The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 564

A branch snapped somewhere to my right and I froze, flashlight swinging hard in that direction.

Nothing moved. I stood there for a count of ten, then kept going.

The shadows played tricks on me. Twice I spun around fast enough to light up bare bark and spent an embarrassingly long time making sure it wasn’t anything before I moved on. A branch overhead scraped against another and made a sound I really did not like, and I walked a little faster until it faded out behind me while my wolf whined.

I was getting deeper now. The trees were older, their roots coming up through the soil and crossing the path in a way that meant I had to watch my feet. I stopped once to look back. The house was gone now, eaten up by the trees.

The thread pulled at me like it was reminding me. I followed it at a faster pace.

Then, directly ahead of me, something moved.

Something big.

I stopped dead. My flashlight swung up and caught two eyes staring straight back at me from maybe twenty feet away.

The sound that came out of me was not a scream, for the record. It was a… shout.

“No,” my wolf giggled. “You screamed! At a deer!”

“Did not,” I muttered, blushing, as the deer leaped off into the darkness.

I kept walking.

The thread was stronger now, more urgent, and I knew I was getting closer. The forest was even darker, but I kept thinking about my mom’s voice coming through that dream, and I thought about how many days it had been since the thing took over her life, her house, her face, and how my dad kept looking at me like I was crazy for saying anything about it, and that kept me moving.

Dad knew something was wrong. Somewhere in there, underneath whatever she was doing to him, he knew. I was sure of it.

I took three more steps, and the flashlight swept across the path ahead, and there they were.

Two boulders, enormous and still, sitting at the bottom of the slope like they’d been there since before anyone alive could remember. They stood side by side, close enough together that the gap between them was just wide enough to walk through.

Like a gate.

I stopped walking and just looked at them for a long moment, the flashlight beam casting shadows on the rock.

The thread in my chest was pulling so hard now it almost hurt.

My mom was on the other side of those boulders. I knew it.

I tightened the straps on my backpack and took a step forward.