The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 282

Chapter 282

Gideon’s POV

The words on the page blurred together as I read them a second time, then a third. Each pass made my chest tighter, like someone was wrapping chains around my ribs and pulling as hard as they could.

“I’m living with my true mate now. He says I’m a princess, and that he’ll make me his queen. Once we’re married, I’ll have lots of little pups, and I’ll be all his. Body, mind, and soul.”

Body, mind, and soul.

The letter slipped from my fingers and fluttered to the ground. I didn’t bother to pick it up.

Avery was my mate. And now she was with the Rogue King.

Was it true? Had she been working with him all along? Had his poison taken over her mind, convincing her that she could have a better life with him than with me?

Or was this all a facade?

I was leaning toward the latter. But the thing was, there was still a small part of me that wondered if she really had chosen him over me. Maybe he’d promised her something. Maybe he’d given her more already than I had.

Meanwhile, I hadn’t even been able to tell her that I loved her. And I was pushing her away because of it.

“Gideon?”

I looked up. Avery’s mother was still standing in front of me, twisting one hand on her cane, Clearing my throat, I composed myself and stooped, picking up the letter.

“She wouldn’t write this,” she said firmly. “Not willingly.”

“How do you know?” I wanted to believe her. It was a lot better than the alternative.

་་

Avery’s mother limped over to me, then pointed at one of the lines on the page. This part here. About the window, She says to put a candle in the east-facing window. at midnight the night before the Dark Moon’ Avery’s mother looked up at me, “My room doesn’t have an east-facing window, I faces west.

My heart stuttered in my chest. “Are you

sure?”

“Positive. I’ve lived in that room for weeks now. I know which direction my window

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Chapter 282

+25 Bonus

faces. I get a perfect view of the setting sun, not rising.” She took a step back and met my gaze steadily. “She’s trying to tell me something. Maybe she’s in the east. In the forest.”

I stared at the letter. East. The eastern forest. That was where I had been. Where I had found Deirdre.

Deirdre had said that Avery wasn’t at the rogue encampment where she’d been held. Of course, I hadn’t believed her from the beginning. And now I had even less of a

reason to.

But it still didn’t change anything. That forest was massive and crawling with rogues. Finding Avery there would be like finding a needle in a haystack, and time was already against us.

“Furthermore,” Avery’s mother went on, “she says she’ll be ‘all his. Body, mind, and soul.’ Avery would never say that. She’s too independent. Too stubborn. She wouldn’t surrender herself like that, especially not to a man she barely knows.”

My wolf stirred at that, and for a moment, my jealousy ebbed away. She was right. Avery had fought me tooth and nail when we first got engaged. She was willful and refused to submit. It was one of the things I liked most about her, and the idea of her willingly giving herself over to someone else, especially the Rogue King, was absurd now that I thought of it.

Dammit. How could I have been so easily blinded by jealousy? Of course Avery wouldn’t betray me.

She loved me.

“So she was forced to write this,” I said. I looked at Avery’s mother. “He made her write it.”

“I think so, too.” Her eyes were wet again. “Please. You have to find her.”

HWT

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