Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 122 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 122

Chapter 122 Bitter Tonic

Selene’s POV

22

Finished

By the time I made it back to the estate, my mother was already waiting at the door, her face carved into the same brittle composure she used whenever she was one wrong word away from losing her temper completely.

“Inside,” she said. “Now.”

I followed her through the halls with my head down, painfully aware of every servant who glanced my way and then quickly looked elsewhere.

News like this moved through a pack faster than wildfire through dry brush, and by the stiff, careful silence trailing me down the corridor, it was clear the servants already knew exactly what had happened at the Cedarfall Lounge.

My wolf curled low and small inside my chest, ashamed in a way I didn’t fully understand. She hated this – the humiliation, the whispers, the sense of being watched and judged by every nose that caught the lingering scent of a stranger still clinging to my skin.

Even here, in my own family’s home, I could feel the weight of it pressing down on me, heavier than any human shame could ever be. Wolves didn’t forget scent. Whatever had happened in that hallway would follow me for weeks, maybe longer, no matter how many baths I took or how hard I scrubbed.

Mother pulled me into her private study and shut the door hard enough to rattle the glass cabinet against the wall.

“Sit,” she ordered.

I sat.

“Did you take anything?” she asked. When I only stared at her blankly, her patience snapped entirely. “The tonic, Selene. Please tell me you at least know enough to ask the pack healer for a nightbloom tonic.”

My stomach dropped. In the chaos of fleeing the hallway, of cameras and Corwin’s cold dismissal, I hadn’t thought that far ahead at all.

“I… no. I didn’t.”

Mother closed her eyes like the words physically hurt her. “Of course you didn’t.”

She was already pulling out her phone, typing something short and clipped to someone on the other end. “I’ll have Ilene bring it within the hour. You drink it the moment it arrives. Do you

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11:41 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 122 Bitter Tonic

Finished

understand me? An unmated wolf carrying a stranger’s pup would be the end of everything I’ve worked to build for you.”

I flinched at the word ‘stranger’. It still didn’t feel real, hearing it said so plainly, so clinically, like it was simply a logistics problem to be solved rather than something that had happened to my own body without my consent to the man behind it.

“What about the pictures?” I asked quietly. “They’re already spreading. Everyone’s seen my face.”

“I’ll handle the pictures,” Mother said, waving a hand like she was swatting away an insect rather than an entire pack’s worth of gossip. “You bury this. You deny everything, no matter who asks. As long as Corwin Ashdown doesn’t say otherwise, no one can prove a thing.”

I wanted to believe her. I wanted, more than anything, to believe this was simply bad luck, a plan gone wrong, nothing more sinister than a waiter’s mistake and a stranger’s wandering key.

But something about it kept nagging at the edges of my mind, a wrongness my wolf refused to let go of.

The suite had been reserved under a false name. Mother had chosen the timing herself, down to the minute. And yet somehow, a mated Silver Moon official had walked through that exact door at that exact hour, carrying a key that should never have worked.

That wasn’t bad luck. That was a door someone else had unlocked on purpose.

“Mother,” I said slowly, “who else knew about the room?”

She didn’t answer right away, which told me more than any answer could have. Her eyes flicked briefly toward the window, toward the phone still clutched in her hand, before her expression smoothed back into practiced calm.

“No one who matters,” she said. “Go wash up. Ilene will be here soon.”

I didn’t move.

“Mother.”

“Selene.” Her voice sharpened into something final, something that made even my wolf go still with old, familiar obedience. “There are things you don’t need to know. Not tonight. We have the family dinner in a few hours, and I need you to be presentable, composed, and silent about all of this. Can you manage that?”

“Yes,” I said, even though every instinct in me screamed otherwise.

I left her study and made my way upstairs, and it was only as I passed her open bedroom door that I caught the low murmur of her voice again, already on the phone with someone new.

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11:42 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 122 Bitter Tonic

Finished

I paused just out of sight, my wolf’s sharper hearing catching fragments I wasn’t meant to hear.

“… the vial worked exactly as promised… yes, I’ll make sure she drinks it before dinner… no, she still doesn’t know your name…”

My blood ran cold.

Whoever my mother was speaking to, it wasn’t the pack healer.

I pressed myself against the wall, straining to catch more, but her voice dropped too low to follow, and a moment later the door clicked fully shut.

I stood frozen in the hallway for a long time afterward, replaying those fragments over and over, trying to make sense of a truth I wasn’t ready to face.

My mother hadn’t just planned this alone.

Someone else had helped her, someone with a vial, a plan, and a name I still didn’t know.

And in a few hours, I would be sitting at a dinner table across from Damian and Flourish, smiling like nothing was wrong, with absolutely no idea that whatever my mother had started that morning was about to get all of us killed.

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Refuse To Be Your Luna

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