Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 134

Chapter 134

Nicolai

As an Alpha, I’m good at many things. I can run an empire or make a man wish he were never born without breaking a sweat. Still, I’m humble enough to admit when I’m beaten. It just took giving my son a bath to find the one thing that could beat me..

It turns out, Benji has very strong opinions about the bath. They are inconsistent. He has, at various points, been enthusiastic about the bath, devastated by the bath, neutral about the bath, and deeply suspicious of the bath. Tonight he’s in the suspicious phase, unsure if he’s about to be swallowed whole by his infant tub or if it’s safe to kick and splash and enjoy himself. Which means he needs to be continuously engaged or he will decide the situation has deteriorated and act accordingly.

“He’s suspicious tonight. Talk to him.” It’s the first thing Skye says to me when I walk in the door to see if she needs my help. It’s also the thing I’m least prepared to do after the day I’ve had.

“About what?” I ask warily.

I talk to Benji often, mostly about nonsense. But we’re also mostly alone when these conversations occur, so I can tell him all my secrets without an audience.

Tonight, the one thing I’m afraid I’ll blurt out, is the last thing I want to let slip carelessly.

“Anything. He likes your voice. He’ll track it.” Skye encourages.

I look at Benji in the small tub, looking back at me with the focused skepticism of someone who is reserving judgment.

“Better make it good” The scowl on his face says. “Good evening,” Is all I manage to come up with.

Skye makes a sound that might be a laugh. “He responds better to actual subjects,” she says. “Not formalities.”

“He’s eight weeks old.” I point out.

“He has preferences.” She grins at me playfully.

I cannot argue with this. So I tell Benji about the border dispute. I describe the firm reminder in terms appropriate for an infant, which means I describe the geography and leave out the resolution. He tracks my voice, which is the point.

Skye’s facial expressions tell me she’s listening intently, even as she washes him efficiently, her hands moving in the practiced way they do now-gentle, confident, unhurried. We’ve developed a system over six weeks. I hold, she washes, we both narrate to give him something to focus on besides the bath.

At some point our hands meet in the water-both reaching, both occupied with the same small moving target who has chosen this moment to demonstrate his crawling instinct despite being eight weeks old and physically incapable of crawling.

I don’t move my hand away. She doesn’t move hers. Skye looks at me and the look is-

I know this look. I know all of her looks, now, in the way you learn a language until you’re thinking in it rather than translating from it. This one is love, which I’m certain of, But underneath it tonight is something more specific. Something I haven’t seen quite like this.

Readiness. She’s ready to hear it. The word bond is right there. Weeks of not saying it and it’s just there, ready, in my chest.

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I pull my hand back. “I should let you finish,” I say. My voice is even. “It’s late.”

“Which part was the truth?” He crosses his arms and glares at me.

“She deserves time to choose without feeling pointed in a direction.”

“And the other part?” He already knows. He’s asking because he wants me to say it.

“If I ask her and she says yes,” I say carefully, “then it’s real. Completely, irreversibly real. And I-” I stop.

“And you’ve been afraid of losing it since before you had it,” Dimitri says. “And you’ve been managing that fear by keeping a small amount of distance. A small amount of not-quite-yet.” He looks at me steadily. “The bond rejection isn’t about protection, Nic. It’s about the moment when you can’t pretend there’s still a way for this to not be everything you want it to be.”

I don’t respond. I don’t have to. We both know it’s true.

“Go to sleep,” he says, finally. Not unkindly. “Talk to her in the morning.”

He leaves but I don’t go to sleep. I sit in the office with the truth of what he said, which is that I’m afraid of the very thing I want most. Me, the man who is afraid of anything, is afraid of one tiny woman.

Because, despite all the dangers in my world, she is the one thing that could destroy me.

Which is, I think, exactly how it’s supposed to feel.

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