I Refuse to Be Your Luna

Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 142 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 142

Chapter 142 Working Hours Only

Lady Flourish’s POV

Finished

The Stonehedge Holdings floor smelled like old money and older wolves cedar polish, ambition, and beneath it all, the faint, territorial musk of a pack that had never once had to share its own hallways with an outsider Alpha.

Rhys walked half a step ahead of me, tablet tucked under one arm, radiating the particular calm he only wore when he already knew a meeting was going to go well.

A young man in an immaculate suit met us at the conference room door before we’d even finished crossing the lobby. “Lady Flourish, Beta Rhys. Alpha Damian was very pleased with the due diligence report you submitted last week. Genuinely thorough work.”

“Just doing the job, Fenwick,” Rhys said smoothly, though I caught the faint, satisfied curl at the corner of his mouth. He loved being told he was good at things almost as much as he loved being right.

Beside him, two junior associates from Stonehedge’s own finance team exchanged a look that suggested their own report hadn’t earned quite the same praise.

–

My wolf noted it without much interest – pack politics dressed up as flattery, same as everywhere.

Damian arrived twelve minutes late, the way he always did to rooms he already owned the moment he stepped into them.

I felt it before I saw him. that low, unmistakable shift in the air, the way every wolf on the floor straightened without quite meaning to. He wasn’t Stonehedge.

He answered to no one in this building. And yet the room bent toward him anyway, the way a compass needle bends toward true north whether or not it wants to.

He was wearing his glasses again. The same pair he’d left at my apartment two weeks ago and picked up, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world to come collect what was his.

I kept my face perfectly, professionally still. My wolf did not.

“Before we start,” Damian said, settling into the seat at the head of the table like it had been built around him, “I want to set one condition for this merger process. Evenings and weekends stay clear. All parties, all partners. No exceptions.”

He glanced, briefly, almost lazily, around the table. “We’re not going to solve anything better at eleven at night than we would at eleven in the morning. I’d rather have everyone sharp during business hours than burned out chasing deadlines nobody actually benefits from.”

1/3

11:49 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 142 Working Hours Only

Finished

Fenwick agreed so fast it was almost comedic. “Alpha Damian’s right. We’re always more efficient in daylight hours anyway.”

Rhys, to his credit, kept a perfectly neutral face. “No objections from F-Tech.”

I said nothing, mostly because I didn’t trust my own voice not to give something away. Is he seriously restructuring an entire merger timeline just so his weekends stay free?

Knowing him, the answer was almost certainly yes.

The meeting itself ran two hours, valuation models, risk exposure, the usual careful choreography of two powerful houses circling each other’s numbers before either side admitted how much they actually wanted the deal.

Ragnar’s people pushed hard on liability terms. Damian didn’t raise his voice once. He didn’t need to.

Every time he spoke, the room simply quieted and listened, the particular deference wolves save for someone whose authority isn’t up for negotiation.

By the time it wrapped, the light outside had gone gold with early evening.

Fenwick caught Rhys on the way out, some question about scheduling that required, apparently, an entire private conversation in the hallway.

I stayed behind to gather my notes, assuming everyone had already cleared out.

I was wrong.

“Are we still on for the weekend?”

Damian’s voice, low and unhurried, came from somewhere just behind my left shoulder. I hadn’t heard him move. My wolf, traitor that she was, went warm and pleased at the proximity before I could stop her.

–

I glanced toward the door, genuinely checking that no one was about to walk back in and catch us like this. “Alpha Damian,” I said, keeping my voice carefully flat, “we’re shopping for furniture. Not going on a date.”

“Sorry.” He tilted his head, the corner of his mouth twitching in a way that made it very clear he’d heard every word. “What was that? Didn’t quite catch it.”

I did not dignify that with a response. I gathered my notebook, my pen, my composure, all in one motion, and walked out of that conference room at a pace that was absolutely not fleeing, no matter what my wolf wanted to call it.

11:49 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 142 Working Hours Only

Damian’s low laugh followed me halfway down the hall.

Outside, I pulled my phone out and texted Rhys before I’d even reached the elevator.

‘I’ll wait for you downstairs.

Finished

Whatever he’d meant by that reply on my phone earlier

—

that clipped, unreadable ‘Okay. Got

–