The Luna You Betrayed Is No Longer Yours

Chapter 116: Chapter 116 I kissed him back

_Pierre’s POV_

“What are you doing here?” I asked. It came out tired rather than sharp, which was probably accurate to how the whole evening had felt by that point.

Ezekiel raised his glass slightly, looking unbothered. “The club is open to everyone. Or did you think it had a guest list with my name conveniently absent from it.”

I glared at him.

He smiled like that had been the entire goal of the sentence.

I looked back at my drink and didn’t give him anything else to work with.

“Something’s bothering you,” he pointed. Not a question. Just an observation set down on the table between us, plain and unhurried, the way you’d point out the weather.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

“Fine,” he said, easily, like it cost him nothing at all, and I appreciated, despite everything, that he didn’t push past that.

He sat back and looked around the bar for a moment, taking it in with the casual attention of someone who had been in a hundred bars just like it and found most of them interchangeable. He did look like someone who bar hops.

“You want to know what’s bothering me instead?” he asked after while. “Since you’re not sharing.”

“Not particularly,” I said.

“Being a prince is exhausting,” he said anyway, ignoring my answer entirely. “Everyone wants something from you before they’ve even said hello. My father wants me to be a certain version of myself in every room I walk into. Larry follows me everywhere taking mental notes like I’m a case study he’s building toward a thesis.” He turned his glass slowly on the table, watching the light catch in it. “Sometimes I just want to disappear. Be nobody for an hour. Sit in some corner where nobody knows who I am and exist without an agenda attached to it.”

I looked at him properly for the first time since he sat down.

There was something real underneath the usual performance, just for a second, before he caught himself and the casual tone slid back into place like a curtain dropping over a window.

He licked his lips and looked at me directly, no pretense in it.

Something moved through me that I hadn’t asked for and didn’t appreciate one bit. His lips...... No!

I cleared my throat and looked at the bar counter instead, very deliberately.

He grinned. He had clearly noticed exactly what he wanted to notice.

“So,” he said, leaning forward slightly after a moment. “Personal life. Girlfriend. Ever had one?”

I shook my head. “No.” frёewebnoѵēl.com

“No girlfriend currently, or no girlfriend ever.”

“Ever,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow, genuinely surprised this time. “Never?”

“I’ve been busy,” I said.

“Busy doing what.”

“Law school. Family business. Following Rowena around solving her problems,” I said, counting them off like a list because that’s essentially what they were. It wasn’t a lie. I was an Alpha too, catering for my pack.

“That’s not a personal life,” he said. “That’s a resume.”

“It’s worked fine for me.”

“Has it,” he said with an expression that suggested he didn’t entirely believe that and had no intention of pretending otherwise just to be polite about it.

I didn’t answer that one.

“What about you,” I said, mostly to get the attention off myself.

“Me,” he laughed. “I’ve had several things. None of them lasted very long. My father disapproves of most of my choices on principle before he’s even heard the relevant details.” He shrugged, light about it in a way that didn’t quite cover what was sitting underneath. “It’s hard to build something real when everyone around you is auditioning for a role in your life instead of actually wanting to be in it for its own sake.”

“That sounds lonely,” I sighed.

“It is,” he said simply. No self-pity in his voice at all. Just a fact he’d made peace with a long time ago.

We sat with that for a moment, the bar noise filling the space between us.

“Tell me something embarrassing about yourself,” he said suddenly, like he’d just remembered the rule of the game.

“No.”

“Come on.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I’ll go first, then,” he said. “When I was sixteen I tried to impress a visiting dignitary’s daughter by riding a horse I had never actually ridden before in my life. I fell off in front of forty people and the horse stepped directly on my foot.” He said it completely straight-faced, no embellishment. “I limped through an entire state dinner afterward pretending nothing whatsoever had happened.”

I laughed before I could stop myself.

It came out loud and real and it surprised me as much as it apparently surprised him, because his whole face changed when he heard it, something brightening in it that hadn’t been there a second before.

“There it is,” he said, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

“Shut up,” I said, still laughing.

“No, that was good. Do it again.”

“I’m not going to laugh on command.”

“Try.”

“No.”

He grinned at me and I found myself smiling back before I’d consciously decided to, and for a moment the bar and the noise around us and whatever had been sitting heavy in my chest all evening receded a little. It was just this. Easy. Unexpectedly, inconveniently easy.

He looked at me for a long moment, the grin fading slowly into something quieter and more serious.

“Pierre,” he called out.

“What.” I answered, looking at him. freёweɓnovel.com

He didn’t answer with words, instead, Ezekiel actually leaned in.

It happened fast enough that I didn’t have time to decide anything before his mouth was on mine, warm and entirely sure of itself, and for one full second I forgot we were sitting in a public bar, forgot who he was and who I was. I forgot every single reasonable thought I should have been having in that moment.

And I fucking kissed him back!