Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 162

Chapter 162

Skye

I’m standing at the edge of the garden, waiting for the signal to walk, to meet Nicolai at the end of the aisle and join my life to his, and I’m thinking about the mating bite. The one Jaxon never gave me.

Three years of marriage. A mate bond that was real, whatever else it was. And he never bit me. Never claimed me in the permanent, biological, undeniable way wolves claim each other. Never pressed his mouth to my shoulder and marked me as his in the way that doesn’t fade-not fully, not ever.

I used to tell myself it didn’t matter. I was lying.

The absence of it was a specific kind of pain I carried quietly, the way you carry things you’ve decided not to examine because examining them would require admitting how much they cost. To be mated to someone who won’t claim you. Who holds you at just enough distance that the world can see the gap.

Today it ends. Today someone is going to claim me. And I’m going to claim him, too.

I take a breath. Look at the garden ahead of me-the guests standing, the flowers I picked, the late-afternoon light doing something golden and implausible to everything it touches.

I’m not nervous. That’s the thing. That’s the difference.

My first mating ceremony I approached with desperate hope in a dress that felt like armor, performing confidence I didn’t have, marrying a man I loved and was already afraid of. I had no information. Just the bond and the hope and the terrible uncertainty of not knowing who Jaxon Vale actually was.

This one I approach with certainty. I know who Nicolai is. I chose him with full information-every inconvenient fact, every moral grey, every 3 AM, every moment of watching him decide. I know what I’m walking toward.

I walk toward it.

The garden holds forty people. Not the ceremony Nicolai initially proposed-he wanted five hundred, a declaration, a statement. We negotiated. What we arrived at is forty people who matter, in the place where we built something, with vows we wrote ourselves because neither of us was willing to say words that weren’t ours.

He’s standing at the far end of the garden path. Looking at me.

Not at the dress, not at the occasion, not at the assembled guests or the flowers or the late-afternoon light doing its implausible best. At me. Just me. With the focused, genuine attention I’ve been the recipient of for months and have never quite gotten used to.

The pack elder speaks. I hear the words without fully processing them-ceremony language, formal and appropriate. My attention is on Nicolai’s face. On the way he can’t take his eyes off me, his expression telling me every emotion he’s not bothering to hide.

Then it’s time for vows. He goes first. His voice is even. Controlled. Nicolai, as I have learned, is always controlled. But underneath the control, I’ve also learned to read what’s actually happening.

“I see you,” he says. “Not the perfect Luna you have been and will be, not the survivor, not the mother, not the political mind-though I see all of those too.” He holds my gaze steadily. “I see the woman who was twelve years old and entirely unimpressed with me, and who has been entirely unimpressed with me at appropriate moments ever since.” There’s a soft laugh from someone in the guests. He doesn’t break. “I chose you before the bond told me to. I will keep choosing you-every morning, every difficult conversation, every moment of celebration, for the rest of my life.” A pause. “That’s the vow. That’s all of it.”

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I have to hold myself very still not to break completely. I take a breath and wait for my heart to stop racing. Then I Speak mine.

“I know what it feels like to be invisible. I know what that costs.” My voice holds. “You’ve never let me be invisible. Not once. Even when I was trying to be.” I look at him. “I choose you. Not because the bond told me to, not because you were safe or convenient or the obvious next step. Because I looked at you-really looked–and I knew. You’re the person I want to figure it out with.” I pause. “All of it. For the rest of my life.”

The mating bite is last. The elder steps back. The guests go quiet. This part is private in the only way this part can be private with forty people watching-intimate despite the audience, because what happens now is between wolves, between us, regardless of who bears witness.

Nicolai turns to me. He moves my hair aside-slowly, deliberately, giving me every opportunity to register what’s coming. His hand is warm at my neck. His thumb traces the place on my shoulder that has been, for my entire adult life, unmarked. I shiver under his touch.

“Ready?” he says quietly. Just for me.

“Yes,” I nod a little too enthusiastically.

He bites. And I- I didn’t know. That’s the only way to explain what happens.

I didn’t know how much the absence of it had hurt until it suddenly, completely, isn’t an absence anymore. The claim of it. The permanence. Not just the physical sensation-though that too, the specific warmth of it, the way the bond deepens and expands-but the meaning.

Someone claimed me. Someone pressed his mouth to my shoulder and said: mine forever. And meant it.

I break. Not in a devastating way. Not with sound. Just-the tears that come when something that’s been held very tightly for a very long time is finally allowed to let go.

Nicolai pulls back. His hands go to my face. “Hey.” Very quiet. For me only. “I’ve got you.”

“I know,” I manage. “That’s why-”

“I know,” he whispers.

He gives me a moment. Then I reach for him. I stand on my tiptoes, he bends for me, and I press my mouth to his shoulder, to the place that will carry my mark from this moment forward, and I bite.

I feel him exhale. The bond does something I don’t have language for-deepens, settles, becomes something that

I understand now I will never be able to live without. Not the involuntary hum of fate. Something warmer. Something that feels like Nicolai has become part of my very soul.

“I love you, moonbeam. With everything I am.” He says, placing a kiss over his mark. “I always will.”

“I love you too, Nico.” I answer, my voice cracking on a sob. “My body, my heart, my soul, it’s all yours.”

We chose this. Chose each other.

Even the bond knows it.

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