The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 462

I took a step forward, then another, turning slowly to take it all in. Everything was exactly where I had left it. The mortar and pestle I had once used for grinding herbs. The notebooks stacked neatly on the corner of the desk. The little ceramic pots lined up along the windowsill, each one holding a different plant.

“You kept all of this?” I asked, glancing at Gideon.

Gideon, who had been standing near the door, nodded. “I told you I did.”

I walked over to one of the worktables and ran my fingers along the edge. There was no dust. No signs of neglect. Someone had been maintaining this space regularly, keeping it clean and functional.

For ten years.

I swallowed and moved to the far end of the room, where the larger planters were arranged in neat rows. Most of them held medicinal herbs—lavender, chamomile, echinacea—but there were a few that I had cultivated specifically for their rarity. Plants that couldn’t be found in the wild anymore, or that required very specific conditions to grow. And certainly none that were found in the human lands.

At the end of the row was a single pot sitting on the corner of the table, half-hidden behind a cluster of ferns. The plant inside was small and delicate, with pale blue flowers that seemed to glow faintly in the sunlight.

I gasped and rushed over. “My blue moonflower!”

I remembered the day I’d found that plant in the wild, wilted and barely clinging to life, and took it home. That had been years ago, right after Gideon and I had realized we were mates, but I remembered it like it was yesterday.

Everything had been so uncertain back then. The bond was tentative, and I didn’t know what would happen next, and so I spent hours in this greenhouse trying to keep this plant alive while I made sense of it all.

And now, here it was. Still alive. Still blooming.

My cheeks flushed hot, and I quickly looked away, fiddling with the plant some more, as if that would somehow hide the way my face had suddenly gone a deep crimson. Gideon’s hand gently pulled away from my shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him reach into his pocket.

“You’re welcome to take whatever materials you need,” he said. “They’re all still yours, of course. But I have another offer.”

Before I could respond, he reached out, gently taking my hand and turning it palm-up. He placed a worn, brass key in my hand. I recognized it immediately: it was the key to the greenhouse, which I had left behind along with all of my other belongings ten years ago.

“The greenhouse was always yours,” he said. “It still is. You should use it. I’d like you to use it.”

The space fell silent around us. I looked down at the key in my hand, and in those moments, something warm unfurled in my chest that I had tried so desperately to hide away all this time.