The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 593

Bjorn’s POV

“Do you feel that?”

My wolf lifted his head, sniffing the air, just as they were about to bring the cake out.

My stomach rumbled. “Do we have to follow it right now? I want cake—”

“We have to. Please.”

I sighed, looking in the direction where my wolf had been pulling me all night. Off in the direction of the woods, just like the night a year ago that I found Mom out there.

But the thing was, Mom was right here. The pull felt different this time. I had felt different all day, still silver, but stronger, like something else was calling me out to the forest.

It wasn’t a bad feeling. But it was an annoying one. Because it took a lot of begging to convince Mom and Dad to get red velvet cake and I really wanted a slice.

My wolf wouldn’t stop whining, though. So I told myself we’d just go take a quick look and be back in time for cake.

Nobody stopped me on my way away from the party. Everyone was busy watching Mom and Dad, and I was eleven now, and I’d gotten good at walking around like I had somewhere important to be. I slipped past the last table, past the last candle jar, and walked into the dark under the trees, and the pull kept right on tugging, soft and sure, all the way to the meadow where the ground dipped down.

I knew what the flowers were before I was close enough to see them properly.

Angelica, I think they were called. It was what Mom always called them, back during the days they made me sick. She always told me to stay away from them, but tonight, I couldn’t. Tall stalks, white petals, a whole field of them glowing under the moon, and they were so beautiful tonight that I just couldn’t stop.

Dad couldn’t walk past a patch without his wolf going crazy, just like how mine used to do. I still remembered the first time it happened when I was a kid. Or at least, I remembered the aftermath. I remembered waking up to find that my classroom got destroyed by my wolf and all the other kids were scared and I didn’t recall any of it.

After that, Mom told me about the Demonblood curse. She said it was in my DNA or something. She said I needed to stay away from those plants. She showed me what they looked like, how to identify them, and most of all, how to wake up when it happened.

I always kept a little pouch of peppermint leaves in my pocket just for that.

It was still there tonight, tucked into my tuxedo that looked just like Dad’s. I pulled it out, clutching it tight, then took a step into the flowers.

When my foot first hit the flowers, I thought it would happen again. That strange feeling of fuzziness, then darkness, then waking up without remembering anything. I stiffened, waiting for it to come.

But it didn’t.

Nothing happened at all.

I took another step, and another, and then I sat down right in the middle of the patch with the flowers up over my head and the moon coming down through the white, and I laughed without knowing what was funny.

It was like the moment right before sleep, except I was wide awake, and I saw a man standing in a field of these same flowers in front of the house. He was tall like Dad and had Mom’s eyes, and it took me a while to understand that I was looking at me.

Grown up. Old, even. Thirty, at least.

There were wolves all around him, little ones and big ones, and the angelica was growing right up to the porch steps like nobody had ever once been afraid of it, and I knew, the way you know things in dreams, that no leader of Nightwolf had ever stood in a field like that before, and that I was going to be the first.

Then it let go of me, slowly, like when Mom doesn’t want to stop hugging me but she knows she has to.

After, I laid back in the flowers and stayed there. I don’t know for how long. Long enough for the moon to move across the sky. Long enough to hear footsteps coming through the grass, and Mom’s voice calling my name, and Dad’s right behind it.

…

Avery’s POV

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