The Heartless Alpha's Beloved Luna Novel

---- Chapter 152 Avery's POV "Homewrecker." The phrase was spit at me by a woman I didn't know, right after I entered the ballroom on the second night of the Alpha Ball. I stared at her in confusion and consternation. The Luna's face was twisted with hate, and she glared at me after she lobbed her insults like a grenade at my face and ran away. The whole day, I had encountered small incidents like this. Apparently Gideon and Dierdra had a falling out in the eyes of the public. Neither had spoken to me since this morning.

I pieced together their altercation from gossip I overheard as I drifted through the palatial rooms where everyone else mingled. Thad eaten my meals in the huge dining room alone, sitting like a lonely island adrift in an endless sea, surrounded by tables of Alphas and Lunas whose raucous laughter spilled over onto me like waves breaking on a shore. These members of the highest echelons of Wolven Society had ties, connections, relationships stretching back for years. They knew each other, knew each other's histories.

Their packs were old allies, or sometimes enemies, and they had each earned their place on this council through their own grit, determination, and destiny. Compared to them, I felt like I was drowning in deep water. I was ---- no one. I came from a pack that was not particularly prominent or powerful, and I had become the Luna of Nightwolf almost entirely by chance. I had been an offering given to the hungry monster of Nightwolf and no one was more surprised than I that Thad survived this long. But now it felt like my luck was running out.

Thad thought I was so fortunate, the night before, reunited with the Alpha who had found me during my first heat and claimed me so audaciously. Now, I cursed the same forces that had brought us together for our unfortunate reunion. The man who had taken me, who had claimed my body and my heart, might be one and the same. And he was off-limits. If it truly had been Gideon in my bed last night, then now I was atoning for our crime, both his and mine. He had apologized to Dierdra, and apparently won himself a reprieve from her wrath. Iwas not so lucky.

The Lunas who had been mostly neutral, a bit curious, and somewhat helpful the night before had now disappeared and those who drew close to me only did so to deliver snakebite venom in their words and actions. "How could you do it, bitch?" one hissed as she passed me in the ---- banquet hall, another bumped into me and splattered her drink at my feet, just barely missing staining my skirt. "You're the worst sort of Luna." another spat, clinging to the arm of her Alpha as they passed by, "Stay away from my man." Their words were horrible.

They clearly thought I had intentionally seduced Gideon, knowing that he was already claimed by his mate, Dierdra. Thad no defense. No one would believe me that I didn't know it was him, that I hadn't known who it was at all. It sounded absurd, even to myself. And on the flip side was the reaction of the Alphas to the news. Their sudden interest was almost just as horrible. Because of Gideon's reaction, the way he had stormed out of my rooms after, and the reunion he had performed in public with Dierdra afterward, the public opinion was that I was to be discarded.

That attracted a very different sort of interest. "Share my bed and I'll take you home with me," an Alpha growled in my ear, shoving me against the wall as we passed each other in the corridor. His fingers trailed along my bare arm. and his broad shoulders pinned me briefly, before releasing me and continuing his path like nothing had happened. I saw others passing bets back and forth. "7 think Reynaud will take her. He has no Luna, and he showed ---- interest in her last night," one said, while another scribbled odds into a notebook.

They were brazen about it, as though my fate was just another interesting game to them.