Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 111

Chapter 111

Skye

Seven months pregnant, and I’ve stopped counting the days until I “go back.” Back to where, exactly? I’m not sure anymore. I vaguely recall I had a plan for my life once the threat was dealt with, but it all seems so hazy now.

Because this is my life now. Living here at Nicolai’s estate. The work I somehow fell into naturally, without really making a conscious decision to get involved. And then there is Nicolai, the man I’ve come to want more than my

next breath.

I stopped fighting that truth somewhere between the first kiss and this morning, when I woke up thinking about him before I was fully conscious. Before I remembered where I was or what day it was. Before anything except the warmth of knowing he exists.

That’s when I knew for sure.

The evidence that I belong here is everywhere, if I look. Pack members come to me now with administrative questions rather than waiting for Dimitri. Not because they’ve been told to, but because I’ve been here long enough to know the answers. Last week, Mikhail consulted me on a border patrol schedule. Yesterday, one of the territory managers asked my opinion on a supply dispute before bringing it to anyone else.

I gave answers. Good ones. And nobody looked surprised.

There’s a corner of Nicolai’s office that’s mine now. I started wandering in while he worked without really planning to, just to be near him. Then one day there was a new desk next to his with all my things stacked in neat little piles on top waiting for me. My files. My correspondence. My coffee cup that Rena stopped moving weeks ago because she understands it lives there.

Speaking of Rena-my breakfast appears every morning without discussion. Same table, same time, the foods I can tolerate at this stage of the pregnancy because she’s been paying attention. This morning it was ginger tea and plain toast and exactly three pieces of fruit, which is what I can manage before noon these days.

Someone noticed. Someone cared enough to remember.And that realization no longer frightens me. I belong here.

Not that Nicolai and I have announced anything formally. We haven’t labeled our relationship or discussed it in terms that would require definitions. I’m not sure I’m ready to and he respects that, something that still surprises me sometimes.

But Nicolai comes to my wing in the evenings. We talk for hours-about everything, about nothing, about the pack and the world and what we think Benji will be like. He reads beside me or sometimes to me, comfortable in the way people are when they just enjoy being near each other.

It’s real. Whatever it is, it’s real.

I think about the night it shifted. The hormone spike that came without warning-that particular pregnancy madness that Dr. Chernov warned me about, the body’s demand for Alpha pheromones that Jaxon used to provide simply by existing nearby despite the fact there was no affection between us. Without him, the absence became physical. Unbearable.

I’d been humiliated by my own biology. Trying to handle it alone, quietly, behind a locked door. But if there is one thing I’ve learned about Nicolai, it’s that he never lets me handle anything alone if he can help it.

At the time, I’d found the fact he heard me pleasuring myself deeply inconvenient. But looking back now, like so many other times in my life, he’d been exactly what I needed: Almost clinical at first-his hands careful, his voice steady, his entire focus on my comfort and nothing else. Then tender. Then devastating.

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And in the days afterward, the awkwardness of what had happened dissolved into the honesty of a conversation

e’d been building toward for months. And somewhere along the way, we agreed to stop pretending.

Since then, he gives me more. Carefully. Deliberately. With a restraint that is both infuriating and – I’m slowly admitting to myself-one of the things I love about him.

He holds something back. Not to tease me, but because he’s decided something, set a line he won’t cross until conditions are met that only he has defined. I’ve tried to move that line many times since then. But he holds it with irritating gentleness.

It makes me want to scream. Especially when his delicious scent swirls around me and the ache between my legs becomes almost unbearable. But it also makes me feel, for the first time in my adult life, genuinely cherished.

I join Nicolai on the terrace, a place we gravitate to most evenings. A place that has become ours. He walks up behind me as I watch the sun drop behind the tree line, painting the estate grounds in amber and gold. His hand resting on my belly, feeling Benji work through what appears to be a complicated martial arts sequence.

It’s a beautiful moment. One I savor, but also fear is too good to be true sometimes.

“He’s going to be a fighter,” Nicolai says, breaking me out of my melancholy thoughts.

“I’m sorry to interrupt.” His eyes go to Nicolai. “We have a situation at the gate.”

Nicolai pulls back slowly. His hands stay at my waist for a moment, steadying. “What situation?”

“Cassandra Winters.” Dimitri pauses. “She’s here. Demanding to speak with Skye.”

Cara Anderson Author

Thank you for reading!

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