The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 572

Gideon’s POV

I felt strange.

I couldn’t quite explain it if I tried.

I just felt… off, like something was missing—not just a piece of myself, but a piece of something around me, too. As if the sky had a big black mark in it in the shape of a puzzle piece, and that puzzle piece was gone, burned up in a fire somewhere before I could snap it into place.

It didn’t make any sense. Avery and I were getting married tonight. It was something I’d dreamed of for a long time, a moment I had pictured over and over again in my mind for ten years when I had spent nearly every waking hour looking for her.

Now, she was here, and she wanted to get married again. She wanted me.

I should have woken with a smile on my face, with her figure gently tucked against mine, warm beneath the sheets. Perfect and serene.

And yet, when I opened my eyes and found her smiling down at me, already awake, her eyes already fixed on mine, it only served to startle me.

I gasped, pressing my hand to my chest, and yanked my head back.

“Goddess, Avery,” I said, forcing out a small laugh that didn’t feel like it had much humor on it. “Do you even sleep anymore?”

She grinned and sat up, stretching languidly with her arms over the head. Her back was the same, bare and slender, her hair cascading down her spine, her shoulders delicate and straight. Everything about her was the same. But something felt off.

“How could I sleep?” she asked. “We’re getting married tonight. I’m so excited! Aren’t you?”

I didn’t answer that right away. Just watched as she popped out of bed, padding over to the door to pull her robe off the hook. My silence must have set her off, because she stiffened, slowly turning to look at me.

“Aren’t you?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to say what was on the tip of my tongue—that no, I actually wasn’t happy, something was wrong and I wasn’t sure what it was but I just knew it was.

But the words died out before they came. The fog rolled in, drowning out all rational thought.

“Of course I’m happy,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Avery grinned again and slipped her robe on, closing it in the front. “Well, we’ve got a lot to do today. I probably won’t see you until the ceremony. Just remember to meet where we discussed, once the moon is highest.”

Right. She’d mentioned it last night; a clearing in the forest, not far from here. The Blue Moon, the annual phenomenon in which the moon was largest, brightest, and fullest, was tonight. According to Avery, the spot she’d picked was where we’d be able to see it the best.

Just like the first night we met.

It was the most logical and meaningful thing. Of course we would hold our intimate ceremony under the Blue Moon, harkening back to the night we’d first discovered each other.

Again, I should have been happy.

But something told me to suggest another location. I wasn’t sure why. I just got an urge to ask, as if a part of me wanted to check to see her reaction if I brought it up.

“Are you sure you don’t want to do it in front of the shrine?” I asked. “The same spot you used to care for so tenderly?”

I recalled the days when Avery used to tend to the Moon Goddess shrine at the edge of the pack border. It was one of the first times, over ten years ago, that I looked at her and thought that she was the most beautiful person I had ever laid eyes on.

Something was wrong.

But what?

I shook my head. No. Avery was perfect, and beautiful, and I was glad to have her back in my life after all this time. If there was a problem, it was with me, not her.

Still, as I got ready for the ceremony, as the sun climbed throughout the day and slowly turned into a purple sunset, I couldn’t fully shake the feeling.

Something was wrong. But no part of me could seem to resist the command to meet her there, in that clearing, where the moonlight was the brightest.

Even when I realized that I hadn’t seen Bjorn all day, and that his room was questionably empty, everything completely untouched like he hadn’t been there since yesterday, I didn’t stop long enough to wonder where he might have gone.

Even when something in that fog was desperately screaming at me to turn around before it was too late, my muscles carried me there anyway, completely against my will. One foot in front of the other, never stopping, always questioning something deep down but never able to understand why.

Even when I felt dread settle over me where joy should have been when I set foot in that quiet clearing, I walked to the center of it, waiting, just like she told me to.

And in those hours that passed, as I patiently awaited my bride,as the sun finally went down and the Blue Moon began to rise, I felt less like myself than I had ever been before.

I should have been happy.

But I wasn’t.

And yet, my body refused to leave the clearing, as if invisible spiderwebs had wrapped around my wrists and ankles and my throat and each one of my ribs, binding me to the inside of that space like a sacrifice.