Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 261 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 261

Chapter 261 The Woman In The Record

Lady Flourish’s POV

I recognized her before I understood what I was looking at.

22

Finished

The woman standing beside the server rack had my mother’s face, thinner than I remembered it, lined in ways the years should not have added if she’d truly been dead as long as everyone told me.

My wolf went rigid inside me, caught between two instincts pulling in opposite directions at

once.

“Mom?”

She didn’t answer right away. Her eyes moved past me toward the door, toward Harold, toward the guards filing in behind him, before finally settling back on my face.

“You shouldn’t be down here, Flourish.”

“That’s what you say to me? After everything?” My voice cracked in a way I hated. “I buried an empty casket for you.”

“I know what you buried.”

Harold stepped up beside me, close enough that I could feel the heat rolling off him, his wolf clearly straining against his control. “Explain yourself. Now.”

Elara’s gaze flicked to him, then back to me, and something in her posture changed, like she was bracing for a blow she already knew was coming. “There isn’t time for the whole story. They found her. That’s the only thing that matters right now.”

“Who found me?”

“The people who never stopped looking.”

Rhys had already moved to the terminal, fingers on the keys, muttering something about the system rebooting on its own before we walked in. “I didn’t do anything,” he said without looking up. “It just came alive.”

‘Something underneath her scent isn’t right, my wolf murmured, low and wary, the way it did whenever a stranger stood too close. ‘It’s her. But it’s not only her.’

I didn’t know what to do with that warning. Grief had a way of making a person doubt every instinct they had left.

12:36 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 261 The Woman In The Record

22

Finished

“How did you even get in here?” I asked. “This wing has three separate layers of security.”

“I helped design part of it,” Elara said. “A long time ago. Before you were born.”

That stopped me cold. “You worked for Stonehedge?”

“Not exactly.”

She reached toward the terminal, and Rhys flinched back like he expected her hand to do something to it.

She only rested two fingers against the edge of the console, and the screen responded instantly, lines of text scrolling too fast to follow until they froze on a single block, bold and centered.

SUBJECT: FLOURISH VOSS-STEELE. DAUGHTER OF THE FIRST BLOODLINE.

DESCENDANT OF THE FIRST ALPHA.

I read it three times before the words stopped looking like nonsense.

“That’s a bedtime story,” I said. “Something they tell pups so they’ll behave.”

“It was never a story.” Her voice had dropped almost to nothing. “It’s a bloodline. Hunted, hidden, passed down in secret longer than Stonehedge has stood. Your grandmother carried it. I carried it. You carry it now.”

Harold’s jaw had gone tight enough that I could see the muscle working beneath his skin. “Is that why the shell company kept routing money through the old tunnels? They were mapping bloodlines?”

“They weren’t looking for a company,” Elara said. “They were looking for a person. Every deal, every acquisition, every piece of land, it all traced back to who might still carry the mark. It led them here. To this family. To her.”

My knees didn’t feel entirely trustworthy anymore. I put a hand flat against the edge of the desk, not because I needed the support exactly, but because it gave me something solid while everything I thought I knew about myself kept sliding sideways.

“The attacks at the estate,” I said slowly. “The men in the parking structure. All of it was about this.”

“Yes.”

“And you knew. This whole time, you let me think you were gone instead of telling me.”

“I let everyone think it.” Her composure finally cracked, just slightly, at the corners. “It was the only way to keep them from finding you before you were old enough to protect yourself.”

12:36 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 261 The Woman In The Record

22

Finished

Some stubborn part of me still wanted to cross the room and let her hold me the way she used to when I was small enough to fit against her shoulder.

But too many lies had piled up in the years between us, and I no longer knew which version of her I was standing in front of.

‘She could be telling the truth,’ my wolf offered quietly. ‘Or she could be the reason they found you at all!’

I had no answer for either possibility.

Rhys’s head snapped up from the terminal before I could say another word. “Flourish. We’ve got a problem.”

“What kind?”

He turned the monitor toward me, and my stomach dropped at what filled the screen. A fresh alert, red, blinking steadily in the corner.

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED — EASTERN WING.

Harold was already moving, pulling his radio off his belt. “That’s not possible. Nobody’s cleared for that wing tonight.”

Elara had gone pale in a way that had nothing to do with the harsh light overhead.

“They’re already inside,” she said.

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12:36 Thu, Oct 1

I Refuse To Be Your Luna