The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 594

Avery’s POV

“Come on… take, damn you!”

I’d been at it since breakfast, but the graft just wasn’t having it. Outside the glass, the first frost of the year sat silver on the ground. Inside, the greenhouse was warm and green and smelled like soil and steam, and Claire’s face was propped up on the tablet between two seed trays, mid-sentence, as usual.

“Are you listening to me, or are you talking to the plants again?” she whined.

“Both,” I said, tying off the tape. “You were on the distribution numbers.”

“I was past the distribution numbers.” She shuffled papers somewhere in that corner office, the city skyline sitting behind her shoulder where it used to sit behind mine. “I was on the part where you’re going to want to sit down. The children’s line got approved. Full launch, both markets. Hospitals on this side of the river, healers on yours.”

I set down the grafting knife.

“At a cost, of course,” she added, before I could ask. “We haven’t made one cent of profit on any of it, just like you asked. The shareholders weren’t happy, but I walked them through the projections, and explained to them how it would be the best thing the company’s name has ever been attached to. They eventually approved it once I showed them how much we’d make on our consumer-facing products once this takes off.”

I grinned. “Claire, I don’t know how you do it sometimes. Seriously.”

“A whole lot of gumption. And having an ass made for pencil skirts definitely helps with those old pervs.” She was grinning now too, and she let herself, just for a second, before the papers came back up along with the all-business tone. “The formula’s yours, so I need the extract standardized by spring. Sick kids don’t care about our timeline, so we’re moving fast. Can the new hybrid handle it?”

I looked down the worktable at the row of grafted seedlings, six weeks of splicing and coaxing and starting over, bred to grow the delicate healing bloom on a root that could survive northern soil. Two of them had taken beautifully. The third was still looking up at me rather mockingly.

“It’ll handle it,” I said, pointing a finger at the plant and then drawing it across my neck. A warning. The leaves almost seemed to shiver in response, or maybe that was just the wind.

That was how the past several months had gone since the wedding. Claire ran the company from her tower across the river, and I helped however I could in my greenhouse, concocting new hybrid plants and consumer-facing perfumes and whatever else Claire and I brainstormed, and twice a week her face appeared on a tablet screen and we built things together, the way we used to when Lycan Root was still just a dream.

The rest of my time belonged to the pack. Being Luna had turned out to be nothing like the word I’d spent years running from. It was walking the grounds with Gideon in the early morning while Tegan went over the patrol reports, and fevers and salves and sitting with elderly wolves who mostly wanted company with their medicine, and pups underfoot in my greenhouse every afternoon, assigned to watering duty and paid in cookies.

Most disputes got settled at my kitchen table over tea before they ever reached Gideon’s office. Nobody had once looked at me the way Silvermoon used to look at me. I kept waiting for it, that first year. But it never happened. It felt like home.

I was happy. The feeling still caught me by surprise sometimes, like when I was folding laundry or walking the familiar paths or watching Bjorn eat his weight across the dinner table. Twelve years of running and building and fighting, and it all came down to this: dirt under my nails, my family under one roof, and work that mattered on both sides of the river.

“Okay,” Claire said, “I’m sending you three versions of the packaging logo, and I need you to tell me which one you like the best, ‘cause I’m at a loss…”

“Yeah, yeah, send it over,” I said, even though that wasn’t my department. “I’ll take a look tonight—”

Before I could finish, my stomach suddenly cramped, and all of a sudden, I knew.

I was about to fucking puke.

I had just enough time to make it to the bathroom before it happened. The entire contents of my stomach swirled down the toilet bowl, and I leaned back against the wall of the bathroom, the tiles cool under me, and wiped my sweaty brow.

I wanted to speculate on whatever that was.

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