The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 536

Avery’s POV

“Colt!”

My voice was swallowed instantly by the noise of the party. The toast had broken up into scattered conversations and clinking glasses, and everyone was up and moving again, drifting between the tables with drinks in hand.

I shoved my way into the crowd, mumbling apologies as I went, my eyes fixed on the spot where I’d last seen that patchy beard.

But he was gone. By the time I reached the far end of the dining room, there was no wrinkled suit slipping through the doorway. He’s slipped away before I could reach him.

I might have kept looking, if the pendant hadn’t chosen that moment to turn into a hot coal against my throat.

I gasped, my hand flying up. The metal had been ice cold a minute ago. Now it was searing, hotter than it had ever gotten before, hotter than it had been the day I threw it into the pond.

I needed to get it off. Now.

I spotted the powder room down the side hall, mercifully unoccupied, and all but threw myself inside, slamming the door behind me and fumbling with the lock. My reflection stared back at me from above the sink, wide-eyed and pale, the little silver crescent pressing against my throat. The skin around it was already blistering.

“Come on,” I hissed, reaching behind my neck for the clasp. My fingers were shaking so badly it took me three tries, the metal of the chain scorching my fingertips, and then the clasp finally gave and I pulled.

But the pendant didn’t come away right away. It clung to the burn like it had grown roots in my throat, and when I pulled harder, my skin went with it.

A sound came out of me that was somewhere between a sob and a snarl. I gritted my teeth, gripped the chain with both hands, and ripped it free.

The pain whited out my vision. When it cleared, I was hunched over the sink, gasping, the pendant dangling from my fist, and a patch of my own skin was stuck to the back of it, raw and glistening. Blood welled up in the hollow of my throat and ran in a thin line down between my collarbones, staining the neckline of my dress and plopping into the sink.

Slowly straightening, I looked up and stared at myself in the mirror. The wound was a perfect crescent, wet and red and deep, like someone had carved the shape out of me with a knife.

I needed to find Gideon.

WIth a shaking hand, I wrapped the pendant in a wad of tissues, shoved it into my purse, and pressed more tissues to my throat. As I worked, tears pricking my eyes as the tissues stung my wound, I reached for the mate bond, the one familiar thing I could think of.

“Gideon,” I thought. “I need you—the pendant—”

Fog swirled around my thoughts before I could reach the bond.

This fog was thick, gray, and endless, worse than it had ever been. I pushed at it, shoved against it with everything I had, but there was no way to penetrate it. The threads of our bond seemed to disappear into that fog; I knew he was there, but he couldn’t hear me, and I couldn’t hear him, and neither of us could tell the bond was even active.

I shook my head, exhaling. He was still here, at the party. I’d just have to find him the old fashioned way.

My legs shook, knees nearly buckling, but I managed to unlock the door and step back out into the party with relative calm. I made it halfway down the hall back to the main room, my hand pressing against the wainscoting as I went, breathing through my nostrils. The pain was searing now, the tissue soaking with far more blood than it should have. I stopped, trembled, then kept going.

She moved through the house like she knew the layout perfectly, down the side hallway, away from the lights and the laughter, through a door and into a dim corridor where the party sounds faded behind us with every step.

My head was swimming worse now. I was leaning on her arm more than walking on my own, my feet clumsy beneath me, and a small voice somewhere far back in my mind pointed out that the corridor seemed too long, that we’d passed three doors already, that the air had started to smell like wet earth, and there, in the distance, were those… boulders?

“Melissa,” I mumbled. My tongue felt thick. “Where… the sunroom…”

“Almost there,” she said. “Just a little further.”

Something was wrong with her voice. It wasn’t hers. It was old and raspy, and when I looked at her, through my rapidly blurring vision, I saw sagging skin and wrinkles and milky white eyes.

I stumbled back, gasping, but it was too late. Instead of hitting a wall behind me, I hit soft soil, and above me, two mossy boulders came into view, piercing the night sky like gates to another world.

The witch leaned over me, pushing her hood back to reveal a dozen spidery eyes creeping across her face, all blinking in unison as long, jagged pincers formed at the edges of her mouth.

“None of that now, little mouse,” she said. “It’s almost done.”

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t scream.

The pincers widened, and the world went dark.