The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 524

“You’re still wearing it.”

I stopped. “Wearing what?”

“The necklace.”

My free hand went to my throat. The crescent was sitting right there in the hollow of it, warm against my skin. I’d left it on my nightstand that morning. I was sure of it. Or… Almost sure.

“Don’t take it off,” Sebastian murmured.

I turned around to ask him what he meant, but he was already asleep, his breathing deep and even, his face slack for the first time all day.

I stood there for a moment longer, then let myself out.

Colt was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He walked me to my car, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, and when I opened the door, he stopped me.

“Hey, uh. Thank you,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get him inside for weeks. He wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Keep an eye on him,” I said. “And make sure he eats.”

He nodded, and I got in and drove home with the radio off, Sebastian’s words rattling around in my head the entire way.

…

I told Gideon everything that night, sitting cross-legged on the bed while he listened from his side, his brow furrowing deeper with every detail. The clearing. The voice. The state of him. The necklace.

“And you’re sure there was no one out there with him?” he asked when I was finished.

“I’m sure. I looked.” I pulled my knees up to my chest. “Gideon, you should have seen him. He looked like a ghost.”

Behind me, something was laughing. A high, cracked cackle that bounced off the trees until it came from everywhere at once, like a witch out of the storybooks I used to read to Bjorn when he was younger.

Branches tore at my arms. The pendant bounced against my throat with every stride, hot as a coal, and no matter how fast I ran, the laughing never fell behind. It was getting closer. It was enjoying this.

My foot caught a root and I stumbled, catching myself on a trunk, and the cackling stopped dead.

The forest went silent.

I turned around.

She was right there, close enough to touch, her hood thrown back to reveal a sneer that stole my breath away before I could even scream. But the rheumy eyes were gone, and the wrinkles were smoothing over even as I watched, the gnarled old features rearranging themselves into something younger. Someone I knew.

Someone who looked a lot like me.