Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 159

Chapter 159

Nicolai

The following evening’s topic of conversation is not quite so pleasant as the wedding planning. Because tonight we talk about Jaxon. We’ve put it off as long as we could.

Not because either of us has been avoiding it purposely-just because there’s been enough to manage that it hasn’t risen to the surface yet.

“He should be there,” Skye says. She’s not looking at me when she says it. Looking at the planning notes on the table between us. “For Benji. The ceremony is going to be part of what Benji’s life looks like, and faxon is part of what Benji’s life looks like, and-it’s the right thing.”

“I know,” I admit. It’s true, but I don’t have to like it.

She looks up. “You’re not going to argue?”

“No.”

“Your wolf is going to argue.” She pierces me with a stare that tells me her wolf is looking directly at mine.

“My wolf argues about many things,” I shrug. “I manage my wolf.”

She watches me for a moment, not entirely convinced.

“You’re sure?”

I think about what it means to have Jaxon Vale-Benji’s father, Skye’s former mate, the man who is slowly becoming someone he should have been years ago, someone I could actually like if things had been different- present at my mating ceremony. What my wolf would prefer. What the version of me that is smaller than this situation would prefer.

And then I think about what Benji deserves. A father and a stepfather who modeled, even in an unprecedented arrangement, what it looks like to put a child’s needs above your own preferences.

“Yes,” I say with more certainty in my tone. “He should be there.”

Skye nods. Something in her face when she looks at me in that moment-gratitude, but more than gratitude. The recognition she has for me when I do something that requires more than the easy version.

I accept it with a nod and a small grin. But she should know by now, I’d do anything for her.

Alone in my office later, I think about the bond. What it is, when I pay careful attention to it. Unlike anything I expected.

Not an obligation or a weight or something pulling me in a direction I hadn’t chosen. Not the involuntary snap of something done to me. Just-the rightness of something that was always going to happen, settled now into a warmth that feels like it’s always been a part of me, yet brand.new at the same time.

I think about the years I knew her from a distance.

Keeping my distance because she was mated to someone else and I had rules about that, rules I kept even when the wanting was present. The fifteen-year-old version of me standing in a room being dressed down for my attitude by a twelve-year-old Skye. The man who kept track of her from afar, told himself it was business interest in her father’s pack, didn’t examine that explanation too closely.

The night I drove through the night when she was attacked without admitting-even to myself, until much later-

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exactly why I couldn’t stay at home and wait.

glad I waited all those years. Glad I let her find her own way to this rather than reaching before she was ready before I was ready to be what she needed rather than just what I wanted to provide.

The bond doesn’t feel like a claim on her. It feels like recognition. Like meeting something again you’ve always known and finally having the language for it.

But sharing this bond with her also means I can read her even better than I ever have. So as much as she might try to hide it, I know there’s something she’s carrying..

I’ve been noticing it for a few days. Since the day she broke her bond with Jaxon.

It appears when she doesn’t know I’m watching-a look that surfaces and then is quickly tucked away. It’s not doubt about me or us. Nothing in how she moves with me or speaks to me or reaches for me has changed. What she’s building with me is intact. I know that like I know my own name.

But something else is there. She’s been giving Jaxon space-they haven’t spoken since the ceremony-and I think the thing she’s carrying is in the vicinity of what she’ll feel when that space ends.

I could ask. I choose not to yet. She’ll tell me when she’s ready. She always tells me when she’s ready, which is one of the things about her I’ve learned to trust completely.

So I file it away. And keep watching.

The night before our wedding ceremony arrives sooner than either of us thought possible. I hold her in the dark and she’s quiet in a way that has a particular texture-not tired, not settled. The quality of someone about to say something they’ve been organizing.

“Tell me,” I say.

She’s quiet for another moment, still gathering her thoughts.

“I don’t know what it’s going to be like to see Jaxon tomorrow,” she says. “Since the bond ceremony. We haven’t- I don’t know what I’ll feel when I look at him now.”

I freeze. Not with alarm. With attention. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know yet.” Her voice is careful. Not hiding anything-just explaining. “I’m telling you I don’t know because you deserve to not be surprised by things. Even by things I don’t have answers to yet.”

I lie in the dark with this. She’s being honest with me. She has always been honest with me. Even when honesty is complicated, even when it would be easier to say nothing and let the moment pass. She brings me the thing that’s there rather than the edited version.

It’s one of the things I love most about her. And right now it’s the thing I have to decide what to do with.

She doesn’t know what she’ll feel when she sees him. She doesn’t know. And she’s telling me so.

I think about what that means. About the space where the bond with Jaxon was, now empty. About the bond with me, new and warm and settled. About Jaxon, who volunteered to do the rejection ceremony before she even asked him-which was, I understood when she told me, the most genuinely unselfish thing he’d done throughout their entire complicated relationship.

I think about what it would mean if seeing Jaxon-without the old bond and its complications-surfaced something for her that was hidden beneath the bond and all its messiness. I think about this for exactly as long as it takes to decide.

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“Okay,” I say. She waits. “We go. We find out. If something comes up, we deal with it together.”

She tightens her arms around me. “Together,” she says.

I press my lips to her hair. And then I stare at the ceiling for a long time after she’s asleep, doing the math of what tomorrow might change and deciding that I will handle whatever it is.

Because she’s mine. Because I chose her before the bond told me to. Because I am not a man who is defeated by complications. And because whatever tomorrow holds whatever she feels when she sees him-she told me.

She told me first. That’s what I hold onto, staring at the ceiling in the dark.

She told me first.

Cara Anderson

Author

Thank you for reading!

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