Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 166

Chapter 166

Jaxon

Nicolai Woolf is sitting across from me in the room that is technically his, but that he lets me use, and he’s behaving as if he is the guest. I have poured two glasses of whiskey because it seems like the appropriate thing to do and also because I think, very soon, both of us are going to need it.

He accepted the glass without a word. We’ve been sitting here, assessing each other in what has become a very awkward silence.

“Right,” I say finally, unable to bear the discomfort any longer. “How do we start this?”

“I don’t know,” Nicolai says. Which is, coming from him, a significant admission. “I’ve been in difficult conversations before. I don’t have a framework for this one.”

“Neither do I.” I confess.

We both take a drink and stare at our whiskey like it holds all the answers.

“Tell me what you felt,” Nicolai breaks the stalemate. “In the garden. Specifically, in detail.”

Precise to the last. Even now.

I set my glass down and think about how to be honest about something I’ve been turning over for nearly twenty- four hours.

“It wasn’t the same as the first bond,” I start. “The first one felt like-something happening to me. Something I didn’t choose, stealing my freedom, my autonomy.” I pause. “This one felt like recognizing something that was always meant to be. Like something I’d been waiting for without knowing I was waiting for it. Warmer. More-“I search for the word. “More mine.”

Nicolai says nothing. But the way his eyes harden, darken, tells me all I need to know about his feelings on the

matter.

“I know how that sounds,” I continue. “Given my behavior in the past, that I should get another chance… and on your mating day of all days. I know I don’t deserve it.

“And you don’t deserve this thing that’s happening to you either. I’m not saying this to-I’m not trying to claim anything. I’m telling you what I felt because you asked.”

Nicolai turns his glass on the table. Slow, deliberate. Thinking.

“You loved her,” he says finally. “Before it came back.”

“Yes.” I don’t bother lying about something we both know is true.

“Before you called Gianna. Before the rejection ceremony. Before you offered to do it.” He looks at me steadily.” You were already in love with her and you gave her up anyway.”

“I gave her up because it was the right thing,” Even now, that admission costs me. “And because what I wanted didn’t-“I stop. “Because love isn’t just what you want. I learned that too late, but I learned it.”

“And now?” He pushes.

“Now I love her and there’s a bond.” I meet his eyes. “I’m not going to pretend I know what to do with that.”

Silence settles between us again. The west wing room is quiet. Through the window, the estate grounds. His estate

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grounds. The place where Skye has been building her life for months now, the place where Benji was born, the Place that is comprehensively not mine in any formal sense.

“What do you want?” Nicolai asks. “Not what you think you can have. What do you actually want?”

I’ve been asked this before. Noah has asked it multiple times over the course of this year and I’ve answered it differently each time because the answer has changed as I’ve changed. This time I know what the true version is.

“I want to be the person she deserved the first time,” I tell him honestly. “I want to respond to the bond the way 1 should have responded to it three years ago. With both hands. Not-“I take a breath. “Not the way I did. Not the refusal and the suspicion and the punishment. I want a chance to respond to the bond the way you’re supposed to respond to finding your fated mate.”

Nicolai is quiet, waiting like he already knows I have more to say.

“But,” I continue, because there’s a but and he deserves to hear it even if it’s killing me, “she just mated you. Yesterday. With vows and a mark and everything that means.” I shake my head. “I’m not asking you to step aside I don’t even know if that’s what I’d want-not after everything you’ve built with her. You’ve been good for her. Better than I was. I’m not trying to undo that.” I meet his eyes, wordlessly urging him to see the truth in them. “I love her too much to do that to her.”

“That,” Nicolai says, “is the most adult thing you’ve said to me in the entire time we’ve known each other.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to practice.”

Something almost like a wry expression crosses his face. Almost.

“You understand what you’re describing,” Nicolai says, “if we were to-if she were to-” He stops. Reorganizes.” Familial packs exist. Historically. A wolf with multiple bonds, multiple partners, the structure exists in tradition.”

“But not commonly,” I see where he’s going. “Not anymore.”

“No. Not anymore.” He turns his glass again. “Wolves have been monogamous for generations. The traditional structures exist in records, not in practice. Most packs don’t even have language for it beyond the historical context.”

“And we’re both Alphas,” I point out. Because that’s the other thing. The thing that makes this not just personally complicated but politically complicated in ways that could reach beyond either of us. “With our own territories. Our own packs. Our own-” I search for the word. “Authority that depends, in part, on how people perceive us.”

“Yes.” Nicolai’s voice is flat. “What does it say about an Alpha who shares his mate with another Alpha? To his pack, to his allies, to his enemies?” He doesn’t answer his own question. “What does it say about an Alpha who enters an arrangement like that without being the primary bond?”

I hear what he’s not saying. Both of us would be-not weakened, exactly. But questioned. And in our world, being questioned is its own kind of vulnerability. One neither of us may be able to afford.

Even for her.

Cara Anderson Author

Thank you for reading!

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