Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 120 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 120

Chapter 120 The Wrong Room

Selene’s POV

The plan was supposed to be simple. Mother had made sure of that.

22

Finished

“He’ll take one sip, and his whole body will burn,” she told me, pressing a small glass vial into my palm before the mixer began. “The waiter already knows which glass to bring him. All you have to do is be in that room when it hits.”

I remember nodding, my heart hammering with something close to excitement. Let Damian humiliate me in front of the whole banquet hall the night before.

Let Flourish parade around on his arm like she’d already won everything. None of it would matter once his own wolf betrayed him and pulled him toward me instead of her.

I slipped into the private suite Mother had reserved under a false name and waited in the dark, my pulse climbing every time footsteps passed outside the door.

I told myself this was the last humiliation I’d ever have to endure. After tonight, I would be the one everyone whispered about – not out of pity, but out of envy.

When the lock finally clicked and the door swung open, I didn’t hesitate. I threw myself against his chest, already imagining the exact look on Flourish’s face when she found out.

It wasn’t until unfamiliar hands gripped my waist – rough, hungry, nothing like the cold restraint I’d always felt radiating off Damian that something cold slid down my spine.

The lights flicked on.

It wasn’t Damian.

“Who the hell are you?” the stranger slurred, blinking down at me in confusion, his collar askew.

I didn’t recognize him at first. Not until my eyes caught the silver crest stitched into the fabric at his throat.

Beta Corwin Ashdown. Mated. A senior trade liaison for the Silver Moon pack’s southern office. I had seen his photograph once, years ago, in one of Father’s business folders.

I don’t know how he ended up with a key to that room. I don’t know why the waiter had let a stranger walk in ahead of the man he was supposed to drug. All I knew was that somewhere between Mother’s plan and that door swinging open, everything had gone catastrophically

wrong.

11:41 Thu, Oct 1

Chapler 120 The Wrong Room

Finistred

I shoved him off me and bolted, my dress slipping further down my shoulder, straight into a hallway already crawling with photographers.

They must have been tipped off to expect exactly this kind of scene. They just hadn’t expected

“Miss, is the man inside Beta Corwin Ashdown?”

Camera flashes exploded around me, blinding and relentless.

“Miss, do you know he’s mated? Are you his mistress?”

“Stop!” I screamed, throwing my arm up to shield my face. “Stop taking pictures!”

They didn’t listen. If anything, my panic only made them more eager, more certain they’d caught something worth chasing.

“Miss, how long have you been seeing him?”

“You look familiar – aren’t you Alpha Garret’s daughter?”

My mind went completely blank. The words ‘he’s mated’ rang in my ears like a death sentence I hadn’t seen coming. I hadn’t slept with a stranger by accident. I had slept with a mated man, in full view of half a dozen cameras, and there was no version of tonight where that didn’t destroy

Corwin stumbled out into the hallway behind me, tugging his shirt straight, looking far more irritated than ashamed. “What’s going on out here?”

“Beta Ashdown, this woman just ran out of your room with her clothes torn. Care to comment on your relationship?”

He clicked his tongue, glancing at me like I was an inconvenience rather than a person. “I don’t know her. We’re not involved. That’s enough – clear out.”

And just like that, he turned and walked back inside, leaving me alone in a hallway full of strangers who had already decided exactly who I was.

I called Mother the second I made it to the car, my hands shaking too hard to properly grip the phone.

“Mom, what do we do?” My voice cracked. “They got my face. It’s already spreading online.”

There was a long, heavy silence before Lydia spoke, and when she did, her voice was tight with barely controlled fury. “How did Corwin Ashdown get into that room, Selene? That wasn’t the plan.”

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11:41 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 120 The Wrong Room

22

Finished

“I don’t know!” I snapped, tears finally spilling over. “I did exactly what you told me. I waited. I thought it was him.”

I didn’t tell her that Damian had looked at me with open disgust the night before, at the banquet, in front of everyone.

I couldn’t bring myself to admit, even to my own mother, that I had lost so completely to Flourish that some small, twisted part of me had already been imagining her reaction to my success before any of this had even happened.

“Get yourself together,” Lydia said finally, her voice dropping into something colder, sharper. “We still have the dinner tonight. None of this can follow us there.”

I wiped my face and nodded, even though she couldn’t see me, some hollow part of me already trying to bury the last hour deep enough that it would never resurface.

I had no idea, sitting in that car with my mascara streaked down my cheeks, that in a few short hours, a wine glass and a vial of Nightshade Root would make tonight’s humiliation look small by comparison.

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11:41 Thu, Oct 1

Refuse To Be Your Luna