Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 144 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 144

Finished

Chapter 144 Liop Me In

Fenwick’s POV

Lady Flourish. The Steele girl. Alpha Harold’s almost-arrangement. And Alpha Damian, lingering behind in an empty conference room just to ask her about a weekend.

My mind was still turning that over when Emeric offered me one last, knowing smile. “I’ll let you get back to it, Fenwick. Alpha Ragnar needs me for something.”

He left before I could ask him a single one of the questions crowding my head. If he’s right, if Alpha Damian really does have his eye on Alpha Harold’s old almost-fiancée, what does that make this merger? A business deal, or the opening move in something much older than either company involved?

I was still turning it over when I looked up and found Alpha Damian standing in my office doorway, having apparently materialized there without a single sound.

My wolf startled hard enough that I nearly dropped my tablet.

“Something wrong, Fenwick? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No, Alpha Damian. I’m fine.” I straightened fast enough to make my spine ache, dragging my scent back under something resembling calm before he could catch the spike of nerves rolling off me. Dartwood Alphas didn’t miss things like that. None of them ever had.

“Good. From now on, I want to be looped in on every meeting with F-Tech’s people. Every one. Big, small, doesn’t matter.”

“Understood, Alpha.” What I understood, privately, was considerably more complicated than the two words I’d just said out loud.

Because if this was really about Lady Flourish, then Alpha Ragnar, Damian’s own uncle, blood tied close enough that half the pack still whispered about which nephew should have inherited what was about to find his own family circling something he clearly considered spoken for.

An uncle and his nephew, quietly squaring off over the same woman, disguised as due diligence and boardroom courtesy.

I felt something twist low in my chest, genuine unease, the kind that came from standing too close to a fault line you couldn’t see the size of yet.

But underneath it, if I was honest with myself, there was something else too.

A low, curious hum, the same restless pull every wolf in this building probably felt whenever old blood started stirring toward old claims.

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Chapter 144 Llop Me in

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This was going to be an interesting few weeks. I could feel it in my teeth.

21

Finished

Lady Flourish

Rhys was waiting by his car in the parking structure, one hand raised in a lazy wave. “Get in.”

I climbed into the passenger seat, and he pulled out before I’d even gotten my belt fastened, his brow already furrowed with the particular focus he wore when something was bothering him.

“What do you think Alpha Damian meant back there?”

My pulse ticked up despite myself. “Which part?”

“The no-overtime thing.” He shook his head, half amused, half baffled. “I ‘just’ told you we’d probably be pulling weekends for this deal, and twenty minutes later he stands up in front of the whole room and announces the opposite. Anyone who didn’t know better would think he’d bugged my office.”

I kept my expression carefully neutral and let out a short, awkward laugh. “Yeah. Strange coincidence.”

Strange indeed. Rhys would never in a hundred years guess that the man reshaping an entire merger timeline had done it purely so I’d have my Saturday free.

“Well.” He shrugged, already moving on, the suspicion sliding off him easily now that it had nowhere useful to land. “No overtime it is. Honestly, works fine for me, let’s just try to wrap Stonehedge’s side during business hours and push everything else back a week.”

“Sure thing, boss.” If he ever found out the real reason behind Alpha Damian’s ridiculous new rule, I genuinely didn’t know whether he’d laugh himself sick or quit on the spot.

Saturday arrived without any further complications, and I met Damian at the home furnishing store exactly as planned.

He’d traded his usual sharp-tailored suits for something far more casual, soft grey sweater, dark jeans, those same silver-rimmed glasses he’d reclaimed from my apartment still perched on his

nose.

Without the armor of boardroom formality, he looked almost dangerously approachable, the kind of ordinary that made it far too easy to forget exactly how much authority walked around inside that relaxed frame.

“The store I told you about is on the fifth floor,” I said, nodding toward the escalators. “Should we head straight up?”

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Chapter 144 Liop Me In

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Finished

“No rush.” He tilted his head toward a storefront just ahead of us, easy and unhurried, like he had the entire day mapped out and I simply hadn’t been let in on it yet. “There’s a bed store right here. Let’s start with that.”

I gave him a long, sideways look. “You’re replacing your bed too?”

“Why would I want to bring a wedding bed home used?”

The words landed somewhere low in my chest and stayed there, entirely too warm for a Saturday afternoon in a furniture store.

My wolf, predictably, had absolutely nothing useful to say, just a slow, pleased hum that did nothing to help me find my voice again.

“Fine,” I managed eventually, tugging my expression back into something neutral. “Let’s take a look.”

It’s his money, I told myself, following him through the doors. His house. If he wants to spend an entire Saturday agonizing over mattresses, that’s entirely his own business.

I had absolutely no idea, yet, exactly how much of his own business that was about to become.

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