Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 156

Chapter 156

Skye

I wake up the next morning, Nicolai still wrapped around my back, a possessive hand splayed across my belly, and his semi-hard cock still buried inside me. I stretch gently, trying not to wake him, and I take inventory.

Taking stock seems necessary after the drastic ways my life changed yesterday-a methodical, honest, checking what remains and what’s different and what my life looks like now that so much is different.

First, I’m in Nicolai’s room, lying in the arms of my second chance mate, the bond singing quietly but happily between us. My body aches in the best way from the night we spent consummating that bond. And my heart… my heart is so full, so overflowing with love, joy, peace, contentment, need and desire, it could burst,

But there’s also the second thing. And it cannot be ignored. The bond with Jaxon is gone.

I can tell the way you tell when a sound that was always present has finally stopped. Not by hearing silence- silence is just silence. By remembering its particular quality and consciously noting its absence!

The thread is gone. The echo is gone. The low hum that I carried for over three years-underneath everything, background noise I’d long since stopped consciously acknowledging out of sheer stubborn willpower-has simply ceased.

I lie still and feel the space where it was. And what I find in its place isn’t grief. And it’s not relief exactly. More like the end of a long exertion. Like putting down something you carried for so long you forgot you were carrying it, and now your arms remember the weight only in its absence.

I feel-empty is the wrong word. Clean is closer. Hollow in the way a room is hollow after you’ve moved the furniture out. There’s excitement for the future, for the way that room can be transformed now that the old is gone. But there’s also a hint of sadness I’m convinced I shouldn’t feel, but do anyway..

I press my hand to my sternum where the bond used to pulse faintly when Jaxon was nearby.

Nothing. Just my own heartbeat. Just mine.

And in its place-No, not its place. I don’t think of it as a replacement. There’s the bond with Nicolai.

Already there. Already settled. Warmer than anything I’ve felt before, like a light source at a different temperature. Not the cold blue-white of the bond with Jaxon-which always lacked the warmth I’d expected to feel-but something amber. Something that feels like it’s been here for a while and was just waiting for me to make space for it.

I turn over Nicolai’s words from last night in my mind. I chose this before any bond formed. The bond is just the universe finally catching up.

I believe him. I believe because with Nicolai, it’s never just words, it’s a living, breathing truth. I’ve seen Nicolai choose me. In dozens of ways, over months, before there was any bond to blame it on. I’ve seen it every time he stepped back when I needed space and moved closer when I needed something else.

The bond didn’t make this. It confirmed this.

After what I had with Jaxon, the difference matters to me more than I expected it to.

My mind drifts back to one of the last conversations I had with Diana. Before all hell broke loose and I had to leave. Then Nicolai stirs behind me, another, substantial part of him stirring inside me, and I know he’s fully awake now. He makes no move to do anything about it though, just hugs me tighter.

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“Good morning, mate.” I can hear the satisfied grin in his voice. “What are you lying here thinking about?”

onsider answering with something inconsequential, keeping the mood light, my musings somewhat heavy for the early hour. But that’s not who he needs me to be.

“I was thinking about a conversation I had with my aunt at my father’s pack house-before the attack, before I had to leave. Diana was describing the years she spent loving my father while married to someone else. Of carrying the bond between them while honoring her commitment to someone else. Waiting for what she actually wanted without ever reaching for it early. Once we were free? We chose each other.” She’d said.

Nicolai makes a sound of acknowledgement, but doesn’t interrupt. Just nuzzles his face in the crook of my neck and let’s me go on.

“At the time, I heard that as a lesson in patience. About not taking what you want before you’ve earned the right to have it. Now I hear something else.” I explain.

“I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for her?” Nicolai observes. “I can’t imagine being separated from you now, watching you live a life with someone else. What do you think she was trying to tell you?”

“I think she meant that some things take the long route, not because the universe is indifferent but because you need time to grow, to become a different person before you can receive what’s waiting for you.

“The Skye who walked into her mating ceremony with Jaxon three years ago-hopeful, soft, so desperate to be loved that she was willing to accept whatever version of it he could manage-that Skye couldn’t have found you.” I turn in his arms to face him, both of us gasping softly as his cock slips free. “I couldn’t have recognized you as the man I need. Couldn’t have been the woman you actually want, the one with the edges and the political mind and the capacity to understand the moral grey of his world and not flinch from it. I had to become that woman first.”

“And you are that woman now?” There’s a hint of vulnerability in Nicolai’s voice. Or it could just be my imagination.

“Absolutely and entirely, without a doubt. I am yours. And you’re mine.” I lean in, sealing my words with a kiss.

“Without a doubt.” He repeats, holding me even tighter.

It took Jaxon’s coldness and Cassandra’s poison and a pregnancy and a divorce and a kidnapping attempt and a formal inquiry and a newborn and a hundred 3 AM moments to become the woman I am now. At the time, I’d have given anything for things to be different. But now…

I wouldn’t change anything, I think. Because it led me here.

And there is nowhere I’d rather be.

Cara Anderson

Author

Thank you for reading!

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