Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 151 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 151

Chapter 151 What The Wind Carries

Alpha Damian’s POV

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Finished

The moment the words left her mouth, every soft, indulgent thing I’d been feeling for the last ten minutes burned away, replaced by something colder and infinitely more useful.

I was off the bed before she’d finished the sentence, my earlier weakness, feigned, all of it, though it felt like a lifetime ago now was gone as if it had never existed.

My wolf surged forward, senses sharpening past anything a human body could manage, and I crossed to the window in three strides, scenting the air through the gap in the frame.

She was right. Something cold, something deliberate, laced faintly through the ordinary night air outside was gone almost as fast as it had arrived, but not fast enough. Not fast enough to hide the particular, unfamiliar shape of it from a wolf who’d spent his whole life learning to catch exactly this kind of scent before it vanished.

Not Corin. Not anyone from Stonehedge, not anyone from Dartwood. A stranger, and one who knew enough to move fast the instant a house full of wolves noticed him.

“Stay here,” I told Flourish, already reaching for the shirt draped over the chair.

“Absolutely not.” She was already on her feet, her own wolf clearly as unwilling to sit quietly as

mine.

I didn’t have time to argue the point properly, and some small, unreasonable part of me, the part that had spent the last several weeks slowly, stubbornly falling for this exact stubbornness, didn’t actually want to. “Fine. Behind me. Not in front.”

We moved down through the villa together, quiet, deliberate, every sense trained outward.

The grounds beyond the windows sat undisturbed, moonlight pooling flat and silver across the lawn, nothing visibly out of place. But the scent lingered faintly near the east hedge line, thin and cold, already fading past anything even a trained nose could properly track.

Whoever it had been, they were long gone by the time we reached the door.

I stood on the threshold a moment longer, jaw tight, running through every name that made sense and landing, uncomfortably, on the same short list I’d already been turning over since the hospital parking lot.

Patrick’s mention of a car outside Harold’s building tonight. Now this – an unfamiliar scent circling my own property while Flourish sat inside it.

Too coincidental to actually be coincidence.

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Chapter 151 What The Wind Carries

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“Whoever it was, they’re gone,” I said finally, more to reassure her than because I fully believed the danger had passed with them.

She hadn’t relaxed at all, her arms still crossed tight over her chest, that same sharp focus in her eyes that made her so formidable across a negotiating table. “That scent. It wasn’t random, was it. You already suspected someone was watching.”

I considered lying to her for exactly as long as it took to look at her face and realize it wouldn’t work anyway.

“There was a car outside Harold’s building tonight,” I admitted. “Before the accident. Patrick mentioned it, and I didn’t think much of it at the time figured it was one of Ragnar’s people keeping an eye on him ahead of the wedding.” I exhaled slowly, watching the last of that cold, unfamiliar scent dissolve entirely into the night air. “I don’t think that anymore.”

Her expression shifted, sharp and quick, the particular focus she wore whenever a puzzle piece slotted into place faster than she liked. “Karl.”

The name sat heavy between us, unwelcome and entirely too plausible.

“Maybe,” I said. “Or someone he’s using. Either way, whoever it was knew exactly which window to stand under, and knew exactly when to disappear the moment they were noticed.” I turned to face her fully, letting some of the urgency I actually felt bleed through the careful calm I usually kept locked down tight. “Which means they know you’re here. Tonight. With me.”

Flourish’s jaw tightened, though I could see her working hard to keep the fear out of it, replacing it instead with the same cold, practical resolve I’d watched her wear in her father’s car and every boardroom since. “Then we stop being careful about who knows what. If Karl already knows, hiding it from everyone else isn’t protecting anyone anymore. It’s just leaving us both exposed.”

She wasn’t wrong. And I hated, with a sharpness that surprised even me, how much I hadn’t considered that until she said it out loud.

I reached for her hand, lacing my fingers through hers before I’d fully decided to, some instinct older than strategy insisting on the contact regardless of what either of us planned to do about it next.

“Then we stop hiding,” I said. “Starting now.”

–

Behind us, deep in the villa, my phone began ringing – the particular tone I’d assigned to exactly one contact, a man who never called this late unless something had already gone badly

wrong.

I felt Flourish’s hand tighten around mine as I turned back toward the sound.

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Chapter 151 What The Wind Carries

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