Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 220

Chapter 220

Skye

In the days since my abduction and involuntary stay at the Savin wayhouse, I’ve fallen into a sort of watchful quiet. Maybe I just needed time to process the trauma or maybe I’m just adjusting to my new normal now that things are settled between Nicolai, Jaxon and I and I no longer have to worry and wonder what comes next:

Either way, it’s allowed me to notice things I might otherwise överlook. Like the way pack members who used to pause when I entered a room now continue their conversations. The way the administrative staff has stopped organizing themselves slightly differently when both my men are openly affectionate with me. The way Rena moves through the house with the settled ease of someone who has stopped waiting for the arrangement to resolve itself into something more familiar.

It hasn’t resolved into something familiar. That part will come with time. But it’s resolved into something real. And that seems to be enough.

The statement I wrote months ago, telling the pack the truth about the life I wanted to build here, did what Dimitri said it would-told people who I am. But the statement was just words. What shifted the pack wasn’t words.

It was showing up.

Doing the bare minimum was my default in Ironwood because I hated the lie Jaxon and I were selling. I didn’t realize I’d fallen into old habits when I first became Nicolai’s Luna until he said something. But I’m not selling anything here. Nicolai loves me and trusts me to be his Luna, his partner.

I’m in all the administrative meetings now. I help Dimitri deal with correspondence and have opinions about it and those opinions get incorporated, which is what the Luna role is supposed to be and was never quite able to be at Ironwood.

I mediate disputes and manage to make all parties feel heard and neither party feel fleeced, which Dimitri tells me afterward is rarer than it sounds. I attend every function when I’d normally only have attended one here and there, not because Nicolai asked me to be visible but because I am their Luna and I choose to.

Of course, there are still members who still have reservations. I know who they are. I don’t avoid them. I’m simply present-the same woman in the same room, week after week, doing the work-and I let time do what no words

can.

Not everyone has to be convinced. Enough of them have been.

Diana comes to visit a few weeks after my safe return. No doubt to see with her own eyes that I’m okay. My assurances during our weekly phone calls apparently weren’t sufficient.

She hugs me first. Long and tight, with the fierceness of someone who has been worried and is relieved but she thankfully doesn’t make a production of either.

“You look good,” she says, pulling back to look at me. “Really good.”

“I feel good,” I say, a bit surprised to realize it’s the truth.

“Mm.” She reads my face the way she always has-satisfied with what she sees. “Yes. You do.” She touches the mating mark on my shoulder, visible above my collar. Then the other one, Jaxon’s, on the other side. Her expression moves through several things. “Both of them,” she says softly.

“Both of them,” I confirm.

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She nods. Doesn’t say anything else about it yet.

Where is he?” she asks.

She means Jaxon. Not because she doesn’t know Nicolai-she knows Nicolai, has met him, has formed her views -but because Nicolai is the choice she understands. Jaxon is the one she’s still deciding about.

I take her to the garden where Jaxon is playing with Benji. She goes straight to them before I can come up with a plan to keep them from baiting each other the way they normally do. All I can do is follow and hope for the best.

Jaxon looks up when he hears us coming. He reads the situation immediately-he’s gotten very good at reading situations—and he sets Benji down in the portable play area that’s been set up near the roses and stands.

“Diana,” he nods in greeting.

“Jaxon.” She looks at him for a long moment. Not hostile. Not warm. Just the shrewd assessment of a woman who has all the relevant information and is deciding what to do with it.

“You refused,” she says. “When I came to you. About Dalton.”

“Yes.” He admits, managing a sheepish expression.

“You let my son sit in that prison for-”

“Yes.” He doesn’t flinch. “I know what I did. I know why it was wrong.” He holds her gaze. “I’m not going to explain it in a way that makes it smaller. I was the kind of man who made that choice out of spite.”His eyes flick to me, full of regret. “I’m not that man anymore and I’m aware that me saying so doesn’t undo what it cost you.”

Diana watches him for a moment, a look of concentration on her face like she’s trying to decide if his apology is genuine.

“You hurt her,” Diana accuses next, completely changing tacks. Not about Dalton anymore. About me.

“Yes,” Jaxon admits that too. “I know.”

“For three years.” She doesn’t let him off easily.

“Yes.”

“And now?”

He looks her in the eye, unblinkingly. “Now I’m trying to be worth the trouble,” he tells her. “I’m aware there’s no amount of being good now that cancels what I did then. I’m just-“He pauses. “Trying to build something that she deserves for the next thirty years instead of spending energy trying to rewrite the last three.”

Diana looks at him. Long enough that I resist the impulse to fill the silence.

“Good,” she says finally. “Don’t stop.”

She turns to Benji. “And this,” she says, crouching down to his level with the ease of someone who has always known how to be with children, “must be the famous Benjamin.”

Benji looks up from his fascinating object. Considers Diana. Holds out the object-a soft block that he’s apparently decided is diplomatic currency. Diana accepts it with the gravity it deserves.

“Very handsome,” she gushes. “He has Marco’s brow.”

“Please don’t tell Jaxon that,” I groan.

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Jaxon, behind us: “I heard that.”

Dana almost smiles.

And just like that, the past is the past.

For all of us.

Cara Anderson Author

Thank you for reading!

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