Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 128 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 128

Chapter 128 The Scent Of Lie

Two days before the reconciliation dinner’

Harold’s POV

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The receptionist’s composure hadn’t cracked, not exactly, but the careful way she avoided my eyes told me she knew more than she was willing to share.

“Where exactly is this warehouse?” I asked again, keeping my voice level despite the impatience clawing at the edges of it.

“Alpha Harold, I’m sorry. I’m not authorized to share Ms. Steele’s off-site schedule.” She glanced toward the elevator like she was hoping someone, anyone, would materialize to rescue her from this conversation.

The scent of her nervousness spiked sharp and sour, sweat and adrenaline, the same cornered- prey reaction most humans gave off around an Alpha who wasn’t bothering to soften his

presence.

Someone did.

“Alpha Harold.” Rhys’s voice carried easily across the lobby, calm in a way that immediately put my wolf on edge. I recognized him from the banquet, Flourish’s second, the man Damian trusted enough to let stand near her during pack business. His scent reached me a half-second before his voice did: steady, controlled, the practiced neutrality of someone who’d learned to mask his emotions around volatile Alphas for a living. “This is a surprise.”

“I need to find her,” I said, not bothering with pleasantries. “It’s important.”

Something flickered behind his eyes, brief and calculating, gone before I could fully read it. “She’s out at one of our satellite storage sites. Riverside district, off Marlow Street.” He offered the address easily, almost too easily, his tone warm and helpful in a way that didn’t quite match the careful stillness in his shoulders.

I inhaled without meaning to, some old instinct sharpening the moment his scent changed. not fear exactly, but the particular, controlled tension of someone choosing his words with more care than the situation should have required.

He was lying.

Not maliciously, I suspected. Protectively, if the tight set of his jaw was any indication. He didn’t know me well enough to trust me anywhere near her, not after whatever version of this morning’s scandal he’d already heard.

I thanked him anyway, let him believe the misdirection had worked, and walked back out to the

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Chapter 128 The Scent Of Lie

car with Callum trailing half a step behind.

“Riverside district?” Callum asked once we were back inside.

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“No.” I stared out the window, replaying the last twenty minutes in my head. “He’s protecting her. Understandable, given everything, but it means we’re not getting the real address that way.”

“Then how-”

I didn’t answer immediately. Instead, I rolled the window down, letting the warm afternoon air spill into the car, and closed my eyes long enough to sort through the tangle of scents drifting off the parking structure behind us.

There.

Faint, threading beneath exhaust fumes and concrete dust, unmistakably her. The same warm, particular scent that still clung to the glasses sitting forgotten in my own glovebox from a lifetime ago, before she’d made it painfully clear I no longer had any claim to it. It trailed toward the loading area at the rear of the building, sharper near a stretch of tire tracks still fresh enough that the rubber hadn’t finished cooling.

“She went south,” I said, opening my eyes. “Not east. Whatever address Rhys gave us was a decoy.”

Callum’s brows rose, equal parts impressed and wary. “You can track her from a parking garage?”

“I’ve spent six years memorizing that scent whether I wanted to or not.” The admission came out rougher than I intended, edged with an old shame I didn’t have the energy to examine right now. “Get us moving. South, toward the shipping corridor.”

He didn’t question it further, pulling out onto the main road while I kept my window down, letting the thread of her scent guide us block by block through traffic that felt agonizingly slow given the restless pacing still clawing at my chest.

It wasn’t an apology driving me anymore, not entirely. Somewhere between the stairwell insult I deserved and this reckless chase across half the city, the worry had outgrown the guilt completely.

That unfamiliar scent outside F-Tech hadn’t left my mind since we’d first caught it. Cold, metallic, deliberate, nothing about it belonged anywhere near a place she considered safe.

If I was wrong about the danger, I’d apologize for interfering, accept whatever scathing rejection she wanted to throw at me, and leave without another word.

But if I was right, I intended to be standing between her and whatever that scent belonged to long before it ever got close enough to matter.

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