I Refuse To Be Your Luna (Flourish and Harold) novel Chapter 281

12:41 Thu, Oct 1

I Refuse To Be Your Luna

Chapter 281 Alone In The Tunnel

Alpha Damian’s POV

“Absolutely not.”

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Finished

Flourish looked at me like I’d already lost the argument before I finished making it. “You read the same message I did. It says alone.”

“I don’t care what it says.”

“Damian.” She kept her voice low, aware of the guards still standing near the terminal, of Elara hovering a few feet away with her arms wrapped around herself. “If they wanted to hurt me, they’ve had plenty of chances already tonight. This isn’t that.”

“You don’t know what this is.”

“Neither do you, which is exactly why I’m the one who has to go find out.”

My wolf pushed hard against that logic, wanting nothing more than to plant myself between her and every dark opening in this estate for the rest of the night.

But she wasn’t wrong that whoever sent the message knew enough about tonight to time it perfectly, right after the wards confirmed a second bloodline presence somewhere on the grounds.

If they were watching closely enough to know that, they were probably watching closely enough to know if I followed her down there.

“Then we find another way to watch you that isn’t following you,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

I looked at Rhys, still hunched over the terminal. “The wards responded to her blood twice tonight already. Can you turn that into something we can track from up here?”

He was already moving before I finished the sentence, pulling up the readout that had lit twice in the last hour. “If her signature triggers a response every time she moves through an active section of the wards, I can map her position in real time without ever needing eyes on her directly.”

“That’s not the same as following me,” Flourish said, though there was less fight in it now.

“No,” I agreed. “It’s the closest thing to alone that I can survive.”

She held my gaze a moment longer, then nodded, the kind of nod that meant she’d already

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12:41 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 281 Alone In The Tunnel

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decided this before I agreed to it and had simply been waiting for me to catch up.

I walked her to the tunnel entrance myself, my hand at the small of her back longer than strictly necessary, my wolf memorizing the shape of her against my palm like it might need the memory later.

The old stone smelled the way it always did down here, damp and old and faintly of blood that had long since dried into the walls themselves.

Then something else cut through it. Faint, almost buried under everything else, but wrong in a way my instincts flagged before my mind caught up to why.

Money. Not the kind that came from modern wealth, the clean scent of good soap and expensive fabric. Older than that.

The kind of scent that clung to bloodlines who’d never needed to prove anything to anyone in generations, layered underneath something that made my teeth want to show themselves without my permission.

“Wait,” I said, and Flourish stopped with one foot already on the first stone step. “Do you smell that?”

She went still, nostrils flaring slightly, her own wolf reading the air the same way mine had. “I don’t recognize it.”

I turned toward Elara, who had followed us this far without a word, and found her already frozen, her face gone the color of old paper.

“Elara.”

She didn’t answer right away. Her hand had come up to press against her own throat, an old habit I’d seen her do twice tonight already whenever something threatened to undo whatever careful composure she’d built over the years since she disappeared.

“You know that scent,” I said. Not a question.

“I know it,” she said finally, barely above a whisper. “I haven’t smelled it in over twenty years, and I hoped I never would again.”

Flourish took her foot back off the step. “Mom. Whose scent is it?”

Elara’s eyes moved to her daughter, and something in her expression cracked open in a way I hadn’t seen from her all night, not during the accusations, not during the reveal about the First Alpha bloodline, not even when she’d admitted to staging her own death. This was different.

This was closer to fear that had nothing to do with tonight specifically and everything to do with something much older.

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12:41 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 281 Alone In The Tunnel

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Finished

“There’s only one family that ever smelled like that to me,” she said. “Old enough that half the pack world forgot they existed generations ago. Wealthy enough that the ones who remembered learned not to ask questions.”

“Elara,” I said again, sharper this time, because whatever courtesy I’d extended her earlier in the evening had run out the moment that scent touched a tunnel my mate was about to walk into alone.

She looked at me, then at the dark opening behind Flourish, and something in her seemed to give way entirely.

“Voss,” she said. “It’s my family name. The one I stopped using the night I let everyone believe I was dead.”

The word landed heavy in the narrow space between us, and I felt my wolf go very still, turning the sound of it over like a stone I didn’t like the weight of.

“You never told me you had a family beyond what we already know,” I said. “Parents. Siblings.”

“Because I didn’t think any of them were still alive to matter,” Elara said, and her voice cracked slightly on the last word. “Or if they were, I assumed they’d stopped looking for me the same way everyone else did.”

Flourish’s hand had gone tight around the stone wall beside the entrance. “Then whoever’s down there right now might be-”

“I don’t know,” Elara said, before she could finish. “I genuinely don’t know who’s waiting for you. But if it’s someone carrying that name, they’re not connected to Voss the way you’ve come to understand it tonight. Not the enemy who’s been hunting the bloodline. Voss is the bloodline. It’s mine.”

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