The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 439

Chapter 439

For a few moments, Sebastian was quiet, clearly choosing his words carefully. Finally, he asked, “So what does this mean for you now?”

I looked down at my hand.

The ring sat there on my finger, gold and plain and exactly what it had always been: a prop. A very useful and effective, but I had leaned on for longer than I should have. I turned it once with my thumb, the way I had done absently about a thousand times over the past weeks without ever really thinking about it.

Then, I pulled it off and held it out to Sebastian.

I smiled. “Sebastian, I want to thank you for everything you did for me and Bjorn. You gave us a safe place when we needed one, and I won’t forget that.” I pressed the ring into his palm. “But I’m done hiding, lying, scheming. I spent ten years building a new life in another place that wasn’t quite right for me; that was a crutch. And then I came back here and immediately picked up a whole new set of crutches instead of facing what really needed to be faced.”

Sebastian stared at his hand as I closed his fingers around the ring. “Are you leaving the packs?” he asked. “Going back to the human lands?”

“No,” I answered, and I meant it. “That’s the reason why I’m doing this; because I want to stay here, and I don’t want it to be under the pretense of lies and manipulation.”

Sebastian looked at the ring in his hand for a moment. Something passed across his face that I hadn’t expected. His eyebrows scrunched like he was trying not to tear up, and he slipped the ring into his pocket.

“Alright,” he said simply. He stood. “I’ll go check on breakfast.” He left the room without looking at me

again.

I sat there for a moment looking at the empty doorway, wondering if I had said something to hurt him. Then, I turned back toward the window.

Just then, behind me, I heard a small, wet cough. It startled me, making me turn quickly. Bjorn was standing in the doorway, coughing into his hand. His face looked a little pale and clammy. The coughs lasted several seconds and sounded thick and rattly, nothing at all like allergies or swallowing the wrong

way.

“Bjorn?” I stood. “You okay, buddy? You’re not getting sick again, are you?”

He nodded, still coughing. When he’d caught his breath, he simply choked out, “Sebastian lied. There

were no cinnamon rolls.”

Without further explanation, he walked over to his airplane then and plopped back down, getting right back to work. I watched him for a moment, waiting for him to start coughing again, but he didn’t. Eventually, I chalked it up to him running through the house and decided to let it go.

I was just about to leave the room when I heard the sound of a commotion outside. Screeching tires,

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something like a car door slamming, and raised voices.

Curious, I moved over to the window and looked out. There, on the driveway, was Tegan’s car, parked haphazardly; and in front of it, on her knees before Gideon’s feet with her head bowed and her hands cuffed behind her back, was Deirdre.

I supposed they had found her after all.

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