Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 176 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 176

Chapter 176 The Man In The Mist

Lady Flourish’s POV

“Damian.” I kept my voice as level as I could manage, my eyes fixed on the tree line behind Isolde’s stone. “Someone’s here. The same scent from your villa. From my apartment.”

Silence, brief and sharp, and then his voice came back entirely different, all the earlier warmth stripped out of it, replaced by something low and controlled. “Don’t move toward it. Stay near the path where you can see the road.”

“I’m not running from a smell in the woods.”

“I’m not asking you to run. I’m asking you to let me get to you before you decide to go investigate it yourself.” A pause, and I heard him moving, the particular clipped rhythm of someone already walking fast. “Flourish, I’m at the base of the hill. I came to surprise you today. Which section.”

For a second, despite everything, the gray, drizzling world around me felt brighter. “You’re here?”

“I told you I’d come home safely. I didn’t say I’d wait until tomorrow to prove it.” Something warm slipped back into his voice even through the urgency underneath it. “Which section?”

“Grassbury.”

“Ten minutes. Stay where the trees thin out. If that scent moves toward you before I arrive, get to the road and start walking down. Don’t wait for me to catch up.

He hung up before I could argue, and I stood there in the thickening rain, my wolf pacing hard beneath my skin, torn between the instinct to hunt down whatever was watching from the tree line and the considerably more reasonable instinct telling me Damian’s plan made more sense

than mine.

The drizzle thickened into something heavier within minutes, cold enough that my damp hair clung to my forehead, my thin jacket doing nothing useful against it.

I lifted my purse over my head in a weak, useless attempt at shelter and kept my eyes moving between the stone path and the trees, cataloguing every shift in the wind for a repeat of that

scent.

It came again, faint, closer this time, gone almost as fast as it arrived, the exact same pattern as the night outside Damian’s villa. Whoever this was had learned patience, learned exactly how long they could linger before a wolf’s senses caught them properly.

My phone buzzed against my palm. A text from an unknown number, the same anonymous

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Chapter 176. The Man in The Mist

shape as the call three nights ago.

:

Finished

*Careful who you trust to protect you. Not everyone in that house is who they claim to be.*

My stomach dropped. Nerissa. They knew about Nerissa, or they wanted me to think they did, another thread deliberately dangled to unsettle me at exactly the moment I couldn’t afford to be unsettled.

I forced my breathing steady and kept walking toward the road, exactly as Damian instructed, my wolf snapping at every shadow the rain distorted into something more threatening than it probably was.

Through the gray curtain ahead, a dark figure came into view along the stone steps, tall, moving fast, an umbrella angled low against the weather.

My whole body went rigid for one suspended heartbeat before the shape resolved itself properly, the particular set of those shoulders unmistakable even through the rain.

Damian.

Relief hit me hard enough that my knees actually wavered, my wolf finally settling from her frantic, defensive crouch into something considerably softer the instant his scent reached me, warm and familiar beneath the storm.

He closed the last of the distance at a near run, and the moment his eyes found mine, whatever coldness he’d been carrying since our call melted into something gentler, steadier. He tilted the umbrella wider over me without breaking stride, cutting off the worst of the rain entirely.

“You’re soaked,” he said, low, his gaze already sweeping the tree line behind me with a wariness that hadn’t fully left him despite the softness in his voice.

“I’m fine,” I said, though my teeth had started chattering slightly, betraying me. “Did you see anything on your way up?”

“Nothing directly. Bram’s team is sweeping the perimeter now.” His jaw tightened, something dangerous still simmering just beneath his careful calm. “Whoever it was pulled back the second they realized I was closing in. Cowards usually do.”

I glanced past his shoulder, catching the faint shapes of two figures moving methodically through the tree line further down the slope, dark against the gray, deliberate in a way that told me exactly what they were searching for.

“They’re not going to find them,” I said quietly. “The rain’s already washed the trail clean.”

“Maybe.” Something flickered behind his eyes, frustration and restraint warring visibly. “Or maybe whoever this is wanted us distracted looking one direction while something else happens somewhere we’re not watching.”

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Chapter 176 The Man In The Mist

Finished

The thought settled cold and unwelcome between us, and for a long moment neither of us said anything at all, the rain filling the silence where words should have gone.

Then his phone buzzed, sharp and insistent against the quiet, and I watched every trace of softness drain from his face the instant he read whatever had just come through.

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B

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Refuse To Be Your Luna

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