The Luna You Betrayed Is No Longer Yours

Chapter 97: Chapter 97 Ezekiel was definitely hitting on him

_Pierre’s POV_

I was just about to leave the room when I realized something. Ezekiel went quiet in that specific way that meant a mindlink had opened.

It lasted about forty seconds. I slowly turned to see his eyes were present but his attention was elsewhere and when he came back he looked at me with the expression of someone who had issued instructions and was now waiting for them to be executed.

What the fuck did he do now?

“My strategist is coming,” he said before I could ask, I guess he already read my mind. Smart kid.

“How long?” I asked, reconsidering my decision of leaving. Who knew if it was his so called strategist who almost had him killed. I trusted no one and I was about to instill that mentality in him.

“He was already in the city,” he said. “Twenty minutes.”

I sat back down.

The twenty minutes passed in a conversation that moved easily between subjects, which surprised me more than I expected it to. Ezekiel talked about the competition, about the cars, about the specific corner sequence on the Starlight track that he had been looking forward to running before the situation had resolved itself into a maintenance channel. He talked about it with the genuine enthusiasm of someone who had come here for the racing and was genuinely annoyed that he had been prevented from doing it.

He also kept looking at me in a way that I was finding distracting and that I was managing by focusing on the content of what he was saying rather than the way he was saying it.

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in!” Ezekiel said loudly and the door opened. A old man came in. He had a controlled alert bearing of someone who had spent a career in security work and had never fully stopped doing it even when the formal role had changed. He looked at Ezekiel first, a comprehensive check from head to level, and then at me with a different kind of assessment. He looked wary which I found stupid because if I wanted to take this little prince’s life, I’d have done it by now. I let my Alpha aura leak out and he composed himself in an instant.

“Larry,” Ezekiel said. “I’m fine. Stop looking at me like that.”

Larry did not stop looking like that. He looked at me again.

“This is Pierre Ashford,” Ezekiel said. “He’s the one who told me who saved me.” A pause. “Which you’re going to confirm now.”

Larry looked at Ezekiel.

“Confirm it,” Ezekiel said. The lightness in his voice had moved aside briefly for something that had more weight.

Larry straightened slightly. “The person who brought you to this hospital was the Marchioness Rowena Ashthorne,” he said. “She transported you from the Starlight arena compound in a private vehicle, covered the hospital admission, and instructed the staff to provide full care.” He paused. “She is the daughter of the late Lord Smith Ashthorne.”

The room was quiet for a moment.

Ezekiel’s expression had done something that I hadn’t seen from him yet. Not the easy charm or the sharp humor or the deliberate provocation. Something more genuine and less managed.

“Smith Ashthorne’s daughter,” he said quietly.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

He was quiet for a moment.

Then the door opened again and to my surprise, she walked in.

Rowena came through the doorway in her day clothes, hair down, looking entirely composed and slightly like someone who had figured out how to exit a guarded house for the second time in twelve hours, which she had. Or maybe she didn’t.

I threw a questioning look at her.

“I’ll explain later,” she said to me calmly.

I decided to accept that.

She looked at Ezekiel.

He looked at her.

There was a moment where they both assessed each other with careful attention of two people who had heard things about the other and were now measuring what they had heard against what was in the room. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com

Then Ezekiel said, “You pulled me out of a ditch.”

“A maintenance channel,” she corrected. freёwebnovel.com

“A maintenance channel,” he repeated. “In the dark. All by yourself.”

“You weren’t that heavy,” she said casually.

Something moved across his face. He looked at Larry. Then back at Rowena. Then he pressed his lips together briefly, the bastard was actually laughing. I couldn’t lie as well, the way Rowena said it was extremely funny to me.

“I owe you a significant debt,” he finally said.

“You don’t,” she said simply. “You just needed help and I was there.”

“That’s not how debts work,” he said.

“It’s how I work,” she replied. That’s my girl.

He looked at her for a long moment.

Then he looked at me.

I looked back at him with a proud smile.

I was watching Rowena and thinking about all the things she did that she never asked for anything in return for and I was thinking about the man she had pulled out of a channel in the dark and brought to a hospital and paid for without knowing who he was, and I was also thinking about the fact that she had apparently woken up this morning and decided she needed to come here and had found a way to do it.

“Why are you here?” I asked her, unable to hold it anymore. “How are you here. Your grandmother—”

“Has a garden wall with a section that was repaired three years ago with slightly substandard materials,” she said. “There’s a gap.”

I stared at her.

“I’ll fix it when this is over,” she said.

“You should have used it yesterday!” I groaned, remembering how she risked her life to climb out of her window.

Ezekiel laughed. It was the first fully genuine sound he had made since I arrived, a real laugh that had no performance in it.

Larry looked at the ceiling.

“I’d like to stay until you’re recovered,” Rowena said to Ezekiel. “If that’s alright.”

The room went still.

I turned to look at her. She wanted to stay?

She looked at Ezekiel.

He looked at her with an expression that was trying to be composed and wasn’t fully managing it.

“You don’t know who I am,” he said.

“Larry just confirmed who you are,” she said. “I heard from the doorway.” She looked at him evenly. “It doesn’t change anything.”

I sat in my chair and looked between the two of them and thought about what Rowena was doing and why and whether it connected to something I was missing.

I didn’t have the answer yet.

But I had a feeling it was going to become clear before very long.

The next response that followed caught everyone off guard. “You don’t have to stay, just let Pierre be with me.” Ezekiel blurted out, his eyes sparkling and my jaw dropped.