The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 530

Avery’s POV

I must have stood in the hot shower, desperately trying to get the spray to soothe the shivering in my bones, for a full half hour before I realized that the way I was shaking had nothing to do with the cold.

Gideon was waiting outside the bathroom door when I finally gave up on the shower, holding the fluffiest robe. From the way he was looking at me, I could tell he wasn’t going to give me any option other than getting me into bed, even though the sun was up and the house was starting to come alive with the sounds of morning and I was too wound up to go back to sleep.

He bundled me into bed, piled on two extra blankets, and sat beside me with his hand on my back while we waited for the doctor to arrive.

The pack doctor arrived within the hour. She listened to my lungs, took my temperature twice, and pressed the back of her hand to my cheek like my mother used to do when I was a kid and I tried to pretend I had a fever to get out of going to school.

“You’ve got a pretty high fever,” she announced. “Which is not surprising, after a midnight swim.” She gave me a look over her glasses, and I had a feeling Gideon had filled her in on more details than I would have liked. “Your lungs sound clear enough, but I want you to rest plenty. Fluids, warmth, sleep. No working, no driving, no gallivanting around. A solid week, at minimum.”

“A week?” I sat up. “I have a deadline. I can’t take time off.”

Ignoring me, she packed her bag. “Rest, Luna. Doctor’s orders.”

I didn’t have the energy to correct her on the title. Gideon walked her out, and I heard them murmuring in the hallway for a while, too low for me to make out even if I’d tried, which I really didn’t.

A few minutes later, he came back, slid into bed beside me, and didn’t say anything about the pond, or the pendant, or any of it. He just pulled me into his chest and held me until I stopped fighting sleep.

I lasted exactly one day in bed.

By the second morning, Gideon had a meeting that he couldn’t push back again, and I waited a full ten minutes after he left before shuffling out to the greenhouse in a sweater and two pairs of socks. I wasn’t going to work, I told myself. I was just going to sit at my desk. Check on my propagation tubes. Light things.

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