The Alpha's Stolen Luna - Chapter 223: Chapter 223

: Sutton
I shot to my feet, straightening and pulling at my clothes nervously. My eyes locked with King Osric’s. I didn’t know how long he held my gaze before suddenly closing the distance between us in three strides. His arms immediately wrapped around me, hugging me tightly. I stiffened in surprise for a moment, but it didn’t take long for the warmth of his embrace melted through me. My arms moved to return the hug as something resembling happiness tugged at my heart. It felt… right. Like a feeling of coming home.
My grandfather pulled back, taking my face in his hands as he looked at me. Tears welling in his eyes.
“You are your mother’s daughter,” he whispered in awe. “Come… tell me about yourself. I want to know everything.”
I took my hand and ushered me onto the sofa next to him.
“Well, um, I guess I should introduce myself,” I said nervously. “I’m Sutton. I guess you already know who Lucas is. Alpha of the Ironpaw Pack and my mate.”
King Osric turned to Lucas with a smile. “Yes, I understand I owe you a great debt for bringing my granddaughter to me.”
“Sutton’s arrival in our lives was a blessing for all of us,” Lucas replied. “Who am I to withhold that from you?”
“Still, you will forever have my gratitude,” King Osric told him before returning his focus to me. “Now, tell me about your life.”
We spent hours talking. He seemed particularly interested in my childhood, taking an interest in my sisters. He interrupted me often, asking questions about Helene and Hannah, even more about our home in the city, the sorts of things that never came up in letters or formal announcements. I stumbled, at first, over how to explain—how honest I could be with a king who was, at the same time, supposed to be my family. But the way he asked, the patient, even indulgent way he listened, made it easier.
It was so strange, how easily I found myself confiding in him. The questions he asked weren’t the prying, needling ones I had expected from a king, but simple things—Helene’s favorite childhood book, what Hannah liked to eat for breakfast, the color of our living room in the first apartment we’d shared with Mom. He even asked if we had pets. When I told him about the stray cat we’d fed, he laughed, and his shoulders shook in a very un-kingly way.
When I told him about my work restoring the Ironpaw grounds, his eyes lit up. “So you’re a builder, too,” he said, and the words seemed to carry a weight I didn’t quite understand. “Your great-grandmother could turn entire hillsides into gardens. She’d have adored you.” I smiled awkwardly, and he squeezed my hand.
He didn’t ask about Mason directly, or the specifics of my first pack, but he did press a little about the years I spent “away,” as he put it. I didn’t know how much Prince Raphe had told him, or how much my mother’s letters had revealed, but I sensed the king didn’t want to press too hard. If anything, he seemed to be skirting around the subject for my sake. I appreciated it, though the effort only increased my suspicion that he already knew more than he let on. Still, if he sensed I was even the slightest bit uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was going, he would change it. Usually bringing us back to my time in the human territory.
I mentioned how I’d grown used to living as a human, and how strange it sometimes felt to be a part of pack life. Lucas, for his part, didn’t add much, but now and then I’d catch his expression softening when the king smiled, as if even he was surprised by how easy the conversation was.
Nomi spent most of the time perched on the armrest beside her mate, saying almost nothing. I caught her watching me—scrutinizing would be the word. Not staring, exactly, but her gaze had the feel of someone assembling pieces of a puzzle, and I could only guess whether she found the picture it made pleasing or not.
The longer we spoke, the lighter I felt, as if I were letting myself believe in the possibility of heritage. Family. I’d always felt like a footnote, a parenthesis in someone else’s story. But the way Osric looked at me, it was as if he was looking at the main character of his favorite book. I glanced at Lucas, who for once seemed content to simply witness, not intervene. The king's hand continued to grasp mine the entire time, as if to anchor me to this strange new chapter in my life.
Helene would love this, I thought. She’d tease me about how quickly I’d gone from orphan to the favorite grandchild in the span of an hour. The absurdity of it threatened to bubble up into laughter until I noticed the seriousness in the king’s eyes. He was trying to make up for years of absence in the only way he knew how—by treating what I told him as something precious.
At one point, he told Raphe to retrieve something for him. Raphe returned with a battered leather folder thick with old photos. We all huddled over them beneath the rays of sunlight breaking through the window, Osric narrating each one, his memory sharp.
“That’s your mother at her summer graduation from the Lycurian Academy. Look at the scowl.” He laughed. “She hated the ceremonial dresses, and she’d just gotten into a fight with a boy—a never-ending plague, boys with no sense—so she refused to smile for a week.”
He turned a page. “There she is with your grandmother. That was their last winter together before we lost her.” He showed me the black-and-white photograph, a woman whose cheekbones mirrored mine, her mouth twisted into a secretive smile as she held a little girl close.
I passed my fingers over the image of my mother as a child. “I still feel like I know so little about her,” I said softly. “She… she seemed to be such a different person from the woman I knew.”
King Osric squeezed my hand. “You are more than welcome to stay and learn as much as you can for as long as you like.”