Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 238

Ch. 10

Cassandra

We stay just long enough to let Liam say goodbye to Vera. She holds him for a long time and he pats her back with the solemn comfort of a child who has learned that adults sometimes need this.

“You’ll call,” Vera says to me. It’s not quite a question.

“Yes, of course.” I reassure her

She looks at me with the eyes of a woman who has lost most of what she had and is no longer all that certain about what she can afford to trust. “He talks about you,” she says finally. “Every day.”

It’s a parting gift she’s giving me. One I don’t have a response to. Not one that’s equal to it, anyway. So I just no and pull her into a hug before we leave.

The drive back starts out quieter than the drive there. Which is disturbing since I was alone then and now Liam is with me

He is buckled into the back seat, in the car seat Vera gave me, because I didn’t even have that for my own son, and he’s looking out the window with the focused attention he gives to everything. Watching things go by. Processing.

I watch the road and try not to dwell on the fact my four-year-old son has nothing to say to me. Finally, somewhere around twenty minutes out, he finally speaks.

“Are we going somewhere safe?” He asks, and I file the question away as one more thing my baby should never have to worry about.

I look at him in the rearview mirror. His face is serious, not scared. Liam’s had plenty of reasons to be scared in his short life but he doesn’t seem to think this is one of them. Which is also something he shouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn. He just waits patiently for an honest answer. Watching me the way he watches everything.

I could tell him yes. I could come up with a story that’s mostly true-Ashford is safe in the immediate sense, no one is threatening us there. But he’s asking something more specific than that and he’ll know if I’m answering the smaller question.

I can’t tell him I don’t know. He’s four and he’s already had too much uncertainty. “I’m going to find us somewhere safe. I promise.”

He looks at me in the mirror for a moment, deciding whether or not to believe me.

“Okay,” he shrugs and goes back to the window. Accepting this with a trust I haven’t earned and am going to spend whatever it takes to deserve.

He falls asleep an hour from Ashford. I carry him in when we arrive-he’s dead weight, the heaviness of a sleeping child-and lay him on the narrow bed in my narrow tent and get in beside him because there’s nowhere

else.

He rolls toward me in his sleep. Presses his small hand flat against my ribs, almost like he’s making sure I’m still there. I snuggle him closer and lie awake, just holding him.

At some point, my thoughts shift from the events of the day and the joy of holding my son again to doing the math. Geraldine’s patience has limits as she reminded me again today, plainly. Reliable means present, she said. A child in my room, too young to look after himself, does not exactly scream reliable.

Him being here changes what I can offer and what the settlement can accommodate. I’ve never had any illusions

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about my place here. It’s always been a precarious arrangement and today I feel that arrangement fraying. So Where does that leave me?

No pack. No money beyond what I earn week to week. No standing. No safety net. One child, four years old, who just lost his father, and who is sleeping with his hand on my ribs to confirm I’m not gone again.

I go through every option. The other border settlements I know of-I’ve heard things, from Garrett and others, about what’s available. The pickings are thin and my reputation as the woman who tried to con the Ironwood Alpha isn’t an asset.I’d choose.

My father’s pack-Marco and Diana’s territory. I think about this longer than I want to. Marco would take Liam. Diana would take Liam. The question is what they’d take me as, if they’d take me at all after what I did to Skye.

And I know the answer. Even if they let me stay, which is unlikely, I’d always be the difficult daughter, the one who made problems, the one who never quite did things the way she should have. I’d spend every day living inside someone else’s assessment of who I’ve been.

Skye. I think about Skye even longer. She’s with Nicolai now-or so I’ve heard from the Ashford pack’s information channels, the way information moves between packs. She has a life that is hers. I don’t know if she’d take my call. I don’t know if she should.

Other options. I go through them and quickly eliminate them. Not that there are many.

What’s left is the thing I’ve been refusing to look at too closely. I won’t look at it tonight. I don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with that now.

Liam’s hand presses tighter against my ribs. I cover it with mine, breathing him in and letting his sweet scent soothe me.

The old me would have refused to consider any option that offered me or my son anything less than the absolute best life has to offer. But I’ve long since stopped refusing to face the truth, that a charmed life isn’t meant for me.

For tonight, that’s all I’ve got.

Cara Anderson

Author

Thank you for reading!

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