I Refuse To Be Your Luna (Flourish and Harold) novel Chapter 160

Alpha Damian’s POV

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Finished

I stared at the files Fenwick had sent through, reconstructing the whole chain of events piece by piece long after I should have gone to bed.

Elijah’s words kept circling back, no matter how many times I tried to shove them aside. ‘Wasn’t Flourish nearly Harold’s bride at one point. Only natural she wouldn’t be fond of the replacement.

I’d corrected him on the facts easily enough. Harold had been the one left standing, not Flourish.

That part I knew for certain, had known since before I ever laid eyes on her properly.

But knowing the shape of the past didn’t answer the actual question sitting underneath Elijah’s clumsy insinuation, and my wolf hadn’t let it go since the call ended.

Was any part of this really about Harold. About proving something to a family that had once decided she wasn’t worth keeping.

I didn’t like how long it took me to be certain the answer was no.

That uncertainty itself told me something worth paying attention to.

Two months ago, I would have laughed off a question like that without a second thought.

Tonight I’d sat with it for the better part of an hour, turning it over like it deserved genuine consideration, and my wolf had paced the entire time, restless and unhappy with how close the doubt had managed to creep before I’d caught it.

I set the files aside and pulled up the timeline properly instead, the way I should have from the

start.

Ethan Carver’s original complaint, filed quietly through Zephyr Legal, nothing about it suggesting anything beyond a songwriter protecting work he’d spent three years building.

The withdrawal, sudden and unexplained, right around the time Stonehedge’s promotional machine kicked into overdrive behind Phina’s album.

The trending topic that followed, timed with a precision that felt less like organic momentum and more like something deliberately engineered.

None of that had Flourish’s fingerprints on it at all.

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11:51 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 160 What Elijah Said

Finished

If anything, the pattern read exactly like what it claimed to be, a company protecting its own investment by any means available, Phina’s guilt or innocence entirely beside the point.

Except for one detail Fenwick had flagged near the bottom of the report, easy to miss if I hadn’t already been looking for exactly this shape of thing.

The pressure campaign against Ethan hadn’t come through Stonehedge’s usual legal channels.

Someone outside the family had arranged the payout, arranged the timing of the extortion accusation that followed it, arranged the whole thing with a precision that suggested experience doing exactly this kind of quiet, deniable damage before.

I read the notation twice before it fully landed.

‘Payment routed through an account previously flagged in the Ashdown Group investigation. Initial K.

My wolf went utterly still, every trace of the earlier, softer jealousy burning away into something considerably more useful.

Karl.

Not Stonehedge acting to protect their own investment after all, or not entirely.

Someone had used Phina’s scandal as cover, folding themselves into the chaos where nobody would think to look twice, using the exact kind of leverage Karl had built an entire career out of wielding against people who couldn’t afford to fight back.

Which meant Ethan Carver wasn’t just an inconvenient songwriter Stonehedge wanted silenced.

He’d become a pawn in something considerably larger, and Flourish, circling that same case with her usual relentless focus, had just walked directly into whatever game Karl was actually playing.

I thought of the scent outside my own window three nights ago.

The unfamiliar trace she’d caught first, faster than even my own senses had managed.

Whoever had been watching that night hadn’t been idly curious.

They’d been confirming something, timing something, the same patient, methodical precision written all over this financial trail now sitting in front of me.

I pulled my phone out and dialed Fenwick without checking the time.

“Alpha Damian?” He picked up on the second ring, voice thick with sleep he clearly hadn’t

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11:51 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 160 What Elijah Said

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