Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 175 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 175

Chapter 175 A Last Visit

Lady Flourish’s POV

Finished

Four days had passed since the safehouse, four days of waiting while Fenwick’s team searched for a woman who seemed to have vanished entirely off every map they had access to.

Ethan’s lawsuit had officially entered the trial queue in the meantime, a small, steady victory in the middle of everything else spiraling around it.

Phina’s numbers, meanwhile, kept sliding. The backlash online had turned vicious enough that I’d heard, secondhand, she’d stopped reading her own comments altogether.

Then, three days ago, wedding photos of Phina exploded across every entertainment feed in the city.

Most people assumed Harold had released them himself, a calculated move to repair her image before the wedding overtook the scandal entirely. I understood the truth the moment I saw the gown.

The exact cut I’d once been fitted for, back when the arrangement between our families still stood. Nearly identical, down to the particular drape of the sleeve, the same neckline I remembered standing in front of a mirror admiring, in another life that belonged to someone else now. A message, deliberate and cruel in the way only another woman could make it, showing off from a safe distance the life she believed she’d taken from me.

I’d looked at the photos exactly once, felt something cold and amused settle behind my eyes, and closed the app without giving her the satisfaction of a second glance.

Whatever she needed me to feel, she wasn’t going to get it. Not

anymore.

Today, none of that mattered. Today was Grandmother’s mourning day.

I stood at Isolde’s gravestone with a bundle of yellow and white daisies pressed against my chest, the mountain air cutting cold enough that my breath fogged in front of me.

The stone itself was cold too, frost clinging in the grooves of her carved name, and I found myself tracing the letters with my eyes the way I used to trace them with my fingers as a child.

My wolf, restless since the safehouse, finally settled into something quieter here, some old instinct recognizing this ground as safe in a way few other places had managed lately. Even the wind seemed gentler on this hillside, as though it knew whose rest it was passing over.

My father came too, along with Lydia and Selene, the whole strange, fractured shape of our family standing together for exactly as long as ritual required.

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Chapter 175 A Last Vigil

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Selene’s lip curled the moment she caught sight of me lingering by the stone, some unspoken judgment passing behind her eyes before she offered a token bow and immediately complained about the cold, insisting they head back down.

Lydia said nothing, as usual, content to let her daughter do the talking for both of them.

“Dad, go ahead,” I said. “I want to stay a little longer.”

My father, who understood better than anyone how close Grandmother and I had been, nodded without argument. “We’ll wait at the rest stop below.”

I meant to tell him not to wait. Instead, I only said, “Okay,” and let them go, watching their three shapes shrink smaller against the tree line until the path curved and swallowed them

completely.

Once their voices faded down the path, the silence finally settled properly around me, the particular stillness that only ever existed in a place like this, where the living had nothing left to perform for anyone.

I crouched beside the stone and let myself say the parts I could never manage in front of my father.

“Grandma, I’m going to marry Damian.” A small, private laugh escaped me. “You remember him. He visited you at the care home once, back before either of us admitted what this actually was.” I brushed a fallen leaf off the edge of the stone, my fingers lingering there a moment longer than they needed to. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll live well. This time, I’m really leaving everything that hurt behind.”

My wolf hummed low and warm at the words, some old grief finally loosening its grip just slightly, like a held breath easing out after too long.

My phone buzzed in my bag, and the caller ID startled me enough that I nearly dropped it into the frost-covered grass.

I answered, and his voice reached me deep and steady, carrying none of the exhaustion I’d expected after everything he’d been managing on the other side of the world these past days.

“Hey. I just landed. Where are you?”

Relief flooded through me so fast it nearly stole my breath entirely. “At Grandmother’s grave. It’s her mourning day.”

A pause, warm and careful, the kind that told me he was already moving before he’d finished thinking it through. “I’ll come to you. Just tell me where.”

I gave him the location, my wolf settling further with every word, some fragile, hopeful thing finally allowing itself to believe he was actually, truly home.

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Chapter 175 A Last Visit

That was when the wind shifted.

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A scent threaded in from somewhere behind the tree line, faint, deliberate, and unmistakably, coldly familiar, the exact shape of the one that had circled his villa the night everything started, the one that had left a black, withered flower on my own pillow three weeks ago.

My whole body went rigid, the phone still pressed against my ear, Damian’s voice still warm on the other end of the line.

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TRefuse To Be Your Luna

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