Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 153

Chapter 153

Skye

Jaxon finds me later that morning. I’m changing Benji-the full production version, the one that involves a change of clothes due to circumstances I’d rather not rehash-when I hear his footsteps in the hallway.

He appears in the nursery doorway. Not Nicolai, who I was expecting. Not even Dimitri. Jaxon. Who I was definitely not expecting and not sure I’m ready to see after last night’s deliberations.

He looks at me, then at Benji, and there’s a moment where he almost offers to help with whatever chaos is currently happening on the changing table. He doesn’t. He reads the room correctly-I’ve got it and stays in the doorway.

“Can we talk?” he says. “Privately. When you have a moment.”

He’s not performing anything. He’s just standing there with the expression that’s been on his face for months- the one that exists in the half-second before he manages himself. The honest one.

“Okay,” I say. “Let me get Rena to take Benji. Give me fifteen minutes.”

I suggest we go sit in the garden. Outside, where there’s air, where the space feels like neutral ground. We walk to the bench near the roses and sit with the distance of two people who have something to say and aren’t sure yet what happens after.

He doesn’t build to it. “I’m going to formally reject the mate bond,” he announces.

The words land with more weight than I expected. I don’t know why I didn’t expect this. I’ve been thinking about the bond all morning. But hearing him say it-quietly, directly, without preamble-is different from the abstract thoughts in the nursery.

“I’ve spoken to Gianna,” he continues. “I know what the process looks like. I want to do it.” He stops. Starts again, like he’s looking for the precise words to say. “You deserve to be completely free. Not tied to me in any way. Not even-not even the thread.”

“Jaxon.” I reach out to him then stop myself. “You don’t have to-”

Don’t have to what? Why am I arguing? Isn’t this exactly what I intended to do?

“Yes I do.” He insists.

His voice is quiet. Certain in a way that doesn’t leave room for argument.

“Because I love you.” He says it the way he’s been saying true things lately-without softening them or hedging them or making them about what he might get in return. “Whatever that’s worth now. Whatever it means after everything I did. I love you. And if that’s real-if it’s actually real-then what it requires is that I let you go.” He looks at the roses. “Completely. And I can only do that if we’re both free to move on.”

I register this. “That’s what you want?” I hear my own voice. Even, controlled. “To be free to move on?”

“Eventually,” he admits.

The word is right. Careful. He holds it steadily. I look at him–this man who has been keeping every promise for months, who makes tea at 2 AM, who learned my son’s cries and believe him.

And something pulls in my chest at that. Why should the thought of him moving on bother me at all?

I’ll examine that later. Not here, not now, not in front of him.

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“Okay,” I agree. “If that’s what you want.”

the ceremony,” he moves on, not bothering to deny it at all. “Whenever you’re ready. I’d like to do it together- if you’re willing. Or I can go to Gianna separately. Whichever is easier for you.”

I think about everything I examined in the nursery this morning. The things I finally admitted. The unnamed thing I don’t know what to do with. The uncertainty that arrived and hasn’t left.

And underneath all of it: it’s too late. Three months too late, and I have chosen and built and decided, and Nicolai is in that house and I love him and we have a life and I am going to be his mate.

And Jaxon is going to let me go.

“Together,” I choose, my voice steady. “I think together is right.”

Jaxon wastes no time. He arranges the ceremony for two days later. It’s a small affair, as few witnesses to the final admission of our failures as possible. Just us and Gianna and a pack elder who has agreed to witness formally.

Nicolai knows it’s happening but agreed not to come at my request. He held my face in his hands the night before, his thumbs at my cheekbones, and said: “I’ll be here when it’s done.” Not I’ll be here if you need me. Just I’ll be here. Present tense. Certain. And that was all the reassurance I needed.

I thought I knew what to expect. I thought it would be physical-I’ve heard about bond rejections. The body’s reaction to the severing of something that lives at the bone level. I thought I was prepared for that.

What happens instead: When the bond severs-when Gianna completes the formal words and the elder witnesses and the thread finally, conclusively goes-I feel every moment of the three years leave me.

All at once.

Not slowly, not in pieces. Just-every moment of waiting. Of hoping. Of making myself smaller so he would have room to love me. Of lying awake listening to him not come to bed. Of trying harder, being softer, making the coffee he liked, choosing the words he’d tolerate. Three years of it, accumulated and unfelt because feeling it would have destroyed me while I was still in it.

It leaves. It’s not grief. It’s… departure. Like something that was lodged deep finally pulling free, leaving me feeling hollow where the bond used to be.

I stand in the garden afterward. Gianna has gone. The elder has gone. But I can’t seem to move.

Jaxon is three feet from me with something moving through his face that I can’t read-something I’d need more bandwidth than I currently have to interpret.

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“Are you okay?” he asks.

“Yes.” I’m surprised to find that my voice still works, even to speak the lie. “Are you?”

He looks at me for a long moment. “I will be,” he nods.

I believe him. The hollow where the bond was is quiet and strange and mine. But I’m still standing.

I go to find Nicolai.

And I refuse to let him see me cry.

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