Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Skye

I press forward, though I’m not even sure which direction forward is anymore.

At some point, my wolf stops talking.

The silence inside me is worse than the howling wind.

I’m alone now. Truly alone. Just me and the storm and the cold that’s seeping into places I didn’t know could go numb.

I can’t run anymore.

My pace has slowed to a limping walk, each step a battle against legs that don’t want to hold me. My lungs burn with every breath, and I’m not sure if I’m crying or if it’s just ice melting on my face.

Probably both.

Just a little further, I tell myself, though I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know where I am. Don’t know how far I’ve come or how far I have left to go.

I just know I can’t stop.

One foot. Then the other. Then the first again.

My body is running on something beyond will now. Some primal instinct that refuses to let me give up. That refuses to let me die here in the snow with my child still unborn and my husband probably not even realizing I’m in trouble yet.

The thought of Jaxon makes something hot flare in my chest-anger or grief, I can’t tell. But it fades almost immediately, swallowed by the cold.

Everything is swallowed by the cold.

I don’t know when I see it.

One moment, there’s nothing but white. The next, there’s a pinprick of yellow light in the distance.

I blink, certain I’m hallucinating. Certain my dying brain is offering me false hope.

But the light doesn’t disappear.

It’s there. Warm and steady and real.

The patrolling station.

A sob wrenches out of my throat, painful and raw. I’m close. So close.

I force my legs to move faster, though faster is still barely a shuffle. The light grows larger, resolving into a building-small and sturdy, built to withstand mountain storms.

Safety. Warmth. Help.

I’m going to make it.

Move, I tell my legs. Just a little more.

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13

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But they’re not listening anymore.

I’m twenty feet from the door when my knee buckles. I catch myself on a tree, my hands too numb to feel the bark. Push off. Keep going.

Fifteen feet.

My vision tunnels, dark creeping in from all sides. I shake my head, trying to clear it, but that only makes the world spin.

Ten feet.

I can see details now. A window with light spilling out. A door with a metal handle. So close.

Five feet.

My legs give out.

I pitch forward, hitting the snow hard. The impact should hurt, but I can’t feel it. Can’t feel anything except the terrible, all-consuming cold.

Get up, I tell myself. Get up. The door is right there.

But my body won’t respond.

I lift my head, looking at the door that might as well be a mile away. I try to call out, to scream for help, but my throat is frozen shut. No sound comes out.

The darkness creeps closer, and this time I can’t push it back.

The last thing I see before everything goes black is that square of yellow light, so close and yet impossibly far.

Then nothing.

–

The Alpha house looks exactly the same as when I left it.

I don’t know why that surprises me. It’s only been a week-three days unconscious in the hospital, four more under observation while the fever finally broke and my body remembered how to regulate its own temperature. Not long enough for anything to change.

But I feel like I’ve been gone for years.

My hands are still bandaged from the frostbite. The doctors said I was lucky-I’ll keep all my fingers, all my toes, though the scars on my feet will probably never fully fade. They said a lot of things, actually. About how close I came. About how my wolf saved me by maintaining my core temperature just long enough.

They don’t know about the baby.

I haven’t told anyone. Haven’t let anyone examine me closely enough to find out. But I can still feel the flutter of life inside me, fragile but persistent. We survived. Both of us.

No thanks to Jaxon.

I push open the front door as quietly as I can but Jaxon is in the foyer before I make it three steps inside.

“You’re back.” His voice is carefully controlled, his expression neutral. “How are you feeling?”

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Chapter 14

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There’s something underneath the question. Something that sounds almost like concern, if I didn’t know better. But there’s also something else-a sharpness. An edge of blame that I can’t quite understand.

“I’m fine,” I say simply.

His eyes scan over me, taking in the bandages, the way I’m still moving a bit too carefully. For a moment, I think I see something flicker across his face. But then it’s gone, replaced by that familiar hardness.

“The doctors cleared you?” he asks.

“Yes.”

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