The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 509

Gideon’s POV

The sound of footsteps in the hallway outside my office had been a constant background hum since early morning as pack members went about their business, but these footsteps were lighter, quicker, and they stopped right outside the door before a knock came.

“Come in,” I called out, glancing up from the stack of paperwork in front of me.

Bjorn pushed the door open and stuck his head in. “Hey, Mr.—I mean, Dad.” His cheeks turned rosy for a moment, and he cleared his throat. “Are you busy?”

“Depends.” Smiling, I set down the paper I was holding. “What do you want, kid?”

He grinned and came the rest of the way in. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, his hair still a little flat on one side from sleep, and he looked…

Good.

Like, actually, genuinely good. The color in his face had returned, no longer that sickly gray pallor but skin full of life and joy. According to Tegan, he had eaten two full plates at breakfast and even got halfway through the third before his stomach finally gave out. I told the Beta to let the kid eat however much he wanted, so long as he didn’t make himself sick. Goddess knew he needed it.

“I was wondering,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets in a gesture that was so Avery it made my brows lift, “could I see more of the pack today? Since I might be Alpha someday, I thought…”

“You will be Alpha,” I said. “If you want to, I mean.” I nodded. “Yeah. We can go see more of the pack. You wanna check out the town?”

Bjorn’s face lit up. “Really?”

Three nights in a row.

That was how many nights Avery and I had spent tangled up together since she had come back, each one feeling less like something we’d stumbled into and more like something we were choosing, deliberately, even if we never said so out loud. She hadn’t brought up labels. Neither had I, aside from that first night. And in a strange, unexpected way, it was working.

Last night she had laughed at something I said in the dark, her face pressed against my shoulder, and I’d thought to myself: yeah. This is going in the right direction.

I looked at the greenhouse, where I knew she was probably working as usual, and tested the mindlink.

It had been tentative the first time I’d reached for it last night, uncertain whether she would let me in or keep the bond blocked off from her end, just as she had been doing for so long. But she had surprised me. The connection had buzzed to life, and she didn’t shut me out. In fact, she almost laughed a little when I sent those images to her.