Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 169

Chapter 169

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Jaxon seems oblivious to the fissure currently carving its way through my heart. He broke it once before and somehow I managed to put it back together. Now here I am, letting him do it all over again.

He was over me. I meant it when I said I needed to move on. He didn’t ask for this. Didn’t want it.

I shouldn’t care. It shouldn’t hurt so much. I walked away from him. And I’ve moved on too, haven’t I?

“What I can tell you,” Jaxon’s voice startles me out of my brooding, “is that this bond feels different from the first one. It doesn’t feel like something that happened to me. It feels like something I-” He pauses. “Like something I arrived at.”

“Or the bond is making you feel that way,” I shrug, doing my best impression of casual indifference.

He holds my gaze, searching for something behind my words. “Yes. That’s possible. I can’t rule it out.” He doesn’t flinch from it. “All I can tell you is what I actually feel, and ask you to decide what to do with it.”

“What do you actually feel?”

“That I don’t want to pretend it isn’t there.” He says it carefully. “That I don’t want to reject it before either of us knows what it is.” He turns to face me more fully. “What do you want, Skye?”

“I don’t know yet,” I answer.

That’s the truest thing I can give him right now. Because I don’t know. I know I don’t want to hurt Nicolai. I know I don’t want to let him hurt me again. But neither of those things answer his question.

“I’ve been honest about things when I know them,” I continue. “I don’t know this yet. I need time to figure out what I’m actually feeling versus what two bonds are telling me to feel.”

He nods slowly. “Then figure it out,” he says.

And then he reaches over and takes my hand. Just my hand. Just holds it.

The bond does something at the contact-warm and comfortable and entirely inconvenient. My wolf leans toward him knowing exactly what she wants even if I don’t yet.

I let him hold my hand. For longer than I should, letting it settle the bond’s need to be close to him. Then I pull back.

“I need to go,” I say.

It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve done in recent memory. But I know if I don’t go, I’ll make a fool of myself and hurt Nicolai more than I already am.

He releases my hand immediately. Doesn’t try to hold on, to coax me to stay longer. “I know,” he says and just lets

So I go. And I think about it for the rest of the day in the guilty way of someone who did something small and understands it was the beginning of something larger. Guilty because of Nicolai-because I am his mate and that hand was held too long and felt too good and I need to tell him.

But also guilty because I can’t entirely trust what I feel when Jaxon touches me now. Can’t tell how much is him and how much is the bond pulling at both of us. Can’t know if what he said about arriving at something was genuine feeling or a bond doing its biological work.

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onfess to Nicolai the moment I see him. Before I chicken out, lose my nerve and talk myself out of it. I told myself months ago that I would be honest with him-honest in the way I could never quite be with Jaxon, honest even when it’s difficult, especially then.

“Jaxon held my hand,” I admit. “And I let him. Longer than I should have.”

Nicolai’s jaw tightens. I watch it happen and don’t look away. I deserve to see his disappointment.

“Thank you for telling me,” he says. His voice is even. Controlled in a way that’s different from his total emotional shutdown control-this is the control of someone who is feeling something significant and choosing how much of those feelings to share with me. Which is possibly worse.

“I needed you to know,” I say.

“I know.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I’m going to need you to keep doing that. Telling me things. Even when they’re difficult.”

“I will.” I promise him.

“And I’m going to need-” He stops.

“What?”

He meets my eyes. “Time. To figure out what I’m actually capable of. What I can accept.”

I nod. But underneath the nod, something is afraid in a way I hadn’t anticipated. What if he can’t accept it? What if I’ve told him too much too fast and the honesty that was supposed to protect us is the thing that breaks us.

“Okay,” I reply. Because what else can I say?

He looks at me for a long moment, and for the first time in a long time, I’m not sure what he’s looking for. Then he reaches out and takes my hand-his hand, warm and deliberate, nothing involuntary about it—and holds it. Like he’s trying to replace Jaxon’s touch with his own.

I hold on tight.

That night, after Nicolai is asleep, I lie awake. I think about the question Jaxon asked me. What do you want, Skye?

Not the version I think others will accept. Not what would be easiest or what I’m supposed to want or what would hurt the fewest people. What do I actually, specifically want?

I lie in the dark and let the answer surface. It comes the way honest things come when you’ve been avoiding them – uncomfortable but no less true. Something you’ve known for a while finally allowed to be known.

I want both of them.

Not as a compromise or a consolation arrangement. Not because I can’t choose or because choosing feels cruel. But as a genuine answer to the question of what would make my life feel complete.

Nicolai, who chose me before the bond and built something with me that I will never not be grateful for, who sees me and values me and makes me feel like the entire point.

And Jaxon, who finally became the person he should have been, too late and also not too late, who has been slowly and painfully building himself into someone I might have loved from the beginning if he’d started earlier.

Both of them.

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I’m terrified of this conclusion. I’m also done pretending I haven’t reached it.

ress my hand to the mating mark on my shoulder. Still tender. I’m not ready to say it out loud yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever find the courage.

But lying here in the dark, I at least stop lying to myself.

Cara Anderson Author

Thank you for reading!

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