The Luna You Betrayed Is No Longer Yours

Chapter 98: Chapter 98 She was blushing

_Rowena’s POV_

The room was quiet for a moment.

I looked at Ezekiel.

Ezekiel looked back at me with the open untroubled expression of someone who had said a completely reasonable thing and was waiting for everyone else to arrive at the same conclusion.

From somewhere deep and unhelpfully present, Kyra bursted out laughing.

Not a small laugh. A full one, the kind that moved through my entire chest, warm and delighted, the amusement of someone watching a situation develop in a direction they found extremely entertaining. She had been paying attention to the room since I came in and apparently she had formed opinions about it that she was now sharing without being asked.

“He already likes him,” she said, in the feeling-language she used when she was being particularly observant. “Look at how he’s looking at him.”

I did not look at how Ezekiel was looking at Pierre.

I looked at Pierre instead.

Pierre had turned to face me with a disgusted look on his face and, was that fear?

“That is not,” he said, “what I came here for. I came because you asked me to look into the situation. I have looked into the situation. I am not a companion service.” freeweɓnovel.cøm

“I know,” I nodded unhelpfully. “It’s fine, Pierre.”

“It is not fine,” he said. “I’m not staying.”

“You’d be doing me a favor,” I reminded.

“You have guards,” he said. “He has Larry. He has troops apparently in the building. He does not need me to sit in his hospital room.”

“My wolf will recover faster with a great company like yours.” Ezekiel said with a smile.

“His wolf will recover faster,” I added with a nod too. “He needs you.”

“Gross, don’t say it like that.” Pierre sighed, “Also, that is not a medical opinion I’m qualified to verify.”

From the bed, Ezekiel made a sound.

I looked at him.

He had arranged his expression into something that I could only describe as deliberate helplessness. Eyes slightly wide, the corners of his mouth pulled down in an exaggerated approximation of someone deeply in need of company. It was tricky and completely self-aware and he let it out with the shamelessness of someone who had learned a long time ago that dignity was less useful than results.

Ahh, he was a talented manipulator.

“Please,” he said, directing it entirely at Pierre. “My wolf is unsettled. I’ve been in this room alone for hours. Larry is many things but he is not interesting company.” He paused. “If you stay, I will tell you how I ended up in that channel and I have not told anyone that yet including Larry.” freewebnoveℓ.com

Larry, to his considerable credit, did not react to being described as uninteresting company. He looked at the window with blankness of someone who had been in royal service long enough to have heard worse things said about them by people they were protecting. Poor Larry.

Pierre looked at Ezekiel again, fury in his eyes.

Ezekiel looked back at Pierre with the puppy eyes fully operational.

Pierre made a sound that was low and short and communicated a complete sentence’s worth of objection in one syllable.

Ezekiel’s expression didn’t change.

I pressed my lips together.

Beside me I was aware of Larry making a very small sound that he managed almost immediately. Almost.

Pierre looked at me.

I looked at the wall above his head.

He looked at the ceiling briefly. Then he walked to the couch along the far wall of the room and sat down, crossed his arms, and looked at the opposite wall. He finally agreed.

“One hour,” he said. “And then I’m leaving.”

Ezekiel smiled. It was a genuine one this time, not the performance of the puppy eyes but something that reached further up his face and had a warmth in it that transformed him from handsome into something considerably more than that.

He didn’t say anything to Pierre.

He just looked at him for a moment and then looked away, and I understood from the way he looked away that he was also managing something, which I noted and filed.

My phone rang at that moment.

I stepped toward the door and picked up.

Celeste.

“He wants to see you,” she said, without preamble. “Alaric. He asked me to reach you.”

“When?” I said. Alaric could’ve just texted. He had my line. Okay, maybe he wanted to keep things professional. That was fine.

“This afternoon. At the company.” A pause. “Also, about Nana.”

I waited.

“She lifted it,” Celeste said. “The house arrest. The ban on leaving. All of it.” Another pause and I could hear in it the quality of Celeste having things she wanted to say about this and choosing not to say all of them right now. “Alaric spoke with her this morning. I don’t know what he said. But she came to find me afterward and told me to let you know you could leave the house whenever you wanted.”

I stood in the doorway of Ezekiel’s hospital room and looked at the corridor wall and absorbed that.

He had moved faster than two days. That was Alaric for you. He was too good.

He had said two days and he had done it in less than a morning.

“Rowena,” Celeste called out again.

“I’m here,” I said. “Tell Alaric I’ll come this afternoon. At the company.”

“Done,” she said, and hung up.

I put the phone away and stood still for a moment.

The ban was lifted. Nana Seraphine had released it, which meant she had been given something that had satisfied her enough to let go of it. Whatever Alaric had said to her, he had found the right approach, and he had found it without being asked to hurry.

I became aware that the room behind me had gone slightly quiet. Were they eavesdropping?

I turned around.

Pierre was looking at me from the couch with his arms still crossed and his expression composed, but his eyes had done something brief that I caught before he managed it, the same small involuntary thing I had seen on his face more than once now, the thing he covered quickly and thoroughly each time.

I saw it though, he was bad at hiding his emotions.

I didn’t say anything about it.

But Ezekiel had no such restraint.

“Alaric? The Alpha King?” he asked. He was looking at me with interest. He was so nosy.

“Yes,” I nodded.

“You’re meeting him this afternoon?”

“Yes.”

He looked at me for a moment. Then the smile came back, slower this time, more specific.

“Your cheeks went pink,” he said, “when you said his name.”

I looked at him like he’d grown a second head. My back was turned to the bastard, how did he see?

“Just an observation, though.” he said pleasantly. “I’m very observant. It’s a gift.” He tilted his head. “Is there something happening between you and the Alpha King? Because the pink suggests.....”

“Shut up and mind your business,” I groaned.

“I’m bedridden,” he said. “Your business is the most interesting thing available to me.”

“Read something instead,” I said.

“There’s nothing to read.”

“Larry,” I called.

Larry reached into the bag beside him and produced a folder of documents without expression. “Regional infrastructure review, Your Highness. Outstanding since last month.”

Ezekiel looked at the folder with a betrayed expression. He had been ambushed. Good for him.

“That was not what I meant!” he yelled at poor Larry.

“It’s what’s available,” I smiled.

I looked at Pierre, who was watching the exchange from the couch with an expression that had lost some of its controlled quality and was resting somewhere closer to genuine amusement, which was a better look on him than the previous look.

“One hour,” I reminded him.

“One hour,” he nodded. And then, quietly and without making a production of it, “Tell him I said hello.”

He said it lightly, looking at the opposite wall. Not at me.

I looked at him for a moment.

“I will,” I said, very awkwardly because why would I tell Alaric Pierre said hello?

I turned and walked out of the room.

Kyra laughed loudly. “You were indeed blushing, my dear Rowena.”

“Just shut it.”