I Refuse To Be Your Luna (Flourish and Harold) novel Chapter 285

Chapter 285 Whst Remains Of Him

Lady Flourish’s POV

21

110

Finished

Damian called while I was halfway through a budget review at F-Tech and he kept it short.

Garret had collapsed at the Steele house, an ambulance had taken him to the pack hospital on the north side, and he was already outside in the car.

I told Cheryl to push everything to tomorrow, shut my laptop, and rode down in the elevator with my coat still over my arm.

The hospital smelled like it always did, antiseptic over wolfsbane tonic, with a sharp edge of blood from too many wolves hurt in one building. Garret was already in surgery.

A nurse handed me a clipboard and pointed at the line where family signed. I signed. My handwriting looked normal, which felt strange to notice.

We took two plastic chairs outside the operating room. Down the hall a vending machine hummed and dropped something into its tray every so often, and a young she-wolf paced back and forth near the elevators with her phone pressed to her ear, whispering.

I watched her for a while because it was easier than watching the doors.

My wolf had gone quiet. Not the frightened quiet I knew from the tunnels, and not grief either. She simply lay down somewhere in the back of me and waited.

‘I don’t know what we’re supposed to feel,’ she said at one point, which was the longest thing she said all night.

Neither did I.

Elara had wanted to come. I’d told her not yet, and Damian had made sure two of his warriors stayed with her at the estate. I didn’t know whether that was kindness or cowardice on my part, and I didn’t have the energy to work it out.

Damian got me a coffee from the machine. I held it until it stopped being warm. He didn’t try to talk me into anything. Around midnight his shoulder settled against mine and stayed there, and Rhys texted him twice, and he turned the screen face down both times without answering.

It was after two when the doors opened. The surgeon had his mask pulled down around his neck and there was a red line across the bridge of his nose where it had sat. He looked at Damian first, then at me, and I stood up.

“He’s alive,” he said. “We got to the bleed in time, but he lost a lot of blood, and a bleed in that part of the brain is hard on a wolf, even with our healing. We’ll know more after forty-eight

1/3

12:42 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 285 Whst Remains Of Him

21

Finished

hours. I have to be honest with you, though. He may not get his speech back. The right side of his body may stay weak. Some patients recover more than we expect. Some don’t.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I know that wasn’t an easy surgery. I’m grateful you got him through it.”

He blinked. He waited, I think, for the rest, for me to cry or ask him to repeat himself or sit down hard. When I only stood there holding a dead cup of coffee, he glanced at Damian like he was checking whether I needed someone to catch me.

“Ms. Steele, did you follow what I told you?”

“Yes. Will we be able to see him in the morning?”

“Once he’s out of recovery.” He nodded slowly and went back through the doors, and I heard him say something to a nurse before they swung shut.

Damian didn’t say anything about it in the car. I was glad.

I went alone four days later. Damian’s car waited downstairs; he’d offered to come up and I’d said no. They had moved Garret out of intensive care into a private room with a window that faced a parking structure.

The machines were fewer, and one of them still beeped every few seconds. One side of his face had dropped, the mouth pulled down, and his right hand lay on the blanket like something set there by someone else.

His eyes were open, though, and they followed me when I pulled the chair over.

“Can you hear me?”

His left hand moved a little. That seemed to be yes.

“Then I’ll say this once, and I’d rather you hear it from me than from a lawyer.” I kept my voice level. “Steele Holdings is finished. The liquidators are in the building. Whatever’s left after the debts goes to creditors, and I’m not going to step in and save it. I could. I won’t.”

His breath caught, loud in the room.

“You’ll be looked after. Good doctors, a proper facility, someone to feed you and turn you make sure you’re comfortable. I’ll pay for that. I’ll come when I have to. That’s what I owe you, and that’s exactly what you’ll get, no more than that.”

and

He made a sound then, thick and broken, and tears ran down the slack side of his face and into his collar. He tried to say my name. It came out as a long wet vowel.

I sat there and listened to it. A year ago that sound would have had my wolf whining and my hands reaching for his. Now she only lifted her head, looked at him, and lowered it again.

2/3

12:42 Thu, Oct 1

Chapter 285 Whst Remains Of Him

Nothing in me flinched.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify