Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 186

Chapter 186

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Nicolai’s been in a meeting allahabad ay, but of course he comes out earlier than expected. He appears in the sitting room doorway and takes in what’s happening. Jaxon and me leaning in, both of us with every intention of reenacting our last kiss.

His face does something and it takes everything in me not to jump back like a girl whose parents caught her with a boy they disapprove of.

Then I notice it’s not the look of jealousy I’ve learned to read-the tight-jaw, controlled-breath version. This is something subtler. The expression of someone watching the person they love in an intimate situation with someone else and still deciding how he feels about it.

He recovers immediately. His shoulders relax and he strolls further into the room. Says something normal≤asks how Benji’s been today, mentions something from his meeting. Joins the conversation for a few minutes with the practiced ease of a man who manages everything. But I saw it.

That evening, when we’re in our room and finally alone, I decide he needs to know that whatever he tried to hide from me, he wasn’t fast enough.

“I saw your face earlier,” I blurt out as we’re crawling into bed.

He sighs, like he was hoping it wouldn’t come up but expected it would anyway. “I know you did.” He’s sitting at the edge of the bed. Looking at the floor for a moment. “I know I agreed to this. And you weren’t doing anything wrong. I’m just… still working on it.”

“I believe you.” I crawl across the bed to sit beside him. “But I want to know what you need from me when it happens. Not how I can stop it from happening-I think we’re past that point and we’ll never move forward if Jaxon and I can’t be together for fear you might walk around the corner. But I want to give you what you need to make this easier. I want you there too, always.”

He’s quiet for a moment but he takes my hand and pulls it into his lap.

“I need to know that you see me in those moments,” he says finally. “And don’t look away.” He glances at me sideways. “Don’t stop what you’re doing to spare my feelings. That’s worse. But I don’t want to feel like I’m intruding either.”

“Okay,” I say, climbing into his lap. “That’s easy to do. Because you’re never intruding.”

“It caught me off guard,” he says. “Not because you were doing anything wrong. Because you were comfortable and unguarded and-” He pauses. “That’s actually what I want for you. But it’s also the thing I’ve always prided myself on, that you could be comfortable and unguarded with me in a way you never could with him. And now you are and I… just need a moment to reconcile that sometimes.”

“I can give you the moment,” I breathe against his lips.

“I know.” He smiles and puts his arms around me, “Thank you. In fact, I’d like to show you how thankful I am if you let me.”

I accept his offer, pulling my nightgown off and flinging it to the floor, then attacking his lips with mine. And that’s the last I think about anything other than the feel of his body moving against mine for the rest of the night.

And when I wake up the next morning, it’s with a renewed sense of determination.

This arrangement between the three of us makes complete sense to me when I’m sitting quietly enough.And I

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realize, the problem isn’t ours, it’s the world we live in. A world that doesn’t understand what we have, what we

1. And the world, given no language, supplies its own.

I’ve been waiting for the solution to appear-for some clarity about what to call this, how to describe it, what framework makes it legible to the pack and the allies and the wider world that has opinions about all of it. I’m done waiting.

I make a decision, here in the quiet of the morning while everyone else still sleeps. I’m going to stop waiting for language to be handed to me and start having the conversations that build toward it.

Whatever we name this, we name it ourselves. Whatever we decide this is, we decide it together. Because this is our life. Ours to name, no one else.

Diana calls a short while later. She calls regularly now-we’ve rebuilt this, my relationship with her, into something genuine. I answer, glad to hear her voice. But I can tell from the first three words that something is wrong.

“I heard something,” she announces, and I can tell from her tone, whatever it is has her worried.

“Tell me.” I demand.

She tells me there’s a rumor circulating in the pack community-not just Woolf territory or Ironwood like we thought, but the wider world, through the networks that carry information between allied packs like water finding its level.

The specifics are vague enough to be untraceable. It could be anyone who started it. But the story is precise enough to understand it’s been constructed with a specific purpose in mind. It’s not sympathetic. It’s meant to destroy.

Of course, this version of the story makes me the problem. A woman who couldn’t be satisfied. Who kept her former mate in the household while newly mated to another. Who is-Diana doesn’t say the word, but she doesn’t have to-unstable. Not someone building something unprecedented. Someone who doesn’t know what she wants and collects men while she figures it out.

Someone neither man can safely claim with their reputations intact. No, this rumor is designed specifically to ensure I end up alone.

I listen to the whole thing. Then I take stock of it for a moment.

The old version of me-the one who spent three years managing everyone else’s comfort while ignoring her own -would have felt shame first and anger somewhere much further down. What I feel now is the old familiar anger, arrived before the shame, which means something has changed.

I’m not angry at Diana, I’m angry at the world that constructs a narrative about someone based on the outline of their choices without any concern for the people who actually have to live with those choices. That looks at what I’ve built and what it cost me and what it keeps costing me every day, and decides to reduce it to a punchline about an unstable woman.

“What do you want to do about it?” Diana asks.

I think about Nicolai asking me to be visible. About Dimitri telling me it isn’t performance, it’s showing people something real. About the decision I just made to stop waiting for the world to catch up and start writing our own script.

“I don’t know yet,” I answer. “But I’m done letting other people define who I am and what 1 get to have in life.”

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“Good,” she says. “It’s about time.”

Cara Anderson Author

Thank you for reading!

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