The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 39

Careful observation–2

1 filed that away.

He answered every question I asked without making me feel foolish for not knowing things. Where

the medical room was and how to reach Sera if I needed her. Which parts of the pack house were

common areas and which were private. How meals worked and what the expectations were

around them. He gave me information the way someone gave directions, practically and without

judgment, and he didn’t volunteer more than I asked for which I appreciated more than I could

have explained.

But I was careful.

I was careful in the same way I was always careful with people who were kind to me, which was to

say I kept the part of me that assessed things running at the same pace it always ran and I didn’t let the ease of his manner turn it off. I’d known people in Ashcrest who were kind on the surface. The pack member who used to leave extra bread near the kitchen entrance where I might find it

and then told Maren what I’d taken. The warrior who’d spoken to me gently in the yard once and the next day stood and watched without expression while Rodan made a point of me in front of

the whole pack.

Kindness had conditions attached to it in my experience. It came with a cost that wasn’t always

named upfront. The naming came later, when you’d already accepted the kindness and the cost

was due and you had no leverage left.

I didn’t know yet what Zeron’s cost was.

Maybe there wasn’t one. Maybe he was simply a man who had been told by his king to show a girl around the grounds and was doing it with basic human decency because that was who he was. That was possible. I understood that it was possible.

I just didn’t know how to believe it yet.

We circled back toward the pack house and he pointed out a few more things along the way, a small garden at the southern corner of the grounds that someone clearly kept with care, a covered walkway between two of the outer buildings that was warmer than the open path on cold mornings, a water source near the eastern tree line that was cleaner than the one near the main

building.

At the side door he stopped.

“If you have questions about anything,” he said, “you can ask me. I’m not difficult to find.”

I looked at him.

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“Why are you being helpful?” I said.

It came out more direct than I intended. In Ashcrest that question would have cost me something. I waited for his face to change.

It didn’t change.

“Because you’re the Alpha King’s mate,” he said. “And because you came from somewhere that

clearly didn’t treat you the way a person should be treated. And because those two things together mean that making you feel welcome here is something worth doing.” He paused. “There’s no other

reason.”

I looked at him for a moment longer.

Then I nodded and went inside.

1 stood in the corridor after the door closed behind me and I thought about what he’d said and I turned it over the way I turned everything over, looking for the part that was going to cost me something.

I didn’t find it.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t there. It just meant I hadn’t found it yet.

I went back upstairs to my room and I sat by the window and I looked out at the eastern forest and I thought about a man who had answered my questions without making me feel small for asking them and had said there was no other reason with the particular plainness of someone who was telling the truth.

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