The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna

Chapter 70 Avery's POV The pack library bore some similarities to the records room in the basement. Both were packed to the brim with information. Whereas the records room had boxes of files, the library had more bound books, but both boasted a copious amount of dust. | mused that one might be able to tell what the state of current affairs was for a pack if their library looked like no one had used itin years.

If our lives were more peaceful, perhaps there would be more time for scholarly pursuits Whereas previously | had been digging around in more general subjects like botany, pharmacology, and medicinal shelves to support my burgeoning medical interests, this time | was deep in the stacks looking for the tomes that recorded the earliest records pertaining to Nightwolf Pack's history. Primarily, | was looking for information regarding the early pacts and alliances that had been formed between Nightwolf and Silvermoon. I wanted to know where this intermarriage tradition had arisen.

Maybe | could find evidence to support ending it. ---- Mostly, the old records were cut and dry records of a struggling settlement trying to get by. Planting records and census rolls were in thick supply, providing sobering insight to the harshness of life in these northern forests. | flipped past heartbreaking records of swaths of deaths to famine, disease, and war. When the pack reached dangerously low levels, they had often turned to neighboring packs to form alliances and boost their numbers through interbreeding. There were stories hidden between these dry lines, | was sure.

In 'one instance, Nightwolf had allied with a pack named Ghostwraith, and then just two generations later a bloody war nearly decimated both. Why had that alliance fallen apart? There was no Ghostwraith Pack still operating that | knew of. | guess history is written only by the survivors. Finally, in the records from about 300 years previous, | found mention of intermarriage between Silvermoon and Nightwolf. Aha! | squinted at the whispery, hand-written script. "Advantageous marriage between Silvermoon Lunar Votaress and Nightwolf Alpha arranged to the satisfaction of both packs.

intact." It took me a moment to parse the archaic language. | hunted down a dictionary to look up a few of the words | wasn't familiar with. If | was interpreting this correctly, it wasn't just that the marriage formed an alliance between

displayed. | didn't know much about how genetics were passed on in werewolf packs, but | knew that most packs had

more susceptible to inbreeding and madness.

intention to marry me was strongly rooted in the fact that if he didn't, he could lose his title of Alpha altogether. That explained why he was so adamant that the tradition needed to be honored at all costs, even when he himself had no interest in the marriage romantically or

| was so screwed. | looked up what votaress meant, and found that it was some sort of

in my grandmother's generation, there had been a Moon Goddess high priestess who had helped to lead Silvermoon pack in traditional rites, but the practice had died out when she did, and she'd had no apprentice to take up the mantle. In my generation, most people viewed the legends of the Moon Goddess