The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 568

Nobody had.

“Mom!” Bjorn’s voice pulled me back.

They were already at our ankles, our knees, running up under Melissa’s skirt and across the backs of my hands no matter how hard I shook them off. Melissa screamed and went down, and I hauled her back up half by the collar. Bjorn stumbled, swatting at his own neck, three of them tangled in his hair before he ripped them out and flung them off with a gagging sound.

“They’re not stopping!” he shouted. “Mom, they’re not stopping!”

He was right. We weren’t going to outrun this. The witch had planned for this—a safeguard to prevent us from leaving.

My mind raced. I recalled the way the fire had burned through the witch’s web the first night I was here, faster than I had thought possible. It would work again.

It had to.

“Get behind me,” I told them. “Both of you, now.”

I didn’t wait to see if they listened. I lunged back down the slope for the hut, spiders crunching and squelching under my bare feet the whole way, shoved through the door, and grabbed the first things my hands found—the jug of lamp oil beside the woodstove, half-full, and next to it a bottle of something clear and sharp-smelling that Melissa was pretty sure was moonshine.

I dumped them both into an empty jar, tore a strip off the hem of my skirt and stuffed it down the neck for a wick, and grabbed a stick of kindling still glowing at one end from the stove.

My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped it twice as I raced back outside. The spiders had surged into an enormous wave before us. Melissa had Bjorn clutched against her legs, both screaming, swatting at the tiny insects as they arced toward them. I stood in the doorway, waving my arms, the jar clutched in one hand.

“Hey! Over here!”

The dark arc of insects began to move toward me. Toward the cottage.

I held still, held my breath, waited for the right moment even as my heart pounded and fear overtook everything. For another moment, I was back in that shed, my hands tied to the boards, terrified and small.

But I wasn’t there. Not anymore.

I hadn’t been in a long time.

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