The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 38

Careful observation–1

(Isla)

Zeron knocked on my door after breakfast.

I’d come back to my room and sat on the bed and looked at the window and tried to work out what I was supposed to do with a day that had no tasks in it. No dishes to wash. No floors to scrub. No list of things that needed doing before someone came to find out why they weren’t done yet. Just a room and a window and time that belonged to nobody and I didn’t know what to do with any of it.

The knock came mid morning. Two knocks, unhurried.

I opened the door and he was standing in the corridor with his hands at his sides and an

expression that was easy without being false. He was very large, almost as large as Caius, with the kind of face that was built for being taken seriously and somehow managed to be approachable

anyway.

“I thought you might want to see the grounds,” he said. “If you’re ready. There’s no rush.”

N looked at him for a moment.

In Ashcrest when someone offered to show you something it was never simply that. There was

always a reason underneath it, something they wanted from you or something they wanted to

establish about the shape of things between you. I’d learned to read the reason before I accepted

anything.

I couldn’t find the reason in his face.

“Alright,” I said.

He waited in the corridor while I put my shoes on and didn’t say anything about how long it took

and didn’t come into the room without being asked and when I came out and pulled the door closed he simply started walking and left enough space between us that I didn’t feel crowded.

We went down the stairs and out through a side door I hadn’t used before that opened onto the

eastern grounds.

The morning was cold and clear and the territory looked different in full daylight than it had when we arrived in the dark. Larger. The training grounds stretched out to the left, empty at this hour, the equipment arranged with the kind of order that came from a pack that took its preparation seriously. To the right the outer buildings ran in a line along the edge of the forest, storage and

workshops and things whose purposes I didn’t know yet.

Zeron walked at a pace that matched mine and not his own, which I noticed without commenting

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Careful

“The training grounds run from dawn until midday,” he said. “Evening sessions for the senior

warriors. If you ever want to watch you’re welcome to. Nobody will bother you.”

I nodded.

“The kitchens are open all day,” he said. “You don’t need to ask permission or explain yourself. You

can go in anytime.”

I looked at him.

“The Alpha King’s instruction,” he said simply, and kept walking.

We moved along the eastern path that ran between the pack house and the outer buildings. Pack

members passed us occasionally, going about their morning, and every one of them acknowledged Zeron and most of them looked at me with the particular curiosity of people who had heard something and were trying to fit what they’d heard to what they were seeing. None of them said anything. None of them stared beyond the first glance.

“They know who I am?” I said.

It came out before I decided to say it. I wasn’t used to speaking without thinking first and I braced

slightly after the words were out.

Zeron didn’t look at me like the question was strange.

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