The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 576

I could see him trying to cut through the haze. His brow furrowed, his jaw working. I knew, as I looked into his eyes, that he was trying to claw his way up through all that fog to reach the surface, fighting the other half that already knew exactly who he was supposed to see standing in front of him.

His eyes moved from her to me and back again, over and over, like he was searching for the one small difference that would tell him which of us was real.

He couldn’t find it anywhere.

I reached into my pocket, closing my fingers around the vial, pulling it out slowly without looking away.

“I’ll prove it,” I said, popping the cap off. I lifted the vial, aiming the sprayer in the witch’s direction. “Then, you’ll see—”

The witch moved faster than I expected, like a flash of lightning shooting across the clearing—or perhaps more like a spider skittering on too many legs.

Before I could react, her hand shot out and knocked it clean out of my grip, sending it end over end into a stand of bushes at the edge of the clearing.

Before I could even think about diving after it, the ground around us split open again, just as it had in the hollow.

Spiders began pouring up out of the dirt again, and out of the trees this time too, dropping down from the branches overhead in a hissing curtain that swallowed the moonlight whole. My whole body wanted to lock up right there and let them take me, the way it always wanted to, but I forced my hands to keep moving instead. I spotted the vial sitting in a bush off to the side and began to lunge toward it.

I didn’t make it before Colt suddenly slammed into me, knocking me out of the way just as a curtain of spiders hit the spot where I’d been standing.

We laid there for a moment, gasping, before the spiders were arcing toward us, skittering across my fingertips in the grass. I screamed and shot up, smacking them off, ripping them out of my hair, while Colt slapped them off his shoulders and whirled around, half-shifting, snarling.

I heard Sebastian shouting something I couldn’t make out over the sound of millions of tiny legs skittering over one another and the constant slamming of my heartbeat. Colt shifted mid-air, along with Sebastian, both males slamming into the spot where the witch stood, only for her to turn into a dark mist and reappear next to Gideon.

The witch shot toward him, surrounded by dark mist, and appeared directly in his path.

I screamed.

He fell backwards, scrambling back on the grass, but it was too late. She snatched his wrist, and then she was rising up, up and up with him in her grip, dangling below her, on a column of spiders that twisted and writhed and made a sound I had to slam my hands over my ears just to drown out.

Everyone went still. Everyone except for Gideon, who continued to shake his head, rocking back and forth on his knees.

As if he weighed nothing, the witch held my son up by the wrist for all to see. High above the ground, he kicked his legs, but it was futile. His terrified eyes met mine from too far, too high for me to reach.

“Nobody move,” the witch said in a low, deep voice that wasn’t like mine at all—it wasn’t even like one voice, but thousands, the voices of every arachnid that had ever existed. “Or I’ll snap his neck right here.”