Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 160

Chapter 160

Jaxon

The invitation to Skye’s bonding ceremony/wedding to Nicolai arrives through Dimitri. I should have seen this coming, some part of me probably did. But my hand still shakes as I take the envelope from him.

Inside is a card, formally worded, the kind of thing you send when every detail of an occasion requires perfection. I read the formal part once. Then I find the handwriting at the bottom-Skye’s, distinctive, the particular slant of it I know from three years of memos and notes and a divorce petition she signed with the same pen she used to sign our marriage documents.

Benji will be there. I’d like you to be there too.

I read it three times. Then I call Noah. Because of all the moments I’ve faced in the last few months, if any one of them required the help of my best friend, it’s this one.

“What do you want to do?” he asks when I explain the situation.

Not you should go. Not it’s the right thing. No advice at all. Just—the actual question.

The words that want to come out are something to the effect of I have no fucking clue. Why do you think I called you? But I force myself to pause, to be an actual adult and really think about my answer.

I don’t want to go. I want to go. Both of these are equally true.

I want to see her-haven’t seen her since the bond ceremony. Instead, I’ve been hiding out in the west wing learning what the absence of the thread that once tied us together feels like, giving us both the space something that significant requires. But all I’ve learned is, bond or no bond, I still love Skye and not seeing her face everyday feels like a special kind of hell.

I also want to see Benji in whatever absurd formal outfit someone has acquired for the occasion. I want to be in the room, even if the room is also the place where the woman I love becomes Nicolai Woolf’s mate.

But I don’t want to watch that, her giving herself to him that way. Don’t want to act composed through it when I’m feeling anything but. Don’t want to spend three hours managing my face while Nicolai looks at Skye the way she deserves to be looked at by someone.

“I should be there for Benji,” I finally answer.

“Yes,” Noah agrees. “And?”

I think about the version of myself I’m trying to become. “And I think she was right,” I admit. “Months ago-she said the two of us have to find a way to be people Benji can be proud of. Not just functional co-parents. People he can actually respect.” I pause. “This is part of that.”

“Then you’ve answered your own question,” Noah sounds absurdly proud of himself..

“Will you come?” I ask, knowing he would have been invited too.

Noah is quiet for a moment. “This one’s yours to do alone, Jax.” He’s right.

I know he’s right.

The absence of the bond is something I’m still processing. Three weeks since the formal rejection and I still reach for it sometimes-not deliberately, just muscle memory, the habitual lean toward something that’s no longer there. Like reaching for a wall in the dark that’s been moved.

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I expected to feel lighter. To feel relieved that something I knew to be inevitable was over and done. I feel quiet

stead

Not peace-not yet-but the hope is there that it might eventually become peace, if I give it enough time and enough space to settle.

What I didn’t anticipate is the clarity I have now. Without the thread there to lean toward, without the hum that was always doing some of the interpreting for me, I can look at what I actually feel about Skye without the bond’s interference.

And what’s left-It’s something I can’t fully name.

Not the driven, overwhelming pull of the bond that I was always fighting against because I thought it took something from me. Not the possessive urgency that made me do stupid things and break promises I’d intended to keep. Something quieter than that. More specifically mine-not produced by biology or fate, but arrived through three years of damage and a divorce and watching her raise my son and becoming, slowly, someone who deserves to see her clearly.

I don’t know what to call it. I just tuck it away because there’s nothing useful to do with it anyway.

When the day of the ceremony arrives, I dress carefully. Not formally-I’m not a guest of honor here and I won’t dress like one. But carefully.

The way you dress when you want to be present without drawing attention. When you’re there for one specific person and that person is tiny and will be thoroughly unimpressed by your outfit no matter what you wear.

I bring nothing. No flowers, no gift. This isn’t my celebration. I’m a co-parent making an appearance because the woman I-because Benji’s mother, I have to stop thinking of her as anything else-invited me. And because it’s the right thing, and because I’ve been working for months on being the man who does the right thing even when it costs me something to do it.

The garden is set up simply–Nicolai’s taste, which I recognize, the kind of elegance that doesn’t announce itself. Flowers I’d have to ask the name of. Chairs arranged without the stiffness of formal events. The kind of ceremony that means something rather than pretending to.

Skye comes through the garden when the ceremony starts and I stop breathing for a moment.

She’s radiant. Not the way I’ve seen her look-not the battered luminousness of an exhausted mother, not even the careful beauty she deploys at public functions. This is unguarded, She’s fully present in herself in a way she never was with me, and I understand why now in a way I didn’t three years ago.

With me, there was always the weight of what wasn’t there. I forced her to carry that weight. Nicolai makes sure she carries nothing.

He looks at her the way I know, with absolute certainty, I should have looked at her. Like she’s the most important person in every room. Like she’s his person. Not a Luna or a mate or a function-her. Specifically her.

So I sit in the back and watch as my son’s mother becomes Nicolai Woolf’s mate. I hold myself still when all I want to do is get up and leave. Go anywhere else that’s not here. Not where I’m forced to watch while my heart is ripped from my chest.

Because this punishment, this living death…

It’s nothing more than I deserve….

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Chorte

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