I Refuse to Be Your Luna

Ch. I Refuse to Be Your Luna 279 I Refuse to Be Your Luna 279

Chapter 279 Diary

Lady Flourish’s POV

Finished

Mira’s words were still hanging in the air when I pushed past her into the hallway, my father calling after me, but I didn’t stop to answer him.

The records room sat at the end of the east corridor, and by the time I got there the door stood open, nothing obviously disturbed, no broken locks or scattered papers, which somehow bothered me more than chaos would have.

Whoever had been in here knew exactly what they were looking for and had taken their time finding it.

I stood in the doorway a second, letting my wolf test the air. Faint. Old. Nothing fresh enough to chase.

‘Whoever it was, they’re already gone,’ she said, low and frustrated.

I believed her. I searched the room anyway, because standing still and doing nothing wasn’t an option my body would tolerate right now.

Most of the filing cabinets looked untouched, drawers closed, labels undisturbed, except for one along the back wall, half open, a stack of folders pulled halfway out like someone had been interrupted or simply hadn’t cared enough to put things back.

I crouched in front of it and started going through what remained.

Buried near the bottom, wedged between two folders thick with property deeds nobody had looked at in years, I found a small leather book, the cover soft and cracked at the spine from

age.

My mother’s handwriting covered the first page before I’d even fully opened it.

Elara. The name written small in the corner, like she hadn’t wanted it to draw attention even to herself.

I sat down right there on the floor and started reading.

The early entries read ordinary enough, notes about weather, about me as a baby, small domestic complaints about Garret leaving his boots in the hallway.

Then, further in, the tone shifted, and I felt my stomach tighten reading it,

I think someone followed me to the market today. The same car, twice, parked where it shouldn’t have been both times. I told myself it was nothing. I don’t believe myself anymore.

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12:41 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 279 Diary

Another entry, dated weeks later.

Finished

G says I’m imagining things. I’m not imagining things. Someone accessed my old records at the pack registry office. They wouldn’t tell me who requested it, only that it happened.

I kept turning pages, faster now, my hands not entirely steady.

If they find her before she’s old enough to understand what she is, they won’t wait for her to grow into it. They’ll take her the moment they confirm it. I have to decide what I’m willing to do to stop that.

Further still, closer to entries I assumed came near the end, before whatever happened that made everyone believe she was dead.

I’ve started teaching Garret how to erase the memories himself, in case something happens to me before we finish. He hates it. I hate it more. But I would rather she remember nothing true than remember enough to get herself killed.

My throat had gone tight reading that, tight enough that I had to stop and just breathe for a second before continuing.

The last several entries grew shorter, more clipped, dates spaced further apart like she’d stopped having the time or the nerve to write as often. And then, near the very back of the book, one entry sat differently than the rest.

The handwriting looked close to hers, close enough that at a glance I might not have questioned it, but something about the loops in certain letters felt off, tighter than her usual hand, like someone had studied her writing carefully and gotten most of it right without getting all of it right.

I have made peace with what must happen next. Flourish will understand, in time, why silence was the only gift I had left to give her.

I read it three times.

It didn’t sound like her. Not the woman who’d just spent an entire diary agonizing over every decision, second guessing herself in the margins, admitting fear on nearly every page.

This entry sounded resolved in a way none of the others did, calm in a way that didn’t match anything that came before it.

‘Someone wrote that after she disappeared,’ my wolf said quietly. ‘Someone wanted whoever eventually found this diary to believe she went willingly. Peacefully.’

I closed the book and set it aside, my hands cold despite the warmth of the room, and reached instead for the loose photographs still sitting in the bottom of the drawer, hoping for

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12:41 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 279 Diary

something that made more sense than what I’d just read.

100

Finished

Most of them were nothing, old pack gatherings, faces I recognized from council meetings over

the years.

Then I found one near the bottom that stopped me completely.

Magnus stood in the frame, younger, maybe thirty years old, and beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched, stood Voss.

They weren’t posed formally. It looked candid, caught mid conversation, Magnus laughing at something, Voss watching him with the kind of familiarity that only came from years of knowing someone well.

This wasn’t a chance encounter documented by accident. Whatever connected these two men went back decades, long before Elara staged her death, long before any tunnel had been breached this week.

I sat there staring at the photograph, trying to make the pieces fit into something that made sense, and I hadn’t gotten anywhere close when the wall panel across the room lit up on its own, the old tunnel security system humming to life without anyone touching it.