The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 51

Watching the

Glawn

Watching the shift

(Caius)

I was still at my desk when Vorak started.

Not the usual restlessness. Not the low frustrated pressure he’d been maintaining since the shack, the one that came from wanting to claim what was his and being told to wait. This was different. This was alert in a way that had nothing to do with patience or impatience. More like a dog lifting its head at a sound too faint for anyone else to hear.

I set my pen down.

‘What is it?‘ I asked.

‘Something changed,‘ he said.

‘What kind of something?‘ I asked.

He was quiet for a moment. Not the quiet of not knowing. The quiet of trying to find the right words for something that didn’t have obvious ones.

‘She’s different,‘ he said. ‘Not different like she’s healing. Different like something in her is waking up.‘

I sat back in my chair.

‘You’ve felt it before,‘ I said. ‘The bond pulling toward her,

‘This isn’t the bond,‘ he said. ‘This is something in her. Something that wasn’t there before or was there but wasn’t moving and now it is.

I looked at the window.

I had felt it too, if I was honest. Not clearly enough to name it. More like a change in the quality of the air when she was nearby, something that had been there since the shack but had shifted recently into something more present. I had put it down to the bond strengthening as she settled into Wraithbone, as she ate more and started looking at the world around her with something other than pure survival in her

r

eyes.

But Vorak was not describing the bond and he was not wrong about things like this.

I picked the pen back up and finished the paragraph I’d been working on and closed the document and sat for a moment in the quiet of my office.

Zeron knocked and came in without waiting, the way he did when something was on his mind and he’d decided I should know about it.

“You’ve been watching her more than usual,” he said.

Not an accusation. Just an observation from a man who noticed things.

“Yes,” I said.

He came and stood on the other side of the desk and waited. He was not going to ask why. That was not

Watching the hil

how 7eron operated. He stated what he had observed and left space for me to do what I wanted with it.

Is there something I should know about?” he asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “Just be aware of her. If anything seems different when you’re around her note it and tell me. Don’t push anything and don’t say anything to her about it.”

He nodded once without asking what he was supposed to be looking for. That was one of the things that made him valuable. He trusted that I had reasons for what I asked and he acted on the instruction without requiring an explanation first.

“Sera?” he asked.

“Sera will notice on her own,” I said. “She’s already looking.”

He nodded again and left and I sat alone in my office.

Vorak was still doing the alert thing. That quiet focused attention that was different from everything he’d been doing since the shack. He wasn’t pushing. He wasn’t frustrated. He was just there, at the edge of my awareness, pointed in the direction of the east wing where Isla was in her room, listening to something I couldn’t quite hear.

‘You felt it at dinner,‘ I said.

‘Yes,‘ he said.

‘The laugh,‘ I said.

‘Before the laugh, he said. ‘When she reached for the bread. Something moved in her. Small. But it moved.‘

I thought about that.

‘She doesn’t know what it is,‘ I said.

‘No,‘ he said. ‘But she’s noticed something. I can feel it.’

I looked at the window for a long time.

I had been paying attention since the library, since the afternoon she had looked at the door when Raith came through it and her body had done nothing. I had noticed it and filed it without commenting on it the way I filed most things that required more information before they became something I could act on.

At dinner I had watched her laugh.

That was the clearest thing. The laugh had been small and brief and she had looked at me immediately after with the expression she wore when she’d done something without checking first, waiting to find out what it would cost. But before she looked at me, in the half second before the checking instinct kicked in her face had been open in a way I had not seen it before. Something had come through it that wasn’t managed or careful or held back.

Vorak had gone very still in that moment.

Not the frustrated stillness of restraint. The stillness of a wolf paying attention to something it recognised.

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