Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 165

Chapter 165

Nicolai

The next morning, I’m up before Skye. Probably because I never really slept to begin with. So I trudge to the kitchen in search of coffee. I have a feeling this day is going to require a lot of it.

I’m not even a little surprised to find Dimitri already in the kitchen, since it’s where Dimitri appears to live when something is happening with me that he’s decided is his business too. He has coffee already made. He pours two cups without asking.

“I know what happened,” he states matter-of-factly.

“Of course you do.” I mumble, sighing in resignation.

“Mikhail saw something and told me about it.” He sets a cup in front of me. “What happened in the garden, He didn’t understand what he was seeing but I did.”

I wrap both hands around the cup to steady myself. Maybe I should be surprised Mikhail noticed the subtle cues that told him something wasn’t quite right, but I’m not. It’s why I trust him with my life.

“I asked her to break the bond,” I say, though he already knows that part. “She did. Last night it came back.”

“I’m sorry, Nic.” He offers.

“On our mating day, Dimitri.” I’m not proud of the plaintive tone I’m using but at least it’s honest.

“I know, brother.” He reaches out to squeeze my shoulder, a reminder he’s got my back, whatever I need.

“What does that mean?” Not rhetorical. I want an actual answer from the person who has known me for fifteen years and is usually capable of one. “What does it mean that she severed a bond and it reformed? What does the universe think it’s doing?”

Dimitri is quiet for a moment, probably considering how to say something he knows I don;t want to hear. “It means the universe has opinions,” he says.

I stare at him blankly. “That’s what you have for me.”

“That’s what I have right now, yes.” He drinks his coffee. “I’ll have more once you tell me what happened after she told you.”

So I tell him. He listens the way he listens-completely, without flinching, without performing sympathy or

concern.

When I finish, he says: “You held her anyway. That had to be hard for you, lying there with her all night when what you really wanted was to hit something.”

“She’s my mate. She needed me to stay, not punish her for something that isn;t her fault by leaving her to hold it alone.”

“That’s exactly my point. You held her anyway even though you were angry and scared and it was your mating night and the whole thing was not what you planned.” He looks at me over his cup. “That matters, Nic.”

“It doesn’t solve anything.” I groan, dropping my head in my hands.

“No. But it tells you something about what you’re actually made of when it costs something.” He sets his cup down. “What are you going to do?”

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“I don’t know yet.”

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es you do,” he retorts. “You’re going to talk to her. And then you’re going to talk to him. Because that’s what you do when something is complicated-you don’t wait for it to uncomplicate itself. That’s not who Nicolai Woolf is. Not what he does. You face things head on, even the hard things. Especially the hard things.”

He’s right. I know he;s right. I’m just not sure I’m ready to face this particular thing.

Skye never joins me for breakfast. Which can only mean one thing: she’s not sure I want her around/But that’s the furthest thing from the truth and I can’t let her carry that. So I go looking for her.

She’s in the sitting room, Benji in her lap, both of them engaged in something that involves a soft toy and lots of baby talk. She looks up when I come in-immediately attentive, the particular quality of her attention when she’s been waiting for something. The hope and longing in her eyes nearly undoes me.

I sit across from her. “Tell me what you’re actually feeling,” I say. “Not the version you’ve edited for me. The real one.”

Because now that I’m looking at her, in the light of day, I realize it;s the thing I need to know but have avoided asking for fear I won;t like the answer.

She glances at Benji-he’s absorbed in the toy-and then back at me. “I feel guilty,” she confesses. “For the timing but also for-” She stops, takes a deep breath. “For feeling relieved. Which is the part I’ve been afraid to say out loud even though I’m not even sure what that means.”

“Say it anyway.” I urge, even though the stabbing pain in my chest hurts worse with every word.

“When the bond snapped-” She takes a breath. “Part of me was glad. Not because I want to hurt you or because I’ve been secretly hoping for this. I wasn’t. But because there was something there that felt unfinished. Something I had to walk away from before I knew what it was.” She meets my eyes. “And now it’s-I’m not really sure what it is.”

I sit with this for a few minutes before asking the question that inevitably comes next. “And between that and what you have with me?” I ask. “Where do you actually sit?”

“I love you,!” she says, with the directness I’ve always trusted her for. “That’s not the complicated part. The complicated part is that I think I also-that there’s something real with Jaxon that I haven’t been entirely honest about. Even to myself.”

“I need to talk to him,” I say, standing abruptly.

Her eyes go wide. “Nicolai-”

“Not in anger.” I hold up a hand. “I’m not going to walk down there and make threats or mark territory. I need to understand what we’re dealing with. What he felt. What he wants. And I can’t know any of that by only talking to you.”

She holds my gaze for a long moment. “I haven’t even asked him that yet. Haven’t even acknowledged the bound yet, at least not in words. And besides, remember it was him that asked me to break the bond. He said he’s ready to move on.”

Pain streaks across her face as she admits the last part. She hides it quickly but not before I catch it. He hurt her with those words and that guts me. I wish I could say my heartbreak was for her, but I’d be lying. It’s all for myself.

“I know, moonbeam.” I force myself to gentle my response. “And the two of you do need to talk. But let me do this first. I need to do it.”

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“Okay,” she finally agrees.

kay?”

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“I trust you,” she says. “Both of you, actually, which is its own complicated thing. But-okay.”

I sit alone in my office before I go to him, and think about the question I haven’t said out loud. I told her I chose her before the bond. I meant it. I still mean it.

But the life I chose the specific shape of it, the arrangement that made sense-has it changed? Has the universe, with its opinions about timing and fate and bonds that don’t stay broken, redrawn the map without asking?

I think about Benji. About Jaxon living in the west wing. About the fact that for months I’ve been building a life that included Jaxon Vale in uncomfortable proximity and managing it because it was the right thing for Benji and for Skye.

I’ve been managing it. Now I’m asking whether managing it just became something else entirely.

I don’t reach a conclusion. But I stop dismissing the question. And I stop pretending that I chose her before the bond is a simple statement when the bond has just complicated everything it was supposed to have clarified.

I stand. Walk to the west wing. Knock on Jaxon’s door. He opens it.

We look at each other for a moment-two men who have been circling the same woman for the better part of a year and are now, apparently, both bonded to her, which is a sentence I would not have anticipated writing into my life’s story.

“I know what happened,” I say.

His expression doesn’t change. I can see he’s been expecting this.

“I need to understand what it means.”

He steps back from the door. “Come in,” he says.

I go in knowing neither of us is sure what we’re about to agree to. But we both understand-without saying it, in the specific-way two Alphas understand things without saying them-that this conversation has to happen.

Whatever comes after it, it has to happen first.

Cara Anderson Author

Thank you for reading!

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