Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 155 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 155

Chapter 155 Ruined Relationship

Phina’s POV

The album was supposed to fix everything.

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Instead, “New Bloom” had barely made a ripple on release day, and the ripple it did make was already curdling into something far worse than silence.

I sat curled on the edge of my sofa, phone in hand, watching the comment count climb on a post I should never have let my team schedule without reading it three more times first.

Three of the tracks were truly mine, written in the quiet, uncertain months after Rowan died, back when music was the only thing that still made sense to me.

The rest had come from composers Stonehedge Studios handpicked and paid handsomely, exactly the way every rising artist’s debut worked. That wasn’t the problem. Half the industry ran on borrowed songwriters, and no one blinked.

The problem was the growing thread of comments insisting one particular track sounded exactly like something else. Not similar. Identical, several of them said, note for note in places, and once one person had said it loud enough, a dozen more had gone digging to confirm it.

My phone rang before I’d finished reading the worst of them.

“Phina, listen to me carefully.” Rita’s voice came through clipped and tense, none of her usual careful warmth in it. “Are you absolutely certain you didn’t lift this from somewhere? Because people are naming a specific songwriter now, and it isn’t just internet noise anymore.”

My spine went rigid. “Rita, I didn’t copy anything. Maybe a few notes overlap by coincidence, that happens in every genre, you know that better than I do. This isn’t plagiarism.”

“I want to believe you,” she said, and the hesitation in it stung worse than if she’d simply doubted me outright. “But Stonehedge poured a fortune into this launch. If this turns into a real lawsuit, it isn’t just your reputation on the line. It’s theirs. And that means it’s Harold’s, by extension, right before his own wedding.”

My wolf pressed low and anxious beneath my skin at the sound of his name, some old, familiar insecurity rising up before I could stop it. I hadn’t clawed my way from a dead beta’s widow to the edge of Stonehedge’s own bloodline by being careless.

Every step of this; the studio deal, the album, the careful cultivation of Harold’s guilt and Harold’s loneliness after Serena. No, after ‘Flourish’ – had been deliberate.

I hadn’t survived Rowan’s death and the empty months after it by leaving things to chance, and I wasn’t about to let one overzealous internet thread unravel it now.

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Chapter 155 Ruined Relationship

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“It’s not going to become a real lawsuit,” I said, more firmly than I felt. “Nobody sues over three notes that happen to line up.”

“I hope you’re right.” Rita didn’t sound convinced. “Because I got a call an hour ago. Someone’s already retained counsel to look into it formally. Not just the song, either – the poster art too. Whoever’s behind this isn’t messing around.”

My stomach dropped somewhere cold and heavy. “Who?”

–

“I don’t have a name for the songwriter’s side yet. But the poster case — that one’s already been sitting with a firm for weeks, apparently. Quietly building.” A pause, and I could hear her hesitating over whatever came next, the way she only ever did right before delivering something she knew would land badly. “Phina, the word going around is that the client advising both cases, unofficially, is Lady Flourish Steele.”

The name hit me like a slap, sharp enough that I actually flinched, my wolf snarling low and furious at the sound of it even through a phone line, even secondhand.

Of course. Of course it was her.

I thought of the home store, the man I still hadn’t quite placed walking beside her, the strange, unplaceable familiarity that had nagged at me for two days straight without ever fully resolving.

I thought of every careful, deliberate step I’d taken to make sure Harold never looked back toward the woman he’d been promised to before I ever entered the picture – and how thin all of it suddenly felt, knowing she was circling the one thing I genuinely couldn’t afford to lose.

“Rita,” I said, my voice coming out far steadier than I actually felt, “get me everything you can find on Lady Flourish Steele. Everything. Tonight.”

Rita hesitated. “Phina, are you sure that’s wise? Poking at her directly might-”

“I didn’t ask if it was wise.” My grip tightened around the phone until the plastic creaked. “I asked you to find out exactly what I’m dealing with, before she decides to find out everything she wants to know about me first.”

I ended the call and sat there in the dark of my own apartment, my wolf pacing a slow, furious circle, some old, half-buried instinct insisting that whatever quiet war Flourish Steele had just opened, I’d already lost the opening move without ever realizing the fight had started.

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