The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 595

Avery’s POV

“Is the moon really gonna be blue?”

“You asked me that at breakfast,” I said, working the tangles out of my daughter’s hair while she squirmed on the stool in front of me.

“You didn’t answer at breakfast.”

“You’ll see it tonight.”

“That’s not an answer either.”

She was only six years old, and already impossible to fool. Smiling, I kissed the top of her head and tied off the braid, and she was gone before I’d finished, thundering down the hallway in her party dress to go pester her brother, who was standing in front of the mirror in his room pretending he wasn’t nervous about tonight.

Bjorn would be seventeen tonight. He had grown taller than me by a full head, taller than Tegan, closing in on his father a little more every month. He’d combed his hair twice and messed it up three times, and when Angelica barreled into his legs, he picked her up without looking and parked her on his hip like he’d been doing it all her life, because he had.

We’d named her for the flowers that couldn’t hurt her. It had felt right then. It felt right now.

The ceremony happened at moonrise.

The whole pack gathered on the field in front of the bonfire, along with half of Evergreen, and my mother, and Claire, and faces I hadn’t seen in years—Camila had come back briefly from her travels, her arms full of gifts, and then there was Ian and Melody, and so many others whose lives had slowly drifted in various directions over the years—all of them turned up toward the sky as the Blue Moon climbed over the treetops, enormous and bright, close enough to touch.

Gideon called our son forward in front of everyone. Bjorn walked up with his jaw set and his shoulders back, and his voice only cracked once when he answered, and when Gideon gripped his shoulder and presented him to the pack as the heir of Nightwolf, the howl that went up shook the birds from the trees.

My mother cried through the entire thing. She’d promised me she wouldn’t, but I’d known better, and I passed her my handkerchief without taking my eyes off my son.

After that, it was a party.

Colt had brought his whole family for the party, a wife whose laugh carried over the music and two little ones who spent the evening chasing Angelica between the tables and being chased back. Evergreen was thriving under him. You could see it in the way his wolves carried themselves, easy and well-fed and quick to laugh, and in the way Colt himself had finally grown into his shoulders, gold eyes calm now.

Claire showed up in heels, lasted about an hour, and spent the rest of the night barefoot in the grass with a drink in her hand, flirting with males whose names she probably wouldn’t bother remembering come sunrise. Some things never changed, and thank the Goddess for that.

Tegan was a little older and grayer, but with no less sparkle in his eyes. He’d married too, although no children ever came. He and his wife decided to go without; he often said that Angelic and Bjorn’s antics were basically free birth control, which was fair.

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