Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 177

Chapter 177

Nicolai

That night, alone in my office while Skye sleeps-I sat with her until she drifted off, just watching her sleep calming something in me that desperately needs to be calmed right now-I do the thing I do with problems that don’t have solutions.

I sit and drink my best whiskey until the solution becomes clear.

I wanted to give Skye a certain kind of life. The life I built here. The estate, the pack, running it together as equal partners, Benji, the mating bond. A life where she was safe and valued and finally, conclusively chosen.

I still want that life. The question is whether that life can contain what it apparently contains now. Another Alpha/

I think about Benji. I keep thinking about Benji-this is becoming a pattern. Using my son as the model, which is either wisdom or avoidance and probably some of both.

Benji has two fathers. Not in the conventional sense. In the sense that two men who love him have figured out, through considerable friction and adjustment, how to coexist in his daily life in ways that serve him. It works. Not perfectly-there are still moments, still the residual friction of two Alphas in the same space-but it works because both of us decided it would. 1

Can the same principle extend to sharing a wife? Can two Alphas who love the same woman decide that it works- that the arrangement works, the unprecedented arrangement with no etiquette and no precedent and a world that’s going to have opinions-and build something that actually does? 1

I don’t know. I know it requires something from me that I wasn’t planning on providing. I know I said I would provide it. But I’m finding out what that costs. And everyday, it seems to cost a little more.

Dimitri is in the kitchen when I come down for water. “I need to say something out loud,” I tell him.

“Then say it.”

“I’m jealous.” I sit at the counter. “When they’re in the same room. When the bond does the thing I can feel from across the space.” I look at him. “It’s not going away.”

“No,” Dimitri smirks. “It won’t.”

“How do I manage something that isn’t going to go away?” I huff.

He raises his eyebrow, clearly finding my question ridiculous. “You don’t manage it,” he chides. “You feel it. You tell her. And you keep choosing her anyway.”

“That’s a considerable amount of ongoing discomfort. You know I don’t do well with discomfort. I prefer to eliminate the source altogether. That’s obviously not an option here.”

He frowns at me and I immediately know I’m about to be schooled by him. “Skye’s been doing it for months, you know. Feeling things that are complicated. Telling you about them. Choosing you anyway.” He meets my eyes. ” That’s been the whole arrangement. Honesty and choosing. She’s been practicing it longer than you have. Maybe it’s your turn to give it a try.”

“That’s not a comfortable observation,” I retort.

“No,” Dimitri agrees. “It isn’t.” Then he goes back to whatever he was doing, effectively ending my lesson on the

matter.

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I sit at the counter for a while longer, letting myself feel the jealousy. Just-feel it, the texture of it, the way it

hurns in my gut, then decide that it doesn’t run the decision.

The decision is already made. I’m going to keep making it. Everyday.

I just didn’t realize how soon that decision would be challenged once again.

That afternoon, I receive a call from a pack Alpha from the eastern territories. Nominally an ally-we’ve done business together for years, maintained the kind of relationship that requires maintenance rather than one that has genuine warmth behind it.

“Nicolai.” His voice is diplomatic. “Congratulations on your mating. Your new mate sounds exceptional.”

“She is,” I reply, a smile spreading over my face.

“I understand she has a son. From her previous mating.” He prods.

“Yes.” I confirm, my tone much colder than moments ago.

“And her former mate is-” He pauses, almost as if he finds his next words distasteful. “Still in residence? At your estate?”

Here it is.

“He is,” My tone is icy now. “He’s an active presence in his son’s life.”

“Of course. That’s admirable.” The diplomatic tone persists, but something underneath it has shifted. “I’m hearing things, Nicolai. About your arrangement. About Jaxon Vale in your estate. About your new mate and her former mate and-”

“You’re hearing things,” I grit out, my tone deadly quiet, “that are none of your concern.’

“My concern is that the Woolf family’s reputation for-”

“I’d stop there,” I warn, “if I were you.”

The line is silent for a moment. “Of course,” he agrees wisely. “I apologize if I overstepped.”

“You did,” I growl. “Let’s not do that again.”

The call ends.I set down the phone and sit in the silence of my office. This will not be the last call like this one. The world is starting to notice. And the world has opinions about what it notices, and those opinions travel in channels designed to make them land where they can do the most damage.

I’ve been managing my reputation in this world for fifteen years. I’ve never had to manage it in a situation that looks, from the outside, like weakness.

A man who cannot keep his mate to himself. That’s the frame they’ll use. That’s the sentence my enemies will build from the information my allies are already gathering.

I contemplate this. And then I consider something else: I knew this was coming. I said yes anyway. So did Skye. And so did Jaxon, in his own complicated way.

We’re building something the world doesn’t understand, and the world is going to push back, and I’m going to have to decide-repeatedly, not just once-whether I’m the man who lets the world’s frame determine his life.

I’ve never been that man. I’m not going to start now.

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But I’d be lying if I said the call didn’t cost something.

C

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Cara Anderson

Author

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