The Alpha King at Work
729 Words
She found the study door ajar on the third morning and knocked.
She had made it her policy not to appear at Caden's door without reason, because her presence in the compound was already a complicated enough variable without her adding unnecessary complication to it. But she had a question that required the Alpha King specifically, and the door was ajar, and she knocked.
"Come in."
He was at the desk, which she had expected. What she had not expected was the scale of what was on the desk: not the organized working space she had briefly seen on the first morning but the full operational picture of governing a realm, correspondence and maps and what appeared to be territorial dispute documents spread across every available surface with the organized chaos of a person who was managing several things simultaneously and who was very good at it.
She looked at the desk. She looked at him.
"You govern alone," she said.
He looked up. There was a quality in his expression that she was beginning to identify as the version of his face that appeared when she said something he had not expected. "Dorian assists."
"Dorian assists with," she looked at the desk again, "some of this. Most of it is yours." It was not a judgment. It was an observation.
"I have governed this realm for two hundred years," he said.
"I know. I read three chapters of the history yesterday." She came to the chair across the desk. "May I sit?"
A slight pause. "Yes."
She sat. She set her notebook on her knee. "The Velthari realm currently has fourteen allied territories with active council representation. The compound itself has approximately two hundred residents. The territorial disputes I can see referenced in the documents on your desk involve at least three active arbitration processes." She looked at him. "How many hours do you sleep?"
He looked at her for a moment. "Why do you ask?"
"Because the correspondence volume suggests a work schedule that is not compatible with adequate sleep, and governance quality degrades with insufficient rest. I have read about this in the texts Maren has been recommending."
He was quiet for a moment. "Four to six hours," he said.
"That is insufficient."
"I am aware."
She looked at him. He looked at her. The thread between them was present, as it always was, warm and specific and entirely outside the operational concerns of territorial arbitration.
"What was your question," he said, and his voice had a quality she had not heard in it before, something between dry and something else.
She had come to ask about access protocols for the eastern grove's northern sector, which she had noticed from a distance was more extensive than the maps had suggested. She asked it. He answered it. She made notes. It took approximately three minutes.
She did not immediately leave.
He did not immediately return to his correspondence.
"The Lunara gifts," she said. "Maren described them yesterday. The pack sense, the perimeter awareness, the stillness." She paused. "Do you feel them? From your side of the bond?"
"The bond's effects are felt bilaterally," he said. "Yes."
"What do you feel?"
He looked at the correspondence on his desk. "Clarity," he said, after a moment. "The work is clearer since the bond formed. The territorial arbitration that has been in process for three months resolved itself in my mind in two hours yesterday morning." He paused. "I did not mention this because I did not want to present it as either a debt you owe me or an advertisement for the bond's utility."
She looked at him.
"But you mentioned it now," she said.
"You asked," he said. "Directly."
"I always ask directly," she said.
"I know," he said. "I find it," a pause, "useful."
She looked at the desk and the maps and the evidence of two hundred years of serious work.
"Thank you," she said. "For the grove access."
She left. In the corridor outside the study she stood for a moment with her hand against the stone wall and felt the thread, warm and present, and thought about a man who slept four hours and governed a realm of two hundred wolves alone and who had used the word useful to describe her honesty as though it were a thing he did not often receive.
- Writer
