The Alpha‘s Personal Chef

Chapter 11: What the Earth Remembers

Ella woke on the sixth day before the full moon. The morning light fell across her desk, where the third recipe still lay closed. She had not opened it again. The words were burned into her memory—the heart of a Moonbound chef.

She dressed and went to the garden. The moonbloom bulb she had planted sat beside her grandmother's herbs in the soil. She had no idea if it would grow. Moonblooms were Ironclaw flowers, raised by wolves who marked their prey with pale petals and red centers. She was not Ironclaw. She was not a wolf. But she had planted it anyway.

The basil beside it was thriving. The rosemary along the wall had spread. The thyme crept further every day. The garden liked her. She did not know if it would be like the moonbloom.

She was kneeling in the dirt when she heard footsteps. Not Dorian's. Lighter. She turned.

Emil stood at the edge of the garden. He was thin, his cheek still bruised, and his hands were shoved deep into his pockets. He did not step onto the soil. He watched her from a distance, like someone who had learned not to enter a space without permission.

"You are the one who cooks for the Alpha," he said.

"Yes."

"My father says you saved me. That is all he would tell me." Emil looked at the ground. "I wanted to say thank you."

Ella nodded and turned back to the soil.

Emil did not leave. "Can I help?"

She looked at him. Fifteen years old. Held by wolves for weeks. His hands were shaking, but he was asking for help with her garden. She handed him the trowel.

"Dig where I point. Not too deep."

They worked in silence. Emil was careful with the roots. After a while, he spoke without looking up.

"My mother had a garden. Kael's wolves destroyed it. She used to tell me flowers remember. I did not understand." He glanced at the moonbloom bulb. "Maybe they remember who planted them."

Ella pressed the earth down around the bulb. "Maybe they do."

"That is an Ironclaw flower."

"I know. He tried to use it to mark me. I want to see if I can make it mean something else."

They worked until the sun was high. When Emil left, the garden looked different. Alive in a way it had not been before. Two pairs of hands instead of one.

Dorian found her there at noon. He stood at the edge of the garden, looking at the freshly turned soil and the small markers Emil had made from twigs.

"The boy helped you," he said.

"Yes. He asked to help."

Dorian was quiet. He looked at the soil, the twig markers, the herbs spreading green. Something shifted in his face. Then he knelt, his expensive trousers pressing into the damp earth. He picked up the trowel Emil had left behind. He did not speak. He just started to dig where she pointed.

They worked until the sun began to sink. When Ella finally stood and brushed off her knees, she looked at the soil where Emil had worked, where Dorian had knelt, where her own hands had pressed down seeds. She thought of Emil's mother, whose garden Kael had destroyed. Her grandmother, whose garden had been left to rot. Dorian's mother, who had planted this corner and then died.

"Your mother planted this garden," she said. "My grandmother planted it. Emil's mother planted one too, and Kael destroyed it. Now Emil is here, putting his hands in the soil." She looked at Dorian. "Maybe gardens remember what people try to forget."

She went inside and washed her hands. Then she opened her grandmother's parchment to the first recipe. She had read it a dozen times. But today, after watching Emil kneel in the dirt and Dorian pick up a trowel, she read it slowly, looking for something she might have missed.

She found it in the margin. A note written in English, smaller than the rest.

No recipe says the cook must stand alone.

Ella read the line three times. She thought of Emil, planting beside her. Dorian, kneeling in the dirt. Victor, holding his son. Rowan, riding through the night.

She closed the parchment. She did not have the answer yet. But she knew now that her grandmother had not meant for her to find it alone.

She looked out the window. The moon was a sliver, growing fatter each night. Five days until it was full. Five days until Kael came.

The garden waited in the fading light. Basil and rosemary and thyme. And in the center, beneath the dark soil, a moonbloom bulb that did not yet know what it would become.