The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna

Chapter 383

Avery's POV

The boy was young, no older than Bjorn. He was small for his age, with sandy blond hair that had clearly once been full and shiny, but was now dull and thin and falling out, leaving behind bald patches on his scalp. I sat beside his bed, gently holding his tiny hand and rubbing soothing lines back and forth across his knuckles with my thumb.

The nurse said that his parents were no longer around; they had unfortunately passed away in a car accident when he was a baby, leaving him an orphan. He wasn't alone, though. The people of Evergreen were good and selfless.

A family took him in. Raised him as their own, and raised him well. He was a good boy, she said. Smart and kind and sweet. The sickness took him quickly and violently. In days, according to the nurse, he went from being a vibrant, healthy little boy who liked to run and climb trees to a shell of his former self. He lost weight, lost the light in his eyes, his appetite, everything. Now, pretty much all he did was sleep; when he wasn't sleeping, he was crying from the pain, so the nurses kept him sedated most of the time so he didn't suffer. It broke my heart to see a child like this.

with the other kids, not laying in bed, hanging onto life by a thread. But that was how the sickness went, it seemed. One day, these kids were fine, and the next, their immune systems simply gave up. The fact

kids with autoimmune disorders were suddenly cropping up across multiple packs. As far as we were aware, it wasn't related to soil, water, or air

one thing-being here, putting up with the bullshit, could seriously help these kids. I kept reminding myself of that whenever I thought about Fiona and Gideon and all of the reasons why I wanted to leave, and

once she'd finished injecting the serum into the boy's IV bag.

low dose at first, just to be safe." I nodded and stood, stretching. The boy was sleeping, and would probably not see any effects from the Lycan Root for a while. He was our first; we still didn't know if he would react at all, but his caregivers had given us the go-ahead to test the serum on him. It was either that, or he was going to die anyway. Better to try something and have

perturbed. More so than usual,