Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 2

Skye

I can’t breathe.

The boy—this child who just called my husband daddy—is looking up at Jaxon with complete adoration. And Jaxon… Jaxon isn’t denying it. Isn’t pushing him away. He’s just standing there with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, watching me with those cold gray eyes like he’s waiting for me to catch up to a joke everyone else already understands.

“I don’t…” My voice cracks. “I don’t understand.”

Cassandra moves then, sweeping forward to place herself between me and the boy. Protective. Maternal. Everything I’ve apparently failed to be.

“Skye, I’m so sorry.” Her voice is soft, pained. “I never wanted you to find out like this. Jaxon was supposed to tell you before the meeting today.”

“Tell me what?” The words are barely audible. “Tell me what, Cassandra?”

She exchanges another look with Jaxon—and god, I hate that. Hate how easily they communicate. Hate how I’m always on the outside looking in at my own life.

“This is Liam,” she says gently, resting a hand on the boy’s head. “He’s… he’s Jaxon’s son.”

The floor drops out from under me. I grab the edge of the desk, my knuckles going white.

“That’s not possible.” But even as I say it, I’m looking at the boy’s face. That jawline. Those eyes—steel-gray, just like his father’s. “That’s not—you left four years ago. You were already gone when we—”

“Before that,” Cassandra interrupts. “Before Jaxon found out you were his mate. We were together, Skye. Surely you remember.”

I did remember. I remembered watching them at pack functions, convinced they were perfect for each other. Remembered the night of my eighteenth birthday when Jaxon’s scent had hit me like a physical blow, and I’d realized with devastating clarity that the Alpha heir I’d crushed on for years was mine. My fated mate.

And that he’d been sleeping with my sister.

“You knew?” I turn to Jaxon, and my voice is rising now, hysteria creeping in at the edges. “You knew about him this whole time?”

“No.” His answer is clipped. “Cassandra only told me when she came back. A month ago.”

A month ago.

That phrase keeps echoing in my head, each repetition driving the knife deeper.

“I’m so sorry,” Cassandra says again, and if I didn’t know her better, I might believe the tears gathering in her eyes. “I never wanted to interfere with your marriage. I left because I knew Jaxon had found his true mate, and I didn’t want to stand in the way of that. I raised Liam alone, tried to build a life for us away from here.”

“Then why come back?” The question tears out of me.

“Liam was sick.” Her voice breaks convincingly. “He needed treatment that only Jaxon’s connections could provide. Our bloodline… you know how complicated wolf genetics can be. I didn’t have a choice.”

I look at Jaxon, desperate for him to contradict her. To tell me this is all some horrible misunderstanding. But he just stands there, stone-faced, and I realize with sickening clarity that he believes her. Every word.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask him. “I’m your wife. Your mate. Why didn’t you—”

“Because today’s meeting with the elders is to announce it,” he cuts in, his tone maddeningly calm. “I needed to handle the political aspects first. The pack needs to know that despite this complication, you’ll remain as Luna.”

A laugh bubbles up in my throat, sharp and painful. “It doesn’t change anything? You have a son with my sister, and you think that doesn’t change anything?”

“What about what’s right for me?” My voice breaks. “I’m your mate, Jaxon. Your fated mate. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“You’ve been back for a month.” I’m shaking now, rage and heartbreak warring inside me. “A month of secret meetings. A month of decisions made behind my back. A month of you two playing happy family while I trained myself into exhaustion trying to be the Luna he needed, not knowing I was already replaced.”

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