I Refuse To Be Your Luna (Flourish and Harold) novel Chapter 136

Chapter 136 His Tirn To Brag

Alpha Damian’s POV

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Finished

The stairwell held nothing but silence and the fading edge of that same metallic scent, already thinning into nothing by the time I reached the ground floor landing.

Whoever had been here was long gone, careful enough to leave no other trace behind, no discarded cigarette, no stray hair caught on the railing, nothing but the scent itself and the unsettling certainty that it had been left deliberately.

I checked the fire exit at the rear of the building anyway, the alley behind it, the shadowed gap between the dumpsters where anyone patient enough to wait would have chosen to stand. Nothing.

I climbed back upstairs two steps at a time, forcing my expression back into something calm before I reached her door. Flourish had enough weighing on her without adding tonight’s discovery to the pile, not until Bram had something concrete enough to act on.

She was waiting for me when I stepped back into the hallway, cheeks faintly flushed from hurrying, a pair of my glasses held out in one hand.

“Here you go,” she said. “I put these away after you left them the other day.”

I took them from her, letting my fingers brush against hers a beat longer than strictly necessary. “Thank you.”

That was when I noticed the second item tucked beside the doorframe – a pair of plain grey slippers, still sealed in plastic, sitting next to her own shoes like they already belonged there.

“Are these for me?” My voice came out lower than I intended.

She followed my gaze and shrugged, though the faint color still hadn’t left her cheeks. “I picked them up at the supermarket earlier this week. Figured you shouldn’t have to keep wandering around barefoot every time you show up unannounced.”

Something warm settled low in my chest, entirely disproportionate to the size of the gesture.

My wolf, still faintly on edge from the scent downstairs, quieted considerably at the sight of them – proof, however small, that she was already building a place for me here without needing to be asked.

It was a strange thing, how much steadier I felt standing in a hallway over a pair of grey slippers than I had crouched over evidence of a poisoning only days ago.

“I don’t have time to try them today,” I said, watching her expression shift into confusion.

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11:43 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 136 His Tirn To Brag

“Maybe next time.”

“That’s not-” She caught herself, flustered. “I didn’t mean it as an invitation.”

22

Finished

“Didn’t you?” I let the question hang just long enough to watch her scramble for a response that

never came.

I slid my glasses back on, more for the small satisfaction of watching her track the motion than any actual need. “I’ll head out. Good night. I’ll see you this weekend.”

“Good night,” she said. “See you around.”

I caught the small, unnecessary repetition in her voice, the kind of thing people said when they weren’t quite ready to stop talking to someone yet. I filed it away carefully, another small piece of her I intended to keep.

The walk down to the car took considerably longer than it should have, my senses still stretched wide across the building, cataloging every shadow, every parked vehicle, every window that might have offered a clear line of sight to her floor. Nothing else surfaced. Whoever had scouted this building tonight had already gotten what they came for and left.

That didn’t make me feel any better about it.

Once I was settled behind the wheel, I pulled out my phone and snapped a quick photo of the slippers sitting on the passenger seat before texting it to Julian.

‘My mate bought me these. Has yours ever bought you anything? Oh, that’s right. You don’t have one.

The reply came back almost instantly.

‘Excuse me?’

I allowed myself the small, satisfied smile the message deserved, setting the phone down as I pulled out onto the street.

It felt good, letting something as small and ordinary as slippers exist alongside everything else circling us right now. Karl, Ashdown, whoever had stood in that stairwell tonight memorizing the layout of her building.

My phone buzzed again before I’d gone two blocks.

‘Perimeter’s covered, Bram’s message read. ‘No further activity since you left. I’ll have someone quietly rotating shifts near her building through the week. She won’t notice them unless something goes wrong.

‘Good, I typed back. ‘Keep it that way. She doesn’t need to carry this on top of everything else,

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11:43 Thu, Oct 1

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