The Heartless Alpha’s Beloved Luna
Eight legs, jointed and black and slick, each one longer than I was tall, lifting her up and up until she towered over the web on a swollen abdomen that pulsed in the dark.
Her face was still there, sagging and gray, set into the front of all that bulk like an afterthought, and around it, where her hood fell away, dozens of eyes opened in slow rows and caught the moon and threw it back at me.
An enormous spider with an old woman’s face.
I screamed until my throat tore, until my voice gave out, thrashing against the silk while she watched me with all those eyes and waited for me to finish.
“There it is,” she finally said, when I had gone too hoarse to continue. The pincers at the sides of her