pack members would show her and she would learn, and

when she did she would have it.

She had left everything she owned on the floor of a shack that no longer existed.

This was what replaced it.

I watched her stand in the doorway and look at all of it and say nothing and I watched the careful

management of her expression fail in a way it hadn’t failed yet since I’d found her. Not dramatically.

Just at the edges, just enough that I could see what was underneath it, and what was underneath it

was something I didn’t have a word for but understood completely.

She walked into the room.

One step at a time, like she was moving through something that might turn out not to be real if she

went too fast. She walked to the dressing table first and she looked at the perfumes and the

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lotions and the hairbrush and she didn’t touch anything. She just looked. Then she walked to the wardrobe and opened it and stood in front of the clothes for a long moment without saying a word.

Then she walked to the bed and put one hand on the cover and pressed down slightly the way you tested something to confirm it was solid.

It was solid.

She stood there with her hand on the cover and I watched something move through her face that she had no name for and neither did I but I understood what it was. The particular thing that happened when your body encountered something it had been denied for long enough that receiving it felt wrong before it felt right.

She was going to be alright.

Not tonight. Not tomorrow. But she was going to be alright and I was certain of that in a way I hadn’t been certain of many things that weren’t related to combat or territory management in eight years of ruling alone.

Sera moved past me into the room and began explaining things quietly, the phone and who would show her how to use it, the products on the dressing table and what each one was for, the food and where to find more when it was gone. She did it in the calm practical way she did everything and I stood in the doorway and watched and felt something in my chest that I’d also been feeling since the shack and still hadn’t found a name for.

I wasn’t going to find the name tonight.

“I’ll

leave you to rest,” I said from the doorway.

Isla looked at me across the room. Her hand was still on the bedcover.

“Thank you,” she said.

It was the first time she’d said those two words to me directly and something in the way she said them told me she didn’t use them easily, that they were words she’d learned to be careful with

because gratitude in Ashcrest had always had a price attached to it and she was still waiting to find out what price was attached here.

I looked at her.

“There’s no price for it,” I said. “You don’t owe me anything for this room or anything in it. It’s yours.”

She looked at me for a moment.

Then she looked back at the bed and the fire and the food on the table and the window with the

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