The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna

Chapter 242 Avery's POV Avoidance became the name of the game from there on out. Not avoidance of Gideon, or Camila. Avoidance of myself. Of the inner monologue that kept trying to tell me that I might be making the wrong choice. I didn't want to consider that possibility. I didn't want to consider that the only plan I had might be useless. That I was useless. The last few months of my life had been driven by other people's decisions. When I stopped to consider why I kept trying to leave, it was staring me in the face that it might be the only control I had in my life.

My Luna duties were proscribed. My wifely duties were nonexistent, so long as Gideon and I remained hostile. Not that he was being hostile to me. More like on guard. I could sense his desire smoldering across our bond, and when he slept at night it intensified, keeping me awake with echoes of his desperation. For me. But I had been possessed for so long. All I could think was that these men had wanted me first for being expendable, then for being indispensable, and from either end of that spectrum I had remained a plaything in their games of power.

2 Would my child enter this world as a defenseless babe, as the pawn of those who would seek to control, use, and dominate their life? Knowing that the Rogue King already believed that any child I bore would be fated to be powerful, I knew he would not allow us to live a simple life. Not while he still lived. I loved this child, even before I could feel them. I loved and hated how they threatened to upend my life completely, I had thought the path before me had seemed simple, if hard. Now it felt impossible.

on the tasks Gideon had given me, trying to avoid my own thoughts. The wolf within me made that impossible. She was strong, opinionated, and very sure that I was fucking up. 'You are scared,' she told me one afternoon, while I paced through the pack house trying to distract myself, 'and it is never good to run when

in my throat. My wolf always thought everything reduced down to simple dynamics of hunter and prey,

for weeks. Because it was where she was. I understood that she was still kept under guard, but that Gideon had allowed her time in the training yard every day. Now, impulse took hold of me and I stepped past the guard outside her door and into her room. "Hello, Dierdra," I said, as she lifted her head in

you tried," I bared my teeth