The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 577

Gideon’s POV

The clearing was chaos around me, but I didn’t notice any of it.

I was somewhere else. Somewhere I hadn’t let myself go back to in longer than I could remember, except now I wasn’t remembering it through fog or static or ten years of trying to forget. I was there.

Ten years ago. The Blue Moon, same as tonight, hanging low and huge over a clearing not unlike this one.

I’d heard her before I saw her—a terrified scream coming from somewhere past the tree line. By the time I broke through the brush, three rogues had her pinned down to a flat rock at the center of the clearing, and she had tears streaming down her cheeks, her lips forming words that I later realized were prayers.

It didn’t take long. Three rogues against an Alpha under the fullest and most powerful moon of the year wasn’t much of a fight, and when the last one finally turned tail and ran, I turned to find her still laying on that rock, chest heaving, cheek pressed to the stone, eyes squeezed shut.

I helped her sit up, and she didn’t look at me like I was another one of the rogues. She looked at me with wonder, her lips slightly parted, her eyes wide and sparkling.

I’d seen plenty of beautiful she-wolves in my time, but she was the most striking thing I had ever seen in my life, eyes blazing even after everything that had just happened to her, and most of all…

Her hair.

I had never seen anything like it. It was pure silver, each and every strand emanating its own light as if it had absorbed the moon.

She kissed me first. I remember that clearly—her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me down to her, breathless against my mouth.

I didn’t even know her name. She didn’t know mine. But it didn’t matter. Nothing in the world mattered except the way she felt against me, warm and alive and mine.

My mate.

“What’s wrong, darling?” the voice hissed when I pulled back, struggling against its iron grip. “It’s me! It’s Avery!”

“No.” I shook my head and shoved as hard as I could. “No. You’re not her.”

“But I am. You’re just not looking…”

“No.” I held onto the image I’d created in my mind over years of missing her. Her face, round and soft at the jaw. Her eyes, hazel, warm, flecked gold at the center when the light hit them just right.

And her hair.

I remembered the way her hair glowed brighter than ever right as I marked her, every strand of it turning to moonlight in my hands like she’d swallowed the Blue Moon itself.