The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 526

But then Melissa turned down a narrow path between two large, moss-covered boulders, and suddenly, out of nowhere, I didn’t recognize the forest at all.

It was strange. Mere yards from here, I knew the forest well enough to traverse it with my eyes closed. Now, all of a sudden, it was like I’d never even seen the area before.

Like something had been surrounding it, keeping me from ever noticing it at all, until I walked between those boulders.

I slowed down, turning to look at the trees. They were older and more gnarled, like in my dream. Everything was hung heavy with moss and lichen. The air smelled colder and earthier. I shivered.

“What is it?” Melissa asked over her shoulder.

“Nothing. It’s just…” I stepped over a root. “I used to forage all through this area. Every week, for years. How have I never seen this trail?”

“It’s easy to miss,” Melissa said with a shrug.

It wasn’t, but I kept that to myself, and we walked on while something cold settled at the bottom of my stomach.

The cottage, if one could even call it that, sat in a hollow where the ground dipped down, a little hut made of stone and dark timber, moss greening the roof shingles. Herbs hung drying in bundles under the eaves. The garden out front was immaculate, and as we came closer, I realized I couldn’t name half of what was growing in them.

That had never happened to me before. Like… Anywhere.

I hung back a few paces while Melissa walked up to the door and knocked. We waited, but there was no answer. She knocked again and called out a greeting, but the little hut remained dark and quiet. I leaned over and peered through the front window: a single tidy room, a cold hearth, a table with one chair. Empty.

The skin at the base of my throat was screaming. I didn’t need a mirror to know what it looked like—I could feel the crescent shape of it, raised and raw, burned deep this time.

“What the fuck?” I whispered, staring down at the pendant dangling from my fingers. It looked normal, but I got a bad feeling from it. “That’s it. I’m done.”

Pressing my palm over the painful spot on my neck, I kept walking, faster, until the ground dipped off the side of the trail and I spotted water glinting through the trees. A pond sat in the distance, ringed with cattails.

I rushed over to the edge of the pond, drew my arm back, and threw the pendant as hard as I could before I could even think twice.

The pendant spun out over the water, flashing once in the sun, and dropped into the middle of the pond with a small, insignificant plop.