The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 592

We exchanged rings. His hands were steady. Mine weren’t, and he steadied them the way he always did, and then he cupped my face and kissed me, and the bond opened all the way up and flared so bright and so warm that I heard Tegan huff a laugh, because every wolf within fifty yards must have smelled it.

The small circle cheered. Bjorn whooped. My mother cried harder.

And underneath all of it, Gideon and I stood very still, holding each other, waiting.

We had never said it out loud, not once in the whole year of planning, but we had both been thinking it. During our first wedding, the curse hadn’t lifted because the vows were not true, not as deep as they were today, sealed in fear instead of love. They were too fragile, too tentative to break a generations-long curse.

Maybe a bond sealed in love, with eternal vows before the Goddess herself, would finally drive it out. Maybe there would be a sign: heat, or light, or that warm hand settling on the back of my neck, or the simple feeling of it leaving, after all these years.

The candles flickered. The wildflowers moved in the evening air. The statue looked up at the moon.

And nothing happened.

Gideon’s arms tightened around me, and I felt his understanding move through the bond alongside mine in silence. Disappointment that was gone in a flash, snuffed out by the joy of a wedding, but still there in the distance like a tiny column of smoke rising from a candle.

It was a good party; nobody in the human lands ever threw a party like this. Long tables under the lanterns, food that kept coming and coming even when our bellies were too full to keep eating, wolves dancing on the grass in their bare feet. My mother got passed from partner to partner, smiling radiantly like a teenager again. Tegan gave a toast that made me laugh so hard it hurt.

It was near the cake that Gideon and I found our quiet minute, off at the edge of the light with our hands wrapped around each other.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “You?”

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