The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 544

I pressed my lips together. The witch’s doing, of course. But why Melissa? She’d never bothered the witch before. She had even left offerings. She had nothing to do with any of this.

“I barely saw her before it all went black,” Melissa said. “When I woke up, I was already in the web. She kept giving me something. A few drops on my tongue, just enough to keep me from screaming or running. I lost the days after that.”

I glanced down at her foot again, at the stump where her toe should have been. She followed my eyes.

“She took it somewhere in the middle of it. I don’t even know when.” Melissa swallowed. “She wrapped it up like she was proud of it and told me she was bringing it to Sebastian. A message, she called it. For not keeping up his end of the deal.”

His end of the deal.

It all started to make sense now. The witch had Melissa, and she’d given him a piece of her, using his ex-mate as collateral to make him obey. He hadn’t sent Colt to that party to hurt me. He’d sent Colt because the other option was Melissa coming home in parts.

It didn’t make the beginning of it any better. He was still the man who’d walked into these woods and bought that pendant off the witch in the first place, who’d set all of this in motion because he couldn’t take no for an answer.

But at least this time, I couldn’t entirely blame him. He was being manipulated by a witch. That wasn’t completely his fault.

I told Melissa as much of it as I could. The pendant, the witch wearing my face, all of it. She listened quietly, her head tilted back against the wall, eyes half-shut.

“We have to get out of here,” I said when I was finished, standing. “Before she takes everything.”

Melissa nodded and let me help her to her feet. It took some effort, seeing as how she couldn’t put weight on the bad foot and we were both weak, but eventually, we managed. I slung her arm over my shoulders and half-carried her out of the hut into the cool night air.

The path was right where I remembered it. We followed it out of the hollow, past the garden, up the slope toward the two mossy boulders that stood at the mouth of the trail like a gate. The same ones Melissa had walked me through. The same ones Gideon had carried me back out through.

We passed between them.

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