The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna

Chapter 320 Gideon's POV The forest was empty again. I shifted back to human form and stopped to look around me. My breath came out in little white puffs, and the ground was hard with frost beneath my feet. It was early spring, but the air was still cold this far north. Probably too cold to be spending all day out here, and the chances of finding my quarry in this region were slim, but I didn't care. I had been tracking Deirdre's scent for three days, following a lead from a rogue who claimed to have seen her near the border. But the trail had gone cold. Again.

It shouldn't have bothered me by now, but I couldn't help it. Each time the trail went cold, each time I went on one of these hunts and came back without so much as a scrap of evidence, my heart felt crushed anew. I stood there for a moment, staring at the trees. Ten years. I had been hunting Deirdre for ten years, and I had nothing to show for it. No answers. No closure. And most of all... no Avery. We never even found a body. It was as if she just disappeared, leaving behind nothing but a severed pinky finger, confusion, and a whole lot of grief.

Finally, I turned and began the long walk back to the estate. By the time I reached the gates, the sun was setting. The guards nodded at me as I passed. They didn't ask where I had been all day. They already knew Everyone knew. I went straight to my office and collapsed into the chair behind my desk. My body ached. I wasn't as young as I used to be, and these hunts were starting to take their toll. Not to mention the pile of paperwork sitting on my desk, waiting for me to look through. I'd been shirking my real duties yet again.

I hadn't been sitting there for long when there was a knock on the door. Tegan stepped inside a moment later without me answering. He looked older now, too. His hair was graying at the temples, and there were lines around his eyes that hadn't been there ten years ago, "You're back," he said curtly. He'd grown more matter-of-fact over the years, too. "Yep." 1/4 Chapter 326 "Find anything?" "Nope." +25 Bonus "Figured." Tegan sighed and sat down across from me. "Gideon, you need to let this go." "Not doing that." "The pack is losing faith in you.

hands. "But I have to know, Tegan. I have to know if she's out there." My Beta stared at me. "Don't give me that look," I muttered. Tegan just pursed his lips and kept giving me the look.

bare hands. Scoured every inch of the banks. I searched through every known mountain lion den in the territories for her bones. I patrolled the forest every fucking day for ten years. And there was never a sign of her. Therefore, I refused to accept it entirely..

should discuss." "What is it?" He hesitated, then said carefully, "An Alpha from another pack showed up today. He said he was going to challenge you. That you're weak and delusional, and you can't lead your pack.", 2/4

the territories, with a booming economy. He'd challenged two other Alphas in the past three years and had expanded his borders considerably. Nightwolf was close to Evergreen, so I supposed he thought I would be

out of my mission." Tegan didn't speak, but I could tell it was only because he was trying not to say something he would really regret. Truthfully, I really hadn't been the