Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 119 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 119

Chapter 119 Caught In The Hallway

Lady Flourish’s POV

Damian didn’t sleep after Mira left with the vial. Neither did I.

Finished

We stayed exactly where we were, sitting side by side on the edge of the bed while the sky outside slipped from heavy black into a thin, grey dawn. His hand hadn’t left mine once. Every so often I felt his thumb move slowly across my knuckles, like he needed the small motion to remind himself I was still there.

“You should rest,” he said eventually, his voice rough with exhaustion. “You haven’t closed your eyes all night.”

“Neither have you.”

–

The room around us still smelled faintly of the fever from hours before — a warm, wild scent that clung to the sheets and the curtains, refusing to fade even as the sun crept higher. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the glassy shine of his stare when the poison had first taken hold of him, and sleep felt impossible to reach.

He let out a tired huff that wasn’t quite a laugh. When I looked up at him, the guilt from hours earlier was still sitting heavy behind his eyes, the same guilt that had been there since the fever broke.

“If it would make you feel better,” he said quietly, tilting his jaw toward me, “you’re allowed to hit me. I mean it. Let it out.”

“I don’t want to hit you, Damian.” Despite everything, a small, disbelieving laugh escaped me. “I want to find whoever did this to you.”

“We will.” His hand tightened around mine. “Karl won’t hide behind a crest on a broken vial for long.”

Before I could answer, three sharp knocks cracked against the door.

Mira didn’t wait for an invitation. She stepped inside carrying a slim folder pressed flat against her side, her expression carved from something colder than I’d ever seen on her before.

“There’s more, Alpha,” she said, setting the folder down on the low table in front of us. “And you’re not going to like it.”

I felt Damian shift beside me, his whole body going still and alert in that particular way meant his wolf had already caught the scent of trouble before his mind had.

“What is it?” I asked.

that

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Chapter 119 Caught In The Hallway

Finished

“This went up on the Stormbridge social feeds late last night,” Mira said. “Before the dinner started. Before any of us knew what Lydia was planning with the wine. I only found it now because one of the guards on morning rotation recognized a face buried in the background of the photos.”

She opened the folder.

The first image sat directly on top, glossy and merciless under the lamplight – clearly pulled from some gossip outlet’s overnight post. My stomach dropped before my mind had even fully processed what I was looking at.

It was Selene.

She stood frozen in a narrow hotel hallway, her hair yanked half out of its pins, the strap of her dress hanging loose off one shoulder. Her face was caught mid-scream, pale and wild-eyed, surrounded by a ring of strangers holding cameras far too close to her.

I picked the photograph up with a hand that wasn’t entirely steady.

Even in the harsh flash of a stranger’s camera, I recognized the exact shade of desperation on her face. I had seen it once before, briefly, at the banquet, the moment right before her mask of confidence had cracked.

Whatever had happened to her in that hallway, it had clearly stripped that mask away completely, leaving nothing behind but raw panic.

Behind me, I felt Damian lean in over my shoulder, close enough that I hadn’t even heard him move. His breath went sharp and quiet against my ear.

“That’s not from tonight,” he said slowly, reading the timestamp printed in the corner of the image. “That’s from hours before the dinner even began.”

I turned the photograph slightly toward the light, my mind already racing through everything I thought I understood about that night. The wine, the servant, Lydia’s trembling hands, Selene’s tearful confession at the table.

None of it accounted for this.

“Mira,” I said carefully, “what exactly happened in that hallway?”

Mira’s jaw tightened. For the first time since she’d walked in, she hesitated.

“You should probably hear it the way it happened,” she said finally. “From the beginning. Before Lydia’s plan at the dinner table even started.”

She reached back into the folder and pulled out a second, smaller stack of notes – statements

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Chapter 119 Caught in The Hallway

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gathered from hotel staff, security logs, timestamps that painted a picture far uglier than the photograph alone could show.

“There was another plan before the wine,” Mira said quietly. “One that had nothing to do with poisoning you.”

My pulse climbed into my throat.

“It was supposed to be about him.”

She nodded toward Damian.

My grip tightened on the edge of the folder. Nothing about Lydia’s family ever seemed to happen in isolation anymore.

Every scheme unraveled into another one, like pulling a single thread only to find it stitched into something far larger.

I looked down at the photograph of Selene again, at the sheer terror written across her face, and felt a slow, sinking dread settle deep into my chest.

Whatever had happened in that hallway the night before, it hadn’t gone according to anyone’s plan.

And somehow, I already knew we wouldn’t like the reason why.

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I Refuse To Be Your Luna