Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 163

Chapter 163

Skye

The reception is everything a celebration should be and almost never is. Genuine. Warm. Forty people who belong in this garden, eating and talking and passing Benji around like the small dignitary he believes himself to be.

I dance with Nicolai. It’s not graceful–I’m a competent dancer but he leads with more decisiveness than I was braced for, and we spend the first thirty seconds negotiating who’s actually leading, which Dimitri watches with visible amusement.

“You could just follow,” Nicolai murmurs in my ear, his own amusement evident in his tone.

“I could,” I agree. “I won’t.”

“I know,” he laughs, and pulls me closer anyway.

I talk to Aunt Diana, who is crying in that way someone who has been hoping for something for a long time and has finally seen it happen does. “You’re radiant,” she says. “I know that’s a thing people say, but you genuinely are.”

“Don’t make me cry again,” I chide her. “I already cried during the ceremony.”

“Good,” she says. “That’s exactly when you should cry.”

Benji is passed to me at one point, formal clothes thoroughly abandoned in favor of a cozy sleeper, his preferred aesthetic, and he grabs at my mating mark with the investigative grip of someone encountering new topography.

“That’s mine,” I tease him. “Hands off, little man.”

He grabs harder. And even though it’s a bit sore, I let him, because I’m happy and he’s perfect and this is my mating day and nothing today is wrong.

Then I see Jaxon across the garden.

He’s in the back, where he said he’d be. Standing with the self-contained ease of someone who has learned to be seen or blend in as he chooses-not absent, not imposing. Just there. He has Benji in his arms-Benji was apparently passed in his direction at some point-and he’s talking to someone from the Woolf pack, something

easy.

He came. He said he would and he came and he’s being decent about it in exactly the way he never would have before.

I feel something looking at him. I tell myself it’s gratitude. Appreciation for the growth. For the man he’s become. For showing up today because it was the right thing for Benji regardless of what it cost him.

I decide to go say hello. It’s the gracious thing. The co-parenting thing. It would be strange not to. So I start across the garden.

He sees me coming and something moves through his expression-managed quickly, but I’ve learned to read Jaxon’s expressions now, the half-second before he shudders his expression.

I’m almost to him. Benji sees me and does his full-body lean of greeting. And then-

The world tilts.

Not subtly. Not the slow-dawning way of something becoming clear over time. The world tilts.

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I know what it is immediately. I’ve felt it before-the specific, undeniable, total quality of a mate bond snapping

te place. The way it takes up all the available space in your awareness before anything else can get through.

No. No, no, no, no, no. That can’t be right. How can this be happening? We severed the bond. I felt it. What is going on?

That is the flight of ideas that flutters through my head in a matter of seconds. Panic is coursing through me like a jolt of electricity. I’ve been here before and it was a disaster.

But… this is different from the first time. The first time felt like something happening to me that I couldn’t control. No force on earth could have stopped me from falling into Jaxon’s arms that night. A frenzy of desperation and need.

handle

This feels like-recognition. The pull is there, yes. And if I’m being honest with myself, so is the desire. But none of it is stronger than simple and pure knowledge that fate chose this person to belong to me. This I can without making a scene at my own wedding reception.

At least that’s what I tell myself.

My wolf surges toward Jaxon with the certainty of something that was always true and has just been acknowledged. Warm and absolute and completely uninterested in my opinions about the timing.

I’m within a few feet of him when I stop walking. I stop even though every fiber of my existence still strains in his direction.

Jaxon is looking at me with an intense expression I recognize on him. But something is different about it, softer somehow. I open my mouth to say something, I’m not sure what exactly. An acknowledgement of some sort, I imagine.

But movement in my peripheral vision catches my attention, breaking me out of the spell this new bond has me in. The present comes rushing back all at once. Where I am, why I’m here.

“Nicolai-“I think his name but from the look on Jaxon’s face, I’m pretty sure I said it out loud.

His name comes to me like a reflex. Like reaching for an anchor when the ground has moved. Not a decision-my body looking for something solid.

Jaxon is very still. He feels the bond too. I can see it in the quality of his stillness-the specific kind I know now, have learned to read like I’ve learned all of him. The stillness of something fundamental. But the name I just called wasn’t his and he’s processing what to do with that.

Neither of us speaks. I don’t know how long. Then he says, very quietly: “Later. You should go back to him.”

I hold his gaze. There’s something in his eyes-not the hope I might have expected, not the reaching of someone taking advantage of an opening. Just honesty. Acceptance. And under it, something he’s managing with obvious effort.

I nod, turn, and walk back across the garden. I carry the new bond with me-warm, present, undeniable-like something I found in my pocket that I have no idea what to do with yet.

The reception winds down. Guests leave in ones and twos, lingering goodbyes, Dimitri managing the logistics with his usual efficiency. Benji is retrieved and put to bed. The garden empties.

Eventually it’s just us. Nicolai and I. Our room. The end of our mating day. His hands at my waist and my head against his chest and the mating mark on my shoulder that still carries the particular warmth of something new.

I’m happy. That’s the truth I need to be clear about, even now, even with what I’m carrying. I am happy.

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I love this man. I am wearing his mark. I chose him and he chose me and none of that has changed or been undone.

“Nicolai.” My voice is small, hesitant. “I need to tell you something.”

He’s still for a moment. Not the stillness of surprise. The stillness of someone who has been waiting.

“I know,” he says.

I pull back to look at him. “You know?”

“I felt something change.” His voice is careful. Even. “At the reception. When you came back from talking to Jakon. “He looks at me steadily, and I see it—he’s been carrying this all evening. Through the rest of the reception and getting here. All evening. “Tell me what happened.”

I look at my husband. My mate. The man who told me he’d rather hear difficult things than be surprised by them

“The bond,” I say. “It snapped back. With Jaxon.”

His face doesn’t change. “On our mating day,” he says.

“Yes.” I admit, guilt churning in my gut.

“The bond you broke.” It’s not a question. More like if he says it out loud, he can make it make sense. “Formed again.”

“Yes.” I answer anyway.

“Tell me everything,” he says.

And I do.

Cara Anderson Author

Thank you for reading!

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