The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 57

Twill wait with you

(Caius)

I stopped outside her door and stood there for a moment before raising my hand to knock.

Vorak had been quiet since Sera left my office but not relaxed. He remained attentive in the particular way he got when something important was unfolding and he wanted to be present for every part of it. Isla knew now and whatever Sera had told her would be sitting in her in layers, some of it landing clearly and some of it still finding its level. I understood that. Twenty years built on a particular understanding of yourself did not shift in a single conversation no matter how carefully that conversation was handled.

I knocked three times and said my name and waited.

There was no movement at first. Then I heard something small from inside the room, the quiet sound of something being set aside. A few seconds passed. I kept my hand at my side and my weight where it was and I did not reach for the handle. She was deciding and the deciding was hers to do in her own time.

“You can come in,” she said.

I opened the door and stepped inside and left it open behind me. She was sitting on the bed rather than by the window. The phone rested in her hands and the screen was lit and she had been using it, which told me something. When Isla was overwhelmed she went still and silent and turned inward. The fact that she was doing something, keeping herself anchored in a task, told me she was managing. She looked up when I stepped inside and her expression was composed but there was something working through the deeper layers of it, something new that hadn’t been there this morning.

I crossed to the chair across from her and sat without moving closer than I needed to.

She watched me settle. Neither of us spoke immediately and neither of us needed to. The quiet between us had become something over the past weeks that didn’t require filling. It was just the space we both existed in when words weren’t ready yet.

“You came to check on me,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Not to explain anything,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Sera did that. I came because I wanted to see how you were.”

She looked at me for a moment with that direct searching look she had, the one that was looking for the gap between what was said and what was meant. I held it without looking away and gave her time to find whatever she was looking for.

“I don’t know how I am,” she said. “Not exactly.”

“That’s alright,” I said. “You don’t have to know yet.”

Her thumb moved lightly across the phone screen, not purposeful, just grounding herself in something physical while she thought. I watched the motion and said nothing. Vorak remained steady, present but not pressing, the way he had learned to be when she was processing something.

4 keep thinking about the shack,” she said after a while. “Not about being there. About what it means that I Thad a wolf all along and nobody knew Not Rodan. Not my family. Not even me.”

“Including you,” I said. “That matters. You were not hiding from it or refusing it. You genuinely didn’t know.”

She nodded slowly. “Sera said the same thing,” she said. “That it wasn’t a failure. That the exposure was the reason and not anything I did or didn’t do.“.

“She’s right,” I said.

Isla looked down at the phone and tapped the screen to wake it. She had been reading something and I could see the text on the screen from where I sat but I did not try to read it. Whatever she had been looking at was hers to look at.

“I started looking things up,” she said. “About wolves and shifting and what it feels like. Most of it doesn’t apply to me.”

“Most of it won’t,” I said. “Your situation isn’t like anything documented. Sera knows more about what to expect than anything you’ll find there.”

She nodded. “I know,” she said. “I just needed to do something.”

I understood that completely. She had spent weeks learning how to exist without constant doing and she had gotten better at it but when something this large landed the instinct to act, to research, to prepare, was not surprising. It was who she was.

“Your safety here doesn’t depend on any of this,” I said. “I want to say that clearly. Nothing that Sera told you changes what you are here or how this works.”

She looked at me. “I know,” she said. “I think I know that.”

“The uncertainty is the part I want to talk about,” I said.

Something moved through her expression that was almost a response to that. She looked at her hands and then back at me. “I keep waiting for the version of this where it matters differently,” she said. “Where having a wolf changes what I’m worth here.”

“It doesn’t,” I said. “It never did and it won’t.”

She held my gaze for a long time. The searching look was there again and I let her search. She was not going to believe it from one conversation and I was not asking her to. I was asking her to hold it and look at it and let the evidence accumulate the way it had been accumulating since the shack.

“I believe you,” she said finally. “More than I did yesterday.”

“That’s good to know,” I said.

She set the phone down on the bed beside her and did not pick it back up. That small change did not escape me. She no longer needed it as something to hold onto for the moment. The room was quiet around us and the fire was low in the hearth and outside the eastern forest was dark beyond the window.

“I’m not afraid,” she said. “I want to be clear about that. I’m uncertain but I’m not afraid.”

“I know,” I said. “The difference between those two things is significant and I noticed it.”

She nodded once. “Will you tell me If you notice things?” she asked. “If Vorak notices things before I do. “Will you tell me?”

“Yes,” I said. “If you want me to.

“I want you to,” she said. “I’d rather know.”

I stood from the chair and she watched me rise. “I’ll let you rest,” I said. “You’ve had a full day.”

a

“You’ll still knock,” she said. It was not quite a question.

“Every time,” I said. “Without exception.”

She nodded and picked the phone back up and her fingers moved across it with more confidence than they had a week ago. She was alright. Not fixed, not finished, but alright, which was all today needed her to

1. be.

I stepped out and pulled the door closed behind me and stood in the corridor for a moment.

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