The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna (Avery and Gideon) novel Chapter 588

Avery’s POV

The three shareholders were already waiting for me in the boardroom when I entered, sitting in a perfect line, backs perfectly straight, rigid like they’d been there all night waiting for me. I stopped in the doorway and looked at them in their matching expensive suits, the same haircuts, the same three watches that cost more than most people’s salaries.

I stood there and I noticed all of these things, and yet I couldn’t remember their names.

I had known these men for years, and I still could not have said with any honesty which was which. They were all so similar that looking at them felt like looking at three monkeys in finery. Maybe they were distinguishable to each other—jury was still out on that one, though—but not to me.

“Avery.” The middle one stood and extended his hand. “There she is. We were starting to think you had run off on us.”

“You look refreshed,” said the one on the left. His eyes went to my braid, flicking over my casual attire in the process. Jeans and a sweater and the same beat-up boots I always wore when out picking herbs in the forest. Nothing fancy. Nothing business-appropriate. “The hair is… interesting.”

“Thank you,” I said, and sat down across from them.

“So.” The one on the right laced his fingers together. “The fragrance. Marketing is ready to move the second the formula locks. We’ve penciled the reveal for the spring window, we’ve got two glossies holding cover space, and frankly, after the quarter we just had, the timing could not be better. Walk us through where we are.”

I looked at the little vial in my palm for a moment. Still empty. Still dusted with dirt.

“There’s no product,” I said, looking up at them.

The three of them blinked at me, one after another.

“The formula’s not finished?” the middle one asked. “Fine. The window was a little too tight anyway. Perhaps we could shift to a summer launch—”

“We’re not doing that.” I set the empty vial on the table, watching as their faces paled in unison at the sight of—gasp—dirt on the mahogany. “The perfume isn’t launching. Not in spring, not in summer. It doesn’t exist, and it isn’t going to. And as of this afternoon, I’m no longer your CEO.”

Silence fell.

After a moment, the one on the left laughed and looked at the other two for backup that didn’t come. “Okay,” he said. “Is this a renegotiation? Because if we’ve been too harsh on you, that’s a conversation we can absolutely—”

“It’s not a negotiation. I’m stepping down, and I’m selling the company.”

All three sat up at once.

“Selling,” the middle one repeated carefully.

I nodded.

“Do you have any idea what your position is worth right now?” the one on the right asked.

“To the dollar,” I said. “Which is convenient, because that’s the price.”

They stared at me. The one on the left looked like he was about to be sick.

Goddess, it felt good.

I walked over to the window in the hallway as the voices droned on, looking out over the glittering city skyline. Nearly a decade of my life had been spent in rooms like that, looking at this same view, and I’d been good at it. I really had been.

But it wasn’t me. I thought it was for a long time, but I knew now that it wasn’t. It couldn’t be me, not with this silver hair and dirty boots and a pack life that I could never truly leave behind.

The thing I loved had dirt under its fingernails. It was a warm greenhouse and foraged plants and the smell of soil after rain. It was making something with my own two hands that fixed somebody’s pain, and handing it to them, and watching it work.

That was what the gift had been for all along. My Lycan blood was never meant to turn a profit; it was meant to help people, to share a gift that had been given to me with those that needed it.

Lycan Root would continue to flourish, of course. I would still make sure of that, just from a worktable instead of an office. Salves. Remedies. Real medicine, made from things that grew where I lived, for humans and wolves alike. And Claire would take on everything else, the meetings and the profit margins and the men in matching suits, and she would be better at all of it than I ever was, because unlike me, she actually wanted it.

She was a human, born and raised. She loved this city and the politics inside of it in the same way I loved the packs. It was something I respected about her, and something she respected about me. That inherent love for our own people, but also the love we shared for the ones who lived across the river. Human and werewolf alike could benefit from the things we would create. Together. Now, she just needed to convince those three men in suits to see the same vision.

I knew she would. She’d always been good at that sort of thing. A lot better than I was, anyway.

Just then, a shape moved behind me in the glass, and I felt warm arms wrap around me. I didn’t need to look up to know it was Gideon. From the scent alone, I’d sensed him coming all the way from the first floor.

“You ready for that dinner reservation?” he murmured, his lips brushing my ear.

I smiled, leaning back against him. “Just another minute of this view,” I said. “Then, we can get the hell out of here.”