The Rejected Maid is the Alpha prince's Fated Luna

Chapter 6

Luna met Damian the next afternoon at a small café tucked two streets away from the university.

He'd traded his formal coat for a plain gray hoodie, a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes — the closest thing to disguise a Crown Prince could manage.

"This feels ridiculous," he said, sliding into the seat across from her.

"You look ridiculous," Luna said, fighting a smile despite everything weighing on her chest. "Like a poorly disguised bodyguard."

"It's working, isn't it? Nobody's recognized me."

"Give it time."

He reached across the small table and took her hand, his thumb tracing slow circles over her knuckles, and for a moment the café noise faded into something softer, something that felt almost normal — two people on a date, nothing more complicated than that.

"I talked to my father this morning," Damian said finally. "About Selena. About us."

Luna's stomach tightened. "And?"

"He wants me to formalize things with her by the end of the year. An engagement, at minimum. He's not asking anymore, Luna. He's telling me."

"What did you say?"

"I said no." Damian's jaw tightened, the easy warmth from a moment ago hardening into something more determined. "I told him I already know who I want beside me when I'm crowned, and it isn't Selena Royce."

"Did you tell him it was me?"

"Not yet. But I will." He squeezed her hand tighter. "I've been thinking about this for weeks, Luna. I don't want to keep hiding you behind curtains and pretending you're nobody. I want to marry you. Properly. Publicly. I don't care what the Council thinks."

Luna's breath caught. She'd imagined this conversation a hundred times in the quiet of her own bed, turning the words over like a secret she wasn't allowed to keep, and hearing it now — real, solid, sitting across a wobbly café table — made her chest ache with something too big for words.

"Damian, your father would never allow it. The Council would revolt. Bloodline politics matter to these people more than anything."

"Then I'll fight them. I've spent my whole life doing what's expected of me. Every duty, every tradition, every rule my father set — I followed all of it. But not this. Not you." His eyes held hers, steady and certain in a way that made her want to believe every word. "One year, Luna. I know I keep saying it, but I mean it more now than ever. Give me until the coronation. After that, nothing they say will matter."

"And if Selena makes good on her threat before then? If she tells the Council everything?"

"Let her try." Something colder flickered across his face, the political animal underneath the boy she loved surfacing for just a moment. "She has no proof. Rumors and suspicion aren't enough to move against a Crown Prince, not without evidence, and I intend to make sure she never gets any."

Luna wanted to feel reassured. Instead, Rose's warning from two nights ago sat heavy in her chest, refusing to loosen its grip. *Keep something back. Don't hand him every piece of you.*

"There's something I haven't told you," she said quietly. "My grandmother said something strange the other night. About my parents. About my family history."

Damian's brow furrowed. "What kind of strange?"

"She said my mother loved someone powerful once, before she died. And that there are things about where I come from that she's been keeping from me. She wouldn't say more than that." Luna turned the bracelet on her wrist, the one she'd started wearing openly beneath her sleeve, the moonstone cool against her skin. "It felt like she was warning me. Not about you specifically. About all of this."

"Do you think it's connected? To us, to any of this?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's nothing. Maybe she's just an old woman worried about her granddaughter falling for someone out of her league." Luna shook her head, trying to shake the unease loose with it. "It just felt like more than that."

Damian was quiet for a long moment, turning her words over with the same careful attention he gave Council matters and something in his expression made Luna wonder if he took it more seriously than he was letting on.

"Whatever it is," he said finally, "we'll figure it out together. I'm not going anywhere, Luna. Whatever your grandmother's hiding, whatever Selena's planning — none of it changes what I want."

He lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, right there in the open café, in front of strangers who had no idea they were watching the future King of the werewolf kingdom fall completely, irreversibly in love with a maid.

It should have felt like enough. For a moment, it almost did.

But walking home alone an hour later, Luna's phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number, and her whole body went cold reading the single line it contained.

*Enjoy your coffee date. The Council would love to see these photos. — S.R.*

Attached was a picture — grainy, taken from across the street through the café window, but unmistakable.

Damian's hoodie. Damian's hand wrapped around hers. Damian's lips pressed to her knuckles, captured in perfect, damning clarity.

Luna stood frozen on the sidewalk, staring at the image until the screen dimmed to black, the warmth of the afternoon evaporating into something sharp and frightened.

Selena hadn't just been threatening. She'd been watching, patiently, waiting for exactly this kind of proof.

And now she had it.