The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 67

The hearing awaits

(Caius)

We came back through the side door as the dark settled fully over the territory.

She slid off my back at the edge of the grounds and I shifted behind the nearest wall and dressed and came back around and we walked the last stretch to the door together without speaking. The pack house was warm when we stepped inside and the contrast with the cold outside was immediate and real.

She stopped in the corridor and looked at me.

There was something different in her face from what had been there when we left. Not dramatic. Just settled in a way it hadn’t been before we went. The lake had done something and the conversation had done something and the kiss had done something and all of it together had produced a version of her expression that I hadn’t seen before and was still learning to read.

“I’m going to sleep,” she said.

“Goodnight,” I said.

She nodded once and went upstairs.

I stood in the corridor for a moment and then went to my office.

Pryor had left a document on my desk while I was out. I saw it the moment I walked in, sitting in the center of the desk the way he left things he considered important enough to position prominently. I sat down and picked it up.

It was the message I’d been waiting for since we left Ashcrest.

I read it through once and then again.

The formal case was complete. Every charge documented. Every name confirmed. The pack arrest orders executed and holding. Rodan and Maren and the Thorne family and the hierarchy members named in the report all accounted for and contained within Ashcrest’s borders under my standing order. Nothing had been obstructed and nothing had gone wrong and the only thing left was to go back and deliver the hearing.

I set the document down.

‘It’s time,‘ Vorak said.

‘Yes, I said.

I’d known this was coming. Had been preparing for it since the night I sat in Rodan’s office and read the list. The formal case was complete and the charges were ready and the sentences had been drafted and reviewed and there was nothing left to do except go back and deliver them in front of the pack that had stood in that yard and done nothing.

I thought about Isla upstairs.

She needed to know tonight. Not tomorrow morning. Tonight, while whatever the lake had given her was

The hearing

still present, while she was in the best version of herself she’d been since she arrived. Not because I Thought she couldn’t handle it otherwise. Because she deserved to hear it when she was standing in something solid.

I went upstairs and knocked on her door.

“It’s Caius,” I said.

A pause. Then her voice, not sleepy, she hadn’t been asleep.

“Come in,” she said.

Claim

She was sitting on the bed with the lamp on, still in her coat, which told me she’d only just come upstairs and hadn’t fully settled yet. She looked at me when I came in and her expression did its usual read before settling.

I sat in the chair across from her.

“Pryor left a message on my desk,” I said. “The case against Ashcrest is complete. Everyone named in the charges is under pack arrest. The formal hearing can proceed.”

She set her hands flat on her knees.

She didn’t speak immediately. I watched her process it the way she processed most things that mattered, going quiet and inward while she worked through what the information was doing to her. I didn’t rush it.

After a moment she looked at the window.

“All of them,” she said.

“All of them,” I said. “Rodan. Maren. Your father. Your mother. Brent. Vera. Drace. Hadoc. Dolin. Torvin. Everyone named in the report.”

She nodded once.

“When?” she asked.

“Two days,” I said.

She looked at me then. Her expression was the particular one she had when she was deciding something and hadn’t finished deciding it yet. I waited.

The quiet stretched.

“Can I come?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. No hesitation.

Something moved through her face. The particular release of someone who had been prepared to argue for something and found they didn’t need to.

“You were going to ask anyway,” she said.

“I was going to give you the choice,” I said. “The same way I’m giving it now. You can come or you can stay. Neither one changes what happens there.”

The hear

She looked at the window again.

Claim

“I need to be there,” she said. “Not to watch them suffer. I just need to be there when it happens. In that

yard.”

“I know,” I said.

“is that strange?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “It would be stranger if you didn’t want to.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“I’ve been thinking about going back since we left,” she said. “Not with dread. More like unfinished business. Something that has to close properly before it can actually be over.”

“That’s exactly what it is,” I said.

She looked at me.

“Will you tell me what to expect?” she asked. “Not the formal parts. What it will actually feel like. Being there.”

I thought about it honestly before I answered.

“It’ll be hard,” I said. “Walking through that gate again. Seeing their faces. The yard will look the same and some of it will land in ways you won’t expect. But you’ll be there differently from how you were the last time. That’s going to matter.”

“You’ll be there,” she said.

“The whole time,” I said. “You ride in front of me the same way we came. You stand where you choose to stand. Nobody tells you where to be or how to respond to any of it.”

She was quiet for a long moment.

Then she said, “I want to address the pack myself. After the sentences. I want to say something to them.”

I looked at her.

Her expression was certain in a way that was new. The particular certainty of someone who had carried something for a long time and had finally decided what they were going to do with it.

“Then you will,” I said.

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