Chapter 10: Learning to Stand
930 Words
Ash found me two mornings later in the mansion's small library, staring at a stack of pack ledgers I understood maybe one word in five of.
"You've been in here since dawn," he said, not quite a question, settling into the chair across from me with the easy grace that seemed to follow him everywhere. "Thorne's already asking if you've decided to skip training in favor of hiding among the books."
"I'm not hiding." I closed the ledger I'd been squinting at, rubbing my eyes. "I'm trying to understand what a Luna actually does besides survive attempted murder and public trials. Turns out it's mostly trade agreements, land disputes, and something called seasonal tithing that I still don't fully understand."
Something softened in his expression. "That's what I came to help with, if you'll let me."
I studied him for a moment...really looked, the way I hadn't quite let myself since the chaos of the past week had swallowed every quiet moment whole. Ash without the weight of council politics or his brother's temper pressing on him looked almost boyish, sleeves rolled up, dark-silver hair falling loose across his forehead.
"Why you?" I asked. "Why not Ryker, or one of the elders?"
"Because Ryker would rather burn the ledgers than explain seasonal tithing, and the elders would use the lesson to remind you how little you're supposed to know." He pulled his chair closer, close enough that his knee brushed mine under the table. "And because I want to be the one who teaches you. Selfishly."
I felt my face warm, though it wasn't the same heat as before not the dizzy, drowning want that flared whenever both of them touched me at once. This was quieter. Steadier.
"All right," I said. "Teach me, then."
He walked me through it patiently... how the pack's outer villages paid tithe in goods rather than coin, how border disputes with allied packs were settled through formal mediation rather than combat whenever possible, how a Luna's signature on trade agreements carried weight equal to an Alpha's. He didn't talk down to me, didn't rush, didn't seem bothered when I asked the same question three different ways until it finally clicked.
"You're a good teacher," I said, somewhere in the second hour, after I'd successfully worked through an entire trade dispute example without his help.
"I had a good teacher myself," he said. "Our father, before he passed. He believed leadership was a skill, not a birthright that Ryker and I would only be as strong as the people we surrounded ourselves with." A faint, complicated smile. "Mother disagreed. Vehemently."
"I noticed," I said carefully.
Ash's expression flickered, something guarded passing behind his eyes before he pushed forward, deliberately steering us back to the ledgers. I let him, sensing he wasn't ready to say more about Victoria than he already had, and not wanting to push a door he clearly needed time to open on his own.
We worked in comfortable quiet for a while after that, his voice a low, steady presence beside me, his hand occasionally covering mine to correct the angle of my pen or point out a detail I'd missed. It should have felt like a lesson. It felt like something closer to intimacy — the kind that didn't need bare skin or breathless gasps to mean something.
"Can I ask you something?" I said eventually, setting down my pen.
"Always."
"Do you resent it? Sharing me with Ryker." I'd wanted to ask since the grove, since that first tangled, overwhelming night, but the question had felt too big, too dangerous to say out loud until now. "You're gentle with me. Patient. And he's not, most of the time. Doesn't that wear on you?"
Ash considered the question seriously, the way he considered most things, rather than brushing it off. "There are moments," he admitted. "When I want to be the only one your eyes find first in a room. When I want to be the only hand you reach for." His thumb traced slow, absent circles against the back of my hand. "But I've watched Ryker my entire life, Elara. He loves like he does everything else — completely, without half measures, without room for doubt. I don't think I could resent that, even when it costs me something."
"That's a generous way to look at it."
"It's the only way that doesn't destroy us both," he said simply. "The moment either of us decides the other is the obstacle instead of the brother, we lose you. I've seen enough rivalries in this pack to know how that story ends." His green eyes met mine, steady and certain. "I'd rather share everything with him than lose everything trying to keep you to myself."
Something in my chest ached at that — not the sharp, desperate ache the bond usually pulled from me, but something slower, warmer. Gratitude, maybe. Or the early shape of something bigger I wasn't ready to name yet.
"Thank you," I said quietly. "For teaching me. And for that."
Ash lifted my hand and pressed a slow, lingering kiss to my knuckles, his eyes never leaving mine. "Thank me by learning fast," he said, warmth threading through the words. "The council reconvenes in a week. I'd like them to see exactly how capable their Luna already is."
I picked the pen back up, steadier than I'd been an hour before, and turned back to the ledgers with something new settling into place beneath my ribs.
Not just want. Not just fear.
Something that felt, cautiously, like belonging.
- Writer
