Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 118

Chapter 118

Jaxon

I stare at my Beta.

“What the fuck did you just say?” I couldn’t have heard him right.

“Cassandra is my fated mate. She knew too,” Noah continues, his eyes never leaving her. I thought I knew what it meant to detest someone but I didn’t, not until this moment. “She’s always known. From the first moment she walked through the door months ago.” He pauses for effect. “She chose to pursue you anyway.”

I look at Cassandra who’s gone completely still, like deer caught in headlights. She’s not performing now. All calculation is gone. She’s just a woman sitting in a guest house being named for exactly what she is, and she has nothing left to hide behind.

Everything I thought I knew rearranges itself. Cassandra’s obsession with me-not attraction exactly, but fixation. The particular hatred she had for Skye that went beyond rivalry. The willingness to destroy everything rather than accept a different outcome.

She rejected her true mate to pursue status. And Noah-Noah, who is the best person I know, who has stood beside me through every mistake and never flinched-Noah watched it happen.

He knew what she was and he stayed anyway. Because he’s Noah. What a fucking disaster! 1

“Cassandra.” She looks at me. “You have thirty minutes. Take what you can carry.” My voice is cold in the way it gets when there’s nothing underneath to warm it. “Dimitri will escort you to the border.” 3

“Jaxon-“Tears stream down her face, possibly the first real tears she’s ever cried. But not because she’s sorry. Because she got caught and is losing everything.

“If you ever set foot on Ironwood Pack land again, the consequences will be handled by Woolf family methods. Not mine.”

It’s a deliberate invocation. A name that carries weight in our world in the specific way that certain names do- not just power but capability. The kind of capability that ends conversations permanently.

Cassandra understands, I can see it in her eyes. The fear. Good. She should be afraid.

She looks, for just a moment, at Noah. He doesn’t look back. She picks up her bag-already packed, I notice. She came prepared for multiple outcomes-and walks past us without another word.

The door closes.

“And Liam’s father?” Noah asks when she’s gone.

“Jarrett Mays.” I lean against the guest house wall and let myself be tired. “We’ll contact him, help him by whatever means necessary to get custody. Liam deserves to know his real father. We’ll have better luck if Cassandra doesn’t know it’s coming.” 1

Noah nods. We stand in the now-quiet guest house for a while. The absence of Cassandra in it is not the same as peace. But it’s closer.

“I rejected the bond formally,” Noah says eventually.

I just look at him and wait for him to continue. This can’t be easy for him.

“She was never going to choose me. And I wasn’t going to spend my life wanting someone capable of all this.” He

Maybe that’s not growth. Maybe it’s just the minimum-the floor, not the ceiling. Maybe it’s too little and certainly too late. But it’s different from the man who spent three years pressing accusations he never even asked about.

I pick up my phone and type: You were right. About all of it. I’m sorry.

I delete it. Then type it again. Then delete it again.

There’s nothing to say that repairs what today did. No message that lands after you’ve just put a pregnant woman through a formal inquiry based on your ex-lover’s faked photographs. Nothing that makes it better.

Except maybe those nine words. You were right. About all of it. I’m sorry.

I type them a third time. I don’t delete it. But I don’t send it either. I leave it sitting in my drafts and stare at it for a long time. Thinking about what it means that I finally, finally know she’s right.

And thinking about whether knowing it is the beginning of something.

Or just the end.

Cara Anderson Author

Thank you for reading!

10 17