The Alpha King And His Chosen Luna novel Chapter 87

What I am–2

“Stay down,” he said quietly.

I obeyed before pride could argue.

My own hands looked too small to belong to me. Scarred wrists. Thin fingers. Skin rising and falling too fast over ribs that ached.

I stared at them.

I had never looked at hands like they were a mystery before.

They should have felt ordinary.

They didn’t.

These were the same hands that had just stood on frozen ground as paws broad enough to crack earth. The same hands they’d bound, struck, worked raw, dismissed. They trembled now inside heavy dark fabric and I couldn’t stop looking at them.

‘Yours,‘ Vaela said.

My throat tightened.

Mine.

Sera came closer only when I didn’t flinch.

“Can you sit upright?” she asked.

“Yes.”

My voice came rough and thin. I hated that it sounded small after what I’d been.

Still, I pushed upright.

Caius stayed near enough to catch me if I failed and far enough not to make it an insult. I noticed that even through the shaking.

Sera knelt in front of me.

“How much do you know of Celestial wolves?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

The answer embarrassed me though it shouldn’t have. No one had taught me anything worth having.

She nodded once. “Most wolves know nothing. Most think they’re stories.”

I tightened my hold on the cloak.

“Then tell me.”

Her gaze moved to Caius, then back to me.

“Celestial wolves are older blood than modern rank lines. Before packs formalized under Alpha law, there were wolves born with authority that didn’t come from inheritance or challenge. It came from nature

itself.”

I frowned.

“Authority.”

“Presence,” she said. “Power. Command that doesn’t need force behind it. The ability to stand equal to Alpha without contest.”

My mind caught on one part.

“Equal.”

Caius answered before Sera did.

“Yes.”

I looked at him.

The word meant more coming from his mouth than anyone else’s. He was Alpha King. Equal wasn’t something lightly given.

Sera continued.

“Some records call Celestials guardians. Some call them judges. Some call them balance when packs grow corrupt. Records disagree on purpose, but not on rarity.”

“How rare?”

She held my gaze.

“The last confirmed Celestial wolf was recorded over three centuries ago.”

The yard seemed to tilt.

Three hundred years. More than lifetimes stacked together. More than any story I’d ever been told mattered to me.

“You’re saying I am the first in three hundred years.”

“I’m saying you’re the first confirmed one in surviving records.”

I laughed once.

It sounded cracked and disbelieving.

“I was chained in a shack not long ago.”

“And you were Celestial there too,” Sera said.

That silenced me.

* Wistiant

Chann

Hooked down at my hands again. Knuckles scraped. Nails broken short from old labor. Fine scars across skin I knew too well.

Nothing about them tooked ancient

Nothing about me looked chosen.

Nothing about the girl they’d named wolfless fit what Sera was saying.

‘There,’ Vaela said.

I went still.

‘You were there?‘ I asked.

‘Always.’

The answer was so small and so certain that it hurt worse than a longer explanation would have.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“Of course you don’t,” Caius said quietly. “You’ve spent years being lied to.”

I turned to him.

Anger moved first, because anger was easier than grief. “Then how did no one know?”

“They may have suspected something was wrong,” Sera said. “A delayed shift. Unusual resistance. Traits that didn’t fit suppression. But true Celestials are so rare most would never think of it.”

“Maren would have,” Caius said.

His voice had changed.

Cold now.

“She knew enough history to fear anything she couldn’t control.”

I thought of Maren’s face in the hall. The careful cruelty wrapped in refinement. The way she’d looked at me when my eyes changed.

A chill moved through me that had nothing to do with weather.

“So they buried it.”

“No,” Caius said. “They tried.”

The distinction landed hard.

I looked at my hands again.

Not what they had done to them.

What they had failed to erase.

୮

I remembered every time the word nothing had been used around me. Every dismissal. Every order. Every

What Lant

pitying look. Every explanation for why I lacked what others had.

“Wolfless

Broken.

Less.

I had built whole rooms inside myself around surviving those words. Now Sera was telling me the foundation beneath them had never been real.

It made me dizzy.

‘Buried,’ Vaela said. ‘Not gone!‘

I closed my eyes for a moment.

That was enough.

“I don’t know what I am,” I said.

Sera’s expression softened, though she didn’t insult me with pity.

“That’s honest. It’s also temporary.”

Caius crouched beside me.

“What you are doesn’t need to be solved today.”

I looked at him.

“You seem very calm about this.”

“I’m not calm.”

That startled a laugh out of me.

He almost smiled. “I’m choosing usefulness over reaction.”

“That’s a very Caius answer.”

“It usually is.”

Clain

The shaking in my body had eased enough for me to notice the cold again. Caius noticed that I noticed and adjusted the cloak more securely around my shoulders.

“You’ll need food,” Sera said. “Rest. Likely another shift soon, though smaller. Your body’s learning fast.”

I groaned.

She ignored it. “You’ll also need practice returning by choice.”

“Today?”

“No.”

“Good”

Zeron spoke for the first time.

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