Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 154

Chapter 154

Nicolai

I know the approximate time Skye and Jaxon’s Rejection ceremony is scheduled. I told myself I wouldn’t watch the clock. I am watching the clock.

When the door opens and Skye comes in-still in the dress she wore to the garden, her hair slightly wind-touched -I read her face the way I read everything that matters to me: completely, before she’s spoken, taking inventory of every small signal before I respond. She looks different.

I’d prepared for her to be devastated. Had prepared myself to be exactly what she needed, to respond to whatever she brought back-grief, relief, shock, any combination. I’d been ready to hold her through the physical aftermath or the emotional one or both simultaneously.

But she doesn’t look devastated. She actually looks lighter. Scraped clean in the way that isn’t damage but it’s opposite-Like she’s set down something she’s been carrying for so long she stopped noticing the weight. Something about the set of her shoulders is different. Something about how she’s breathing.

She comes directly to me. Doesn’t speak first. Just walks straight into my arms, puts her own arms around me and stands there, trusting me to catch her.

And I hold her. Don’t ask anything. Don’t speak. Just breathe in the pure, clean scent of her, the one that belongs only to me now, and give her time.

The estate is quiet. Benji is with Rena. There’s nowhere either of us needs to be for the next several hours. So we just stand in the middle of the room, in each other’s arms, and let that be enough.

“It’s done,” she says finally, her voice barely above a whisper against my shoulder.

“Mmm,” I hum a noncommittal response, acknowledging without interrupting.

I feel her take a breath, preparing herself to replay the rest. “It was painful. But not the way I expected.” She pulls back slightly so I can see her face. She’s searching for words the way she does when she wants what she says to be exactly right but isn’t sure how. “Not physical. It was like-” She stops. “Like everything I’d been carrying from the marriage leaving all at once. In a rush.”

I take her face in both hands. “Is that bad?”

She considers this honestly. “No.” She pauses to consider. “It feels like being clean, like all the messy parts of the last three years, even those I thought I’d let go but hadn’t, have all been washed away.”

She says this calmly. Looking at me directly. I look back, trying to decipher every emotion hidden behind her eyes, every minute facial expression.

She’s saying it for me, I think. Giving me the version that’s easy to receive. There’s something else underneath- something she’s managing, which she does with everything, which I’ve learned to read.

I choose not to press it. Today she gets to be clean. Whatever she carried out of that garden and brought back, she gets to put it wherever she needs to put it.

I kiss her careful, certain, everything I always mean. “You should rest,” I say against her mouth.

“I’m not tired.” She argues.

“You did something significant today.” I lean back, taking in the tired lines around her eyes. “Let me take care of you.”

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She looks like she might push back for a moment, but then her shoulders drop and she lets me steer her toward

he bedroom. I pull the curtains. She doesn’t argue about getting into bed, which tells me more than the “not thed” did. I sit beside her until her eyes close and her breathing evens out, and then I stay a little longer.

Watching her. The woman who spent three years waiting to be chosen. Finally resting in a house where everyone in it is here because they decided to be.

By late afternoon, Skye is still sleeping. I go to check on her-quietly, cracking the door, intending to just confirm she’s okay and leave..

She’s still mostly asleep. But she’s starting to wake up the adorable way she does-incrementally, wiggling around restlessly and moaning a complaint in her sleep before she finally admits defeat and opens her eyes. Her – eyes are now half-open. Hair loose on the pillow. An unfocused expression on her face. And utterly beautiful.

Then she sees me. Her eyes open fully as she pulls herself to a sitting position. And something happens.

I can’t describe it precisely, which is unusual for me. But this is not the kind of thing that responds to precision. This is something else entirely, instinctual and wild.

My wolf pushes forward, a growl building rapidly in my chest. “Mine!” I roar possessively, a sound that’s both beast and man.

Then everything goes still. I rein in my animal, though the effort has me panting, my fists clenched at my sides. My wolf is screaming in my head to go to her, to bite her, to claim her. To let him take over completely so he can have her.

But I don’t want to scare her. Because I’m not this man, one who lets his instincts call the shots. First, I have to figure out what this is, this something different, something beneath thinking. The kind of something that happens only when something fundamental has aligned.

It moves through me like-not like a strike, which is how I’ve always heard it described. Not impact, exactly. More like a bone-deep recognition that demands to be acknowledged, to be acted upon.

“Skye.” Her name is a gravelly, rough thing, like a man dying of thirst and she’s the water I need to survive.

She’s fully awake now. Her hands are twisted in the comforter, her knuckles white. The expression on her face is one part confusion, one part wonder, and the rest of her fighting the same battle I am to stay in control.

“Nicolai, she breathes my name like it takes all the air in her lungs.: “What -”

“You feel it too.” It’s not a question. I can see in every line of her body that she does.

Then something crosses her face, like she’s just let herself believe what is happening between us and choosing to accept it.

“Yes,” she says. Her voice is careful. “Is this-?”

“I think so.” I let myself cross the room. Sit on the bed and pull her into my lap, my wolf demanding we hold our mate, touch her wherever we can. The thing between us is palpable now, a pulsing, living thing neither of us can resist much longer. “I think we’re fated. Actually fáted.”

I meet her eyes, awed by the love I see reflected in them.

“I think I’m your second chance mate.”

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