Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 170

Chapter 170

Nicolai

Life as head of the Woolf fatnily, Alpha of all its territories, CEO of the family business, has forced me to prove what I’m made of on a daily basis.

I’ve walked into rooms where the outcome was uncertain and the stakes were permanent. I’ve made decisions that couldn’t be unmade, in the presence of people who would have loved to watch me fail or even be the orchestrator of it, and I held to those decisions without flinching because flinching wasn’t an option.

I have never been tested the way I’m being tested now.

By a woman I love. A bond I chose. And the honest confrontation of whether love means what I’ve been saying it

means.

The abstract is easy. I told Jaxon: I would rather share her than lose her. And I meant it when I said it. It felt like the true thing-the generous, certain, chosen-freely thing that real love is supposed to be.

The concrete is different.

The concrete is: Skye held Jaxon’s hand and didn’t want to let go. And told me about it, which I asked her to do, and which I received with my jaw tight and my chest doing something uncomfortable that I am not going to examine in front of her.

The concrete is: there are two bonds now. My mate has two bonds. On our mating day, a new bond snapped into place between her and the man I’ve been managing to tolerate living in the west wing of my estate, under the same roof as my mate, for months, and I said I would rather share her in an abstract conversation and now I have to find out if I actually meant it.

The truth is, I don’t know.

That’s what I’m grappling with. For the first time in a very long time, I genuinely don’t know what I’m going to do. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this.

Dimitri finds me in my office. He doesn’t ask how I’m doing-he can read how I’m doing from the door-just sits down and waits.

“She’s going to tell me what she wants,” I tell him. “Eventually.”

“Yes,” he agrees. “And probably soon, if I know her the way I think I do. She won’t want to leave either of you worrying over this for too long.”

“And I should be able to offer her the same. When she tells me, I need to have already decided what I’m going to say.” I take a breath before admitting the rest. “I know what I should say.”

“I know.” He states. “Nicolai Woolf always knows what he should say. The question is, do you know what you’re actually going to say? Or are you saying you know because that’s just what you do?”

I should have expected this from him. “The second one,” I admit.

“Then figure out the first one.” He stands, which means he’s delivered what he came to deliver and considers the rest my problem to solve. “For what it’s worth-and you can ignore this if you’d like-you’ve been building toward an unconventional life since you let a pregnant divorced woman into your estate.” He moves toward the door. “You didn’t do the expected thing then. You did the right thing.” He pauses. “Maybe unconventional doesn’t have to mean wrong.”

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He leaves me. But his words don’t.

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Dmitri is right, as usual. But before I can figure out what to say to my mate, I have to be honest with myself. And that honestly means facing the thing I’ve been avoiding…

Jaxon Vale.

Not the man from a year ago-the controlling, cold, jealous Alpha who spent three years destroying the woman I love and expected forgiveness the moment he understood what he’d done. That man I’ve had very little difficulty dismissing.

I’m talking about the man he is now.

The one who called Gianna and offered to do the bond rejection voluntarily, without being asked, without forcing Skye to bear that burden. Who said to me, in our conversation: I don’t want to undo what you’ve built with her. I love her too much for that. Who has moved away from his pack and into uncomfortable proximity to his ex mate’s new husband because Benji needed his father present every day.

That man. Nicolai Woolf, who doesn’t dismiss things he can’t afford to dismiss, has to sit with the fact that Jaxon

Vale has become someone he can’t entirely hate.

Not a threat. Not an antagonist. Something more complicated. Something that, in different circumstances, in a different story, might have been-not a friend. That’s too far. But something that isn’t an enemy.

This is uncomfortable. I force myself to ponder it anyway. And it leads me to the conclusion that I’ve been asking the wrong question.

I’ve been asking, Can I share her? That framing puts me at the center. Makes it about what I’m capable of, what I’m willing to tolerate, what I can manage.

Here is the right question: What does she need, and am I actually willing to provide it?

I’ve been saying-for months, in various phrasing-that I chose her before the bond. That love means wanting what’s best for her. That I’m not a man who loves someone and then places conditions on what that love will cover.

Now, I get to find out whether any of that was true. When it costs something real. When the abstract principle

meets the concrete situation.

I think about what she needs. Not what would be easiest for me. Not what I can handle. What she actually needs, specifically her, the woman I know better now than I’ve ever known anyone.

She needs to not be forced into a choice that leaves something unfinished. She needs to be able to look at what she feels-all of it, including the parts that are inconvenient and complicated and not what anyone planned- and tell the truth about it.

She needs permission to not have it all figured out yet. And she needs the people who love her to hold their own wants loosely enough that she can breathe.

The answer I arrive at, slowly and with considerably more difficulty than I’d like, is yes. I meant what I said. All of it. But I also know it will come with a price.

One I’ll have to figure out how to pay.

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