The Heartless Alpha's Beloved Luna Novel

---- Chapter 158 Avery's POV Iran like the wind, but he was always on my heels. That great black wolf with its amber gaze. Great teeth like knives. I felt his hot breath at my heels and knew I could never escape him. Never ever. The rogues were on my tail as I took off running for the village. With Gideon protecting Dierdra, I was on my own. There were no warriors flocking to my side, no defender racing towards me. The fingers of the forest tore at me.

Branches and thorns scratching at my limbs as I sprinted with all my strength towards the village in the distance, but it was all too far away. The rogues at my back brought me down. Tooth and claw tore at my skin, drawing blood and slicing deep into my flesh. The pain was indescribable. They seized my arms and slapped their hands over my mouth to stopper my screams. Even as they dragged me to my feet, Ihad only one thought in my mind. They were taking me to him. The Rogue King. He was delivering, good on his threats to take me and use me for his own ends.

My feet refused to move, to lend any aid in conveying me to my fate. I was dragged, white and bloodless, back under the sinister trees. Their limbs burying me within their shadows as surely as if ---- Iwas being put in my grave. My eyes had drifted shut, the world spinning every time I opened them. Vertigo twisted my stomach and when the rogues suddenly released my arms I fell sideways and slammed into the earth with a crunch. My ears were ringing, but it seemed as though voices were coming from a great distance, calling my name. "avery...

Avery...AVERY." I wished the disembodied voices would leave me alone. I just wanted to lay here in the sweet, rotting leaves and melt into the soil. Let the deer find my bones. "She's badly wounded. Take her ankles," I heard someone say above me. Someone was lifting me, moving me. I moaned with the pain of it. Why would they not let me die? Perhaps they did, for I no longer felt any sensation in my limbs. And then, I felt nothing at all. Inext awoke in a bed. Someone's bed. Was it my own? Was it his? There were bandages around me, confining me.

They tugged at my hurried movements, and then the pain grew in a slow swell that crested in a crushing wave of agony. Once more I was drowned beneath it, and must have been senseless for a while longer. ---- The next time I opened my eyes, it was dark. A single lamp was on the bedside table, but its dim glow failed to illuminate the room. I could see nothing. But I could hear him. Hear his breathing. That heavy rasp that meant he hungered. Hungered for me. Whose wolf waited in the darkness? My mind was a fog through which I could not see clearly.

The instinctual wolf in me could do nothing to quell the very human terror that flooded my body. Oh why could they not have left me to die? I was not well. Fever was racing through me. It left me weak and breathless. Now I would be devoured whole by the insatiable demon who craved to eat my heart most of all. The presence I sensed in the room with me. My skin was on fire. Sweat dripped between my shoulderblade as Iscrambled weakly towards the headboard. Anything to put space between me and him. Was that his amber eye in the darkness? Glowing like a hot coal?

; Ahand reached out and grabbed at my wrist, pulling me back. Something cold and wet was lapping at my neck and forehead. Was it his tongue? No, a cloth? "Do not touch me!" I screamed, and the hand withdrew. There was a growl in the darkness, and the sound of it quieted ---- my body against my will. How dare he seek to control me in this way!