Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 234

Ch. 6

Noah

Dr. Lukas comes back much sooner than I expect her to. She sits across from me in the waiting room rather than gesturing me back to her office. And her face does the thing.

I’ve known her for six years. I know her professional expression and her thinking expression and her delivering- difficult-information-to-patients expression. What her face is doing right now falls firmly in the fourth category the one I don’t have a name for. It’s the expression someone wears when they’re still deciding how to say something and probably won’t know how it’s going to come out until the words leave their mouth.

“I want to run the panel again.” She seems a little startled by her own choice of words.

“What are you seeing?” I push, wishing she’d just cut to the chase. “You’ve never asked to rerun tests before. Why can’t you just tell me now?”

“I want to confirm before I say anything.” Her voice is strained and I can’t help the panic churning in my gut. There’s a chance the results are wrong, contaminated or something. I’d hate to give you inaccurate information.”

I watch her carefully for a minute, trying to get a read on what she’s holding back. But whatever she was feeling when she first sat down, she’s shuttered her expression now. Her face is a blank slate.

“Okay, fine. Run the second panel,” I huff, giving in.

She nods then timidly adds, “Um… I’m also going to request a specialist’s review. Dr. Carver at the Northern Medical Collective-he has experience with… difficult interpretations. I want his eyes on this.” She avoids my eyes, giving me no chance to argue. “I’ll have results in a week.”

“Goddess, Sera!” I choke out, reverting to her first name in complete disregard for the professional manner of our meeting. But I’m not just another patient. I’m a friend. And more than that, her Alpha. “A specialist? Now you’ve really got me worried. What aren’t you telling me?”

“Noah, calm down.” She hushes me, looking around to see who’s listening. “It’s just a precaution. I promise.”

“Uh-huh. Sure.” I can’t keep that sarcasm out of my tone. I’m not sure what she’s not telling me but whatever it is, it’s not good. “Do what you need to do, doc.”

I rise a little too quickly, almost knocking my hair over in the process. I should probably feel bad about stomping to the exit and slamming the door behind me too, but I’m too pissed to care at the moment.

I go back to the Alpha house and spend the rest of the day doing my job, anything to distract me from thinking about that concerned look on her face. Or worse yet, the blank look that all but confirmed she’s hiding something from me.

I don’t entirely succeed in distracting myself. Not the rest of that day or the five days that follow. The wait is agonizing.

Six days go by before I hear from her again. Six days of going through the motions, pretending I’m not slowly losing my mind, torturing myself with all the what-ifs.

“Can you come in? At the end of the day, when the office is quiet?” She asks cryptically when she finally does call. And fuck if that isn’t ominous.

“I’ll be there at five o’clock,” I say, wondering how the fuck I’m going to make it until then without buckling under the stress.

1/2

She’s already waiting for me at the front desk when I arrive, two chairs set up across from each other. She doesn’t even bother taking me back to the examination room. The setup is more like two old friends just sitting down to have a cup of coffee and a conversation. I understand immediately that whatever she’s about to tell me is the kind of thing she thinks requires that. A friend.

“I ran the panel twice,” she prefaces, as if I’d doubt she was thorough. “Dr. Carver reviewed both sets of results. He and I both found the results are consistent.” She holds the folder that presumably contains said result, but doesn’t open it. “What I’m about to tell you is rare, which is why I had to be sure. Rare enough that it’s not in standard pack medical education. Historical records exist but they’re not widely circulated. There usually just isn’

a need.”

“Just tell me, Sera.” I insist, just shy of growling the words.

“The markers I ran are associated with a specific condition documented in wolves who have formally rejected a fated mate bond.” She meets my eyes, and it’s the pity I see in them that almost breaks me. “Rejected Mate/ Syndrome. The blood work, combined with your reported symptoms, is consistent with early-stage onset.”

The office is very quiet, unnaturally quiet, while I try to process the information. I’ve heard of RMS before. Everybody has. But no one believes it’s real, just a fable passed down through the generations to highlight the sacredness of the mate bond.

No, this has to be something else. I just can’t imagine what.

“Is this your fucked up way of telling me I’m going to die?”

Cara Anderson Author

Thank you for reading!

104

Comments

Support

Share

2/2

ཨ་ཊ།༽

+15 8gnus