The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 528

Gideon’s POV

I reached for Avery in my sleep and found cold sheets.

That alone wouldn’t have woken me all the way. She’d been getting up early all week, sneaking off to the greenhouse before breakfast.

But this time, it was different. Because the clock on the nightstand read three o’clock, hours before she usually snuck out, and her side of the bed was already cold like she’d been up for some time.

I sat up, blinking the sleep from my eyes. The bathroom door hung open, the space beyond dark and unused.

“Avery?” I called out.

There was no answer. No half-asleep grumbling about having to pee in the middle of the night. When I tried the bond, it was foggy again, like it had been last night. If anything, it had gone thicker, denser with that strange gray uncertainty.

Muttering to myself about her working herself to exhaustion in the greenhouse at this hour, I pulled on a pair of sleep pants and went downstairs.

I expected to find her in the kitchen, perhaps making herself a sneaky cup of coffee before heading out. Or perhaps already in the greenhouse, working on a formula that she had mere weeks to complete before those human shareholders came back to give her more trouble.

But when I reached the bottom of the stairs, I stopped.

The front door was hanging open, the night air pouring in over the threshold and stirring the coats on the rack.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs for a second, every hair on my arms rising, then crossed the foyer and looked out.

Her car was sitting n the driveway where she had left it. Her shoes were still lined up by the door. Her coat was here, her keys, even her purse.

But Avery was gone.

The forest was still familiar at this hour, even in the shadows. I’d grown up in these woods, run these trails my entire life; I still ran them three mornings a week, rain or shine. I knew every fork and creek crossing for miles around.

So when her trail bent off the main path and slipped down a narrow path, the bottom dropped out of my stomach for a new reason.

The boulders that stood in front of me now were enormous, covered in moss, standing on either side of a narrow, well-worn path that led deeper into the woods. I stopped in my tracks, looking up at them. They were huge, distinct, nearly identical to one another.

How could I have missed these? It seemed impossible; they weren’t that far from the house. I could still see it from here when I turned back, looking at the treeline. And yet, somehow, I swore I had never seen these boulders in my life.

It didn’t make any sense. Boulders didn’t just show up out of nowhere. And the way they were covered in moss on all sides indicated that they had been here for a very, very long time. Long enough that I would have noticed them already.

But Avery’s scent went straight between them, so I went straight between them too.

The moment I stepped through, the forest felt… different. The trees seemed bigger and older, their branches hanging with strips of pale moss. The air was cooler and more heavily scented with pine and earth, and the canopy was thicker, blocking out most of the moonlight.