The Luna You Betrayed Is No Longer Yours

Chapter 117: Chapter 117 Virella at the alleyway

_Ezekiel’s POV_

I pulled away first.

I don’t fully understand why, even now. Some instinct survived the moment intact even when everything else in me clearly hadn’t.

For one second, just one, something in me wanted to stay exactly where I was. The kiss had been real in a way I hadn’t expected, warmer and more perfect than anything I’d planned for, and some part of me was already mourning the fact that it had ended before it had properly begun.

I looked at Pierre’s face, hopefully, thinking he felt the same.

But to my disappointment, I saw the opposite of what I wanted.

The irritation arrived fast, faster than I expected. His jaw tightened and his eyes went sharp. He stood up so quickly that I feared he might fall over.

“Pierre.....”

He was already walking away and didn’t look back.

I hurriedly followed him outside.

The cold air hit both of us the moment we stepped through the door and Pierre stopped on the sidewalk and dragged a hand through his hair, so hard, the gesture of someone trying to physically pull a thought out of his own head by force.

“I’m sorry,” I said before I could stop myself. What the fuck have I done?! Why did I do that?

Moon goddess.

He turned to look at me. “Stay away from me.”

“Pierre.”

“I mean it,” he said. His voice was tight and controlled. “Whatever that was. It doesn’t happen again. And would never.”

He got in his car before I could say another word and the door shut.The engine started and he pulled away from the curb fast enough that I just stood there on the sidewalk and watched his taillights disappear around the corner.

I let out a long breath.

I pulled a cigarette from my jacket pocket and lit it with hands that weren’t entirely steady, which annoyed me considerably, because my hands didn’t usually do that kind of thing regardless of the situation.

I leaned against the cold brick wall and smoked, trying to make sense of what had just happened in the span of about four minutes.

I had kissed Pierre Ashford.

In public. In a bar. After an evening that had started with my father trying to arrange a formal marriage to a woman I genuinely respected but did not want, and had somehow ended with me kissing a man who very clearly regretted it the second it happened.

What did that even mean.

I turned it over slowly, methodically. Yeah, I’m bisexual. That wasn’t new information to me. I had known it about myself for years and made my peace with it privately a long time ago, quietly and without much internal drama. freeωebnovēl.c૦m

But this felt different. Not a passing thing or a convenient distraction from a bad day.

This felt like something that mattered, which was precisely the part that unsettled me the most.

But did I actually like him?

I thought about it honestly, standing there in the cold with the cigarette burning down slowly between my fingers, and the answer that came back, clear and unwelcome, was yes. Yes, I liked Pierre. From the first day I saw him, I wanted him.

My father would have something to say about this. My father, who measured everything by how it appeared to people whose opinions he respected, who had spent that very morning planning a formal marriage proposal to the Marchioness of Ashthorne on my behalf, was not going to receive this particular piece of news well. I could picture his face clearly enough that I didn’t need to imagine it twice to feel the height of it.

I exhaled smoke slowly into the cold night air and thought, not for the first time in my life, that things had an exhausting habit of becoming more complicated exactly when I most needed them to slow down.

My phone rang just then and I checked to see it was

Larry.

“I need a driver,” I said before he could get a word in. “I’ve had a bit to drink.”

“Where are you?” he asked, already moving, I could hear it in the shift of his voice.

I gave him the street name.

“Ten minutes,” he said, and hung up without further comment.

I finished the cigarette and crushed it out under my shoe and looked down the street in the direction Pierre had driven, even though there was nothing left there to see anymore.

Then something across the street caught my eye. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com

A narrow gap between two buildings, low lit by a single overhead light. It was an alleyway but an expensive part since this neighborhood was owned by the Alpha King. It was a rich area.

I looked again, more carefully this time.

I saw two people standing in the gap, close together, and it took a second for my eyes to adjust properly and resolve what exactly I was looking at.

There was a woman with hair, a coat that looked expensive even in the low lighting. A man beside her, neither of them paying the slightest attention to the street, both of them very thoroughly occupied with each other. She was pressed against the wall, her dress riding up her waist. One look and you could tell she was getting her brains fucked out.

But the funny thing was, I knew her.

I had seen her the night before, in that club, throwing a cheque at Rowena and flipping her hair dramatically for an audience that had not been remotely impressed by the performance.

That was undoubtedly Virella.

Kaelen’s wife.

I almost laughed out loud, right there on the sidewalk.

I crossed partway, just enough to get a clean angle without making myself obvious, and pulled out my phone. I took the photo quickly and quietly, the two of them clearly visible, her face turned just enough to be completely unmistakable.

Afterwards, I put the phone away.

“Stupid.” Doing this outside, in a public gap between two buildings, where literally anyone walking past could have seen exactly what I had just seen.

Headlights swung around the corner and I knew Larry had arrived. He got down from the cab and came to get my car keys.

Life was definitely going to be interesting from now on.