The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 490

I looked away. I didn’t answer; I couldn’t. My throat felt too choked up, not just from my injuries, but from all of it.

“Why did you keep him from me?” Gideon’s voice was barely above a whisper. “All these years, and my son was right here. Why did you lie to me?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it again. The question hung in the air between us, heavy and unavoidable. I’d known it was coming. Hell, I’d been dreading it since the moment he first walked back into our lives.

I turned my head to look at him properly. Really look at him.

The man sitting beside me wasn’t the Alpha I had run from ten years ago. He wasn’t the powerful, commanding figure who’d torn through pack territories searching for his mate. He was just… tired. Bruised and battered and broken in a way that had nothing to do with the fight he’d just lost.

He looked like he just wanted to understand.

My throat constricted. I swallowed hard and forced myself to speak.

“I heard you,” I said quietly. “At Asher’s camp. Ten years ago.”

Gideon’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“You told Asher that you only wanted the baby. That you didn’t care about me. You said your child was all that mattered. Your heir. Nothing else.”

Gideon’s face drained of what little color it had left.

“Combined with everything else…” I had to look away. “You were obsessed with finding your mate. With having an heir. You never once said you loved me, not even after you realized that I was the mate you’d been searching for all that time. Not even when we bonded. And then I heard you say those things, and I just… I couldn’t do it, Gideon. I couldn’t let myself be trapped in a life where I was nothing more than a broodmare for a man who only wanted me for what I could give him. So I ran. I ran from you and Asher and Deirdre and…”

I looked at my hands.

“I ran from everything, because I felt the only way to survive was to leave it all behind and start over. Far from the packs. Far from the pain that followed me everywhere here.”

I looked up at him.

“Far from you.”

The silence that followed was suffocating.

“Avery.” Gideon’s voice was hoarse when he finally spoke. “He tortured me into saying that.”

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