The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 584

My eyes burned. I cradled his jaw in both hands.

Gideon looked up at me. “Those ten years we were apart,” he said, “did you miss me?”

I almost laughed out loud at that. I could have. But I held it back.

“I spent ten years in the human city,” I said. “I had the company and this enormous house and my mother, and Bjorn, of course. I should have been happy. I told myself I was. But some part of me stayed in the packs the entire time. I left half of myself here. With you.”

Gideon was quiet.

“I told myself hiding from you was the safe choice, and I repeated it until it sounded like the truth.” My voice wavered. “I wish I could take it back. All of it. Ten years I stole from you. From him.”

“You didn’t steal anything.” He said it flatly and without hesitation, and for a moment, his form blurred behind tears that I quickly blinked away. “You ran from the man I was. I marked you before I knew your name. I let you live for months thinking that you weren’t good enough for me. That you had always been nothing but a means to an end—a way to stop a curse, nothing more.” His jaw worked silently. “It took losing you for ten years and losing you again to a witch for me to understand the difference between wanting you and deserving you. If either of us gets to take something back, it’s me.”

I didn’t argue. There would be time, later, to sort out whose guilt weighed more, and I suspected we’d never agree on the answer. But tonight, this was enough.

“In the clearing,” he went on, quieter now, “when she came for you and Bjorn... Stepping in front of you was the easiest decision I’ve ever made. I was certain, Avery. More certain than I’ve been of anything in my life. If that pincer had gone through me instead of Sebastian, I would have died knowing it was right. You and Bjorn are al lthat matters to me. I hope you know that.”

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