Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 196

Chapter 196

Nicolai

By mid-morning, Jaxon and I have made as much progress as we’re going to with the information we have and I’ve dispatched a few men, whose loyalties to the Woolf family have been tested by fire, to see if they can uncover

more.

I’m just about to take a break, go in search of some much needed quality time with my mate, when the issue of the Ironwood succession comes up. Some documentation requires attention and Jaxon brings it to me because it intersects with Woolf territory legal standing-Gianna has been handling both sides, but certain questions about Jaxon’s formal role here require my review.

We sit across from each other in the meeting room with the documents between us.

“The standing question is the one I can’t resolve without you,” he says. “If I’m here as-what I am here-there needs to be a formal designation. Otherwise I have no legal standing in Woolf territory at all. If something happens to you or Skye, I have no rights. Not to Benji, not to-” He stops. “It doesn’t need to be a position of any authority but it does need a name.”

“There’s an old pack designation,” I consider aloud, judging his reaction as I speak. “Not used in decades. Consort Alpha. It’s in the historical governance records-I had Dimitri pull it last week. It confers standing within the host pack’s governance structure without subsuming the Alpha’s own authority. It was designed for exactly this kind of situation-a wolf with Alpha status who affiliates with an established pack.”

“Does it still hold legal weight?” He questions.

“Yes. Old designations don’t expire.” I confirm. “It would make you formally part of Woolf pack governance. Not my subordinate. Not co-Alpha. Something lateral.”

“Consort Alpha,” he repeats, testing the title.

“It’s not a diminished title. It carries specific rights and responsibilities.” I elaborate.

“I see that.” He’s reading the document I slide to him. “I was looking at this last week. I just wasn’t sure if you’d offer it. And I thought it would be too presumptuous to ask.”

“And?” I smirk at him, liking that I can still keep him off balance.

“You offered it.” He smirks in return before gratitude takes over his features. “That means a lot to me.”

We return to the documentation. Thirty minutes of tedious, unglamorous work-questions about standing, about legal recognition, about what happens in various scenarios. The conversation is practical. Necessary. And Skye’s name doesn’t come up once,

Neither of us notices until it’s over and we’re putting the documents away. The silence that follows is comfortable, not stiff the way it used to be.

“Gianna should review the question about pack standing,” Jaxon says.

“Yes. I’ll have Dimitri arrange it.”

We return to our respective work. Neither says anything about what just happened but we both know this is becoming a partnership in more ways than one.

It’s late afternoon by the time I get a chance to leave my office for the first time today. I’m moving through the hallway near the garden door-heading toward the east wing, some business with Mikhail-when it hits me.

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Skye’s scent.

is is normal. She visits the garden daily, her scent in this hallway is often stronger than the traces she leaves in areas of the house she spends less time in. I’m so attuned to it now that I register it the way I register muy own name part of the very fabric of my being and essential to my very existence.

But… This is different. I stop and stand in the hallway, trying to understand what I’m smelling. Something in Skye’s scent has a quality that it didn’t have this morning. Something that changes the impression of it, adds layer that

I have to reach back in my memory to place it. Months ago during Skye’s pregnancy the hormone surge she had that presented like a mini heat. The strength of her scent in the days before it hit.

This is that. Unmistakably that, but… more. No, I think, telling myself maybe I’m imagining things. Then, Yes. There’s no denying exactly what this is.

And then I’m moving-east wing forgotten, Mikhail forgotten toward the garden where her scent is leading me

The garden is empty when I arrive. But her scent lingers everywhere she was here recently, within the last hour. But she’s not here now.

I go to the house. Find Rena. “Luna Skye?” Rena looks up from whatever she’s managing. “She left about an hour ago. Said she had an errand to run.”

“Alone?” Surely she wouldn’t leave Woolf territory in the middle of a mounting insurrection and definitely not so close to a heat.

“Yes, I believe so.” Rena replies, oblivious to my growing panic.

“Did she say where?” I phrase it as a question but my tone makes it a demand.

“No. Just an errand.” Rena reads something in my face and her expression becomes careful. “Is something wrong?

I’m already moving. I stand in the garden again with her scent in the air and I try to make sense of what’s happening.

She knows. She must know. She’s a wolf-she can smell it on herself as clearly as I can smell it in this garden. Which means she left knowing. Which means she chose not to tell us. Which means

My phone is out before I’ve decided to reach for it. Where are you? I watch the screen for a response. But one doesn’t come.

I take a deep breath, scenting the air again just to be sure my mind isn’t playing tricks on me. The smell in the garden is stronger than it should be for someone who’s been gone an hour. There’s only one explanation for that. Her heat is approaching. Soon.

She’s alone. She’s going into heat and she’s alone.

I send one more message not to her. Something’s wrong. Meet me now. Then I stare at the garden door, frozen in place.

Come home, I think at her through the bond. Wherever you went just come home.

My phone buzzes. Jaxon: What happened?

I’m already walking back inside.

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