The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 476

Gideon’s POV

I shut the door to Bjorn’s room behind me and stopped in the hallway. My hand was still clenched at my side, fingers curled tight around the single strand of dark hair I had quietly plucked from Bjorn’s pillow when Avery wasn’t looking.

My chest felt hollow as I opened my fingers and looked at it.

I hadn’t planned on doing it. At least, not when I first came with that book tucked under my arm. But when I had sat there beside him, watching his chest rise and fall with those shallow, ragged breaths, something in me just… snapped. I couldn’t take it anymore. The not knowing. The constant guessing.

No more beating around the bush. I needed to know for certain if Bjorn was mine. The clock was ticking, and I got the distinct sense that no amount of medicine could do what I could do if I knew he was my biological son.

I stood there for a moment longer, staring at the hair in my palm, before I quickly closed my fingers back around it and walked down the hall. The sun was bright overhead when I stepped outside, making me squint as I crossed the gravel driveway to my car. I climbed in and sat there with the engine off for a moment before I reached for a tissue in the glove compartment.

The hair was dark, almost black, just like mine. It was fine and soft, the way a child’s hair was supposed to be. I carefully placed it on the tissue, then folded the material over it a few times, ensuring it wouldn’t slip free.

This whole thing was a giant violation of Avery’s trust. I knew that. Avery would never forgive me if she found out.

But what else was I supposed to do? Just sit around and wait for her to tell me the truth? She had already lied to my face once when she told me she miscarried—I could sense it the moment those words came out of her mouth. Like she had regretted them the very second she said them.

Avery had never been the best liar, anyway. Not to me. I could tell from the way her ears turned ever so slightly pink and the way her eyes darted downward, to her feet, as she drew her lower lip through her teeth.

She had done that that night when I had asked her what happened to the baby that she’d been carrying ten years ago when she first left.

And now… Now, it felt like she was dangling Bjorn in front of me like a goddamn carrot on a stick, refusing to confirm or deny anything. As if I couldn’t already tell that there was an undeniable connection between myself and Bjorn. As if our wolves didn’t recognize each other.

I thought back to what she’d said that night in her office, about how an Alpha would need to claim Bjorn to make his sickness go away. About how his wolf would slowly retreat and eventually go away altogether without a father figure.

If Bjorn was mine, then he needed me. Not Sebastian. Me.

And if he wasn’t… Well, I would still do whatever I could to help him. But I still needed to know for certain. Because if he was my son, then I wouldn’t hesitate. I would claim him as my heir immediately. As was my right, and his.

I just wished it didn’t need to be this way. I didn’t want to lie to Avery and go behind her back like this. I knew she would be furious—worse than furious. She would be so thunderous in her rage it would make the gods pale in comparison.

But she clearly wasn’t being honest with me, and it was putting a child—potentially our child—at risk. She was giving me no other choice.

In the end, she had to understand that I was only doing this to help her and Bjorn. And if she refused to understand, then I would just have to find a way to make her understand that I wasn’t the selfish monster she seemed to think I was.

Tucking the tissue into the glove compartment for safe keeping, I turned the engine on and pulled out of the driveway.

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