I Refuse to Be Your Luna

Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 146 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 146

Chapter 146 The Photo

Alpha Garret’s POV

I’d just wrapped a dinner meeting that had run two hours longer than it needed to, my wolf worn thin from an evening spent smiling at men I didn’t particularly like, when my phone lit up with Selene’s name.

I rubbed at my temple in the back of the car. “Selene. Just say it.”

“Dad, guess who I saw at the mall today?”

“I’m not in the mood for guessing games.”

“Serena- I mean, Flourish. She was with some guy. Older. Way older, Dad. Did you know she’s seeing someone?”

I felt my jaw tighten, more out of habit than real concern. Selene had spent weeks trying to dig up anything that might drag her sister back down to her own level. “Explain. What did you actually see?”

“They were walking around a home goods store together. He was dressed casual, trying to play it young, but I could tell from how he carried himself. He’s old, Dad. I’m talking forty-five,

easy.”

I didn’t answer right away, and the silence apparently worried her, because she rushed on before I could get a word in. “I’ve got pictures. Sending them now. You’d better believe me this time.”

My phone buzzed a second later.

I almost hadn’t planned to look. But something in the back of my mind had already started turning over a stray comment I’d caught at dinner tonight – one of the Council elders mentioning, almost offhand, that Alpha Damian had been spotted that afternoon in a parking lot wearing a plain grey sweater, dressed so far beneath his usual polish that half the room had laughed about it.

I opened the photo.

My pulse did something strange and unfamiliar in my chest.

I knew that back. I’d know it anywhere, the particular set of Flourish’s shoulders, the way she carried herself even from behind like she already owned whatever room she was standing in.

And the man beside her, broad through the shoulders in a way no tailored suit could fully explain, carried himself with the exact loose, contained authority I’d only ever seen in one kind

1/3

11:50 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 146 The Photo

of wolf. The kind born to lead, not taught to.

Did she actually manage it? Did my daughter actually land him.

Finished

Warmth spread through my chest before I could stop it, pride, sharp and undeniable, the particular satisfaction of watching a gamble I’d half doubted start paying out in front of me. I forced my voice flat before I let any of it slip through to Selene.

“Enough. Stop obsessing over your sister. I’m warning you, Selene, don’t you dare go stirring trouble with her. Do you hear me?”

The line went quiet in a different way this time, the kind of quiet that came right before someone’s temper finally snapped clean through. “Unbelievable. Even now, you’re taking her side.”

The call cut off before I could say anything else.

I sat there a moment longer, staring at the phone, my wolf pacing a slow, thoughtful circle somewhere beneath my ribs. Selene wouldn’t understand this, not tonight, maybe not for years. She’d spent her whole life measuring herself against a sister who never once seemed to try as hard for anything, and it was going to eat her alive one day if she didn’t learn to stop.

But I couldn’t spend energy managing that particular fire tonight. Not with this photo still glowing on my screen.

Twenty percent of Steele Holdings. That had been the number she’d named in the back of my own car, cool as anything, like she was quoting me a market rate rather than her own future.

I’d thought, privately, that it had been ambition talking, the same reckless, overconfident streak that made her formidable in a boardroom and occasionally insufferable at a dinner table.

I hadn’t actually believed she could pull it off.

I opened my messages, thumb hovering over her name, half a mind to call and demand the truth outright.

Congratulate her, corner her, something. But something older and more careful in me held back. If she was playing this as cautiously as I suspected, a phone call from her own father crowing about a photograph might be exactly the kind of clumsy misstep that spooked a man like Damian into pulling back entirely.

Alphas like that didn’t respond well to being handled. I knew that better than most.

Patience, then. I’d let her run this her own way a little longer.

I set the phone down on the seat beside me and let my head fall back against the leather, allowing myself, just for a moment, the small indulgence of imagining what it would mean for

273

11:50 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 146 The Photo

this family if she actually managed it. Stonehedge’s council seat.

Finished

The kind of alliance that would make every rival house in three territories reconsider exactly how they spoke to us from now on. My chest was still warm with it when the phone buzzed again against the seat.

A new number. Unlisted, unfamiliar, the kind of call that came through at this hour for exactly one of two reasons, an emergency, or an opportunity too sensitive to route through anyone else first.

I picked it up slowly, my earlier satisfaction curdling into something more wary as I turned the phone over in my hand.

Whoever was calling this late, on a number I didn’t recognize, wasn’t calling to make small talk.

I answered.

“Alpha Garret Steele,” I said, keeping my voice level despite the sudden, sharp prickle of unease crawling up the back of my neck.

There was a pause on the other end just long enough to set every instinct I had on edge, before a voice I didn’t recognize finally spoke.