Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 259

Ch. 29

Noah

I have a date. Dinner with Piper. I’ve been looking forward to it and dreading it in equal measure. Excited because I genuinely want to connect with her, to want someone who isn’t Cassandra. Dreading it because Cassandra is the elephant in the room I’m not sure how to deal with yet.

The restaurant I chose is in the pack’s commercial district-good food, familiar, the kind of place where neither of us has to work at the atmosphere. And more importantly, not so far away from Cassandra that I’ll end up with a debilitating headache that ruins the whole night.

She’s at the table when I arrive, already with water and the menu and the easy quality she carries everywhere.

“You look like you’ve had a week,” she says when I sit down.

“Is it that obvious?” I chuckle at her brazen honesty.

“Only to me,” she smiles softly. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Territorial disputes. Council disagreements. The usual.” I don’t mention the real problem.

“The Reeves thing?”

“The Reeves thing is handled,” I barely keep the growl from my tone. “The thing that replaced it is less handled.”

She laughs. “Is that how it works? You solve one thing and another thing moves in?”

“That’s exactly how it works,” I nod. “Nobody tells you that before you take the Alpha role.”

“Jaxon didn’t warn you?”

“Jaxon’s version of preparation was ‘you’ll figure it out.’ He wasn’t wrong. He was also not helpful.” She laughs again-full, easy,real.

The dinner is good. She asks good questions and listens to the answers and offers her own without waiting to be asked. She tells me about a conflict she’s navigating in the wellness program she coordinates-two pack members who’ve decided their dispute needs to be aired in her meetings rather than resolved between themselves.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“I made them work together on the quarterly report,” she says. “Nothing builds reluctant cooperation like shared administrative suffering.”

“That’s actually good management.” She’d make a good Luna, I think to myself.

“I have my moments.” She tilts her head. “You’re better tonight.”

“Better than what?”

“Better than the last few weeks. You’ve seemed-” She considers. “Weighed down. Like you’re carrying something heavy.”

She meets my gaze steadily, waiting patiently for me to decide on a response.

“Nothing I can’t handle.” I go with the less is more approach: “Tonight’s company doesn’t hurt either.” I add with a broad smile.

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“You’d say that either way.” She smiles back anyway.

oesn’t mean it’s not true.”

She shakes her head, still grinning. “Okay. You don’t have to tell me.” She picks up her menu. “But I’m asking. For when you’re ready.”

I pick up my menu too, surprised to find I’m actually having a good time and happy to be here with her. This could work, I think. But only if her bite halts the disease.

I don’t worry about that now.

After dinner, I invite Piper back for a nightcap. It seemed a natural extension of the evening, the conversation still flowing easily between us. We’re enjoying our coffee and she’s chatting away about something when I smell it.

Cassandra’s scent in the hallway. Still a distance away but coming closer. I know it’s her before she’s anywhere near the kitchen door, her scent burned so deeply into my brain I couldn’t forget it if I wanted to

I don’t think, just react, making a decision I’m not proud of. I scoot closer to Piper and pull her into my lap. She looks up at me, something questioning in her expression-and I kiss her.

Just a brush of our lips. Soft, affectionate. Piper doesn’t question it. She kisses me back, a contented hum in the back of her throat.

I’m aware, through the bond, of the exact moment Cassandra reaches the kitchen doorway. I’m aware of the exact moment she stops. I don’t look. I just keep kissing Piper.

She doesn’t enter, doesn’t interrupt. But she doesn’t leave immediately either. Instead, she watches us for a minute before her footsteps retreat.

Piper pulls back, smiling. “What was that for?”

“Does there have to be a reason?” I fix a wobbly smile in place.

“No,” she shakes her head. “Definitely not.”

We finish our coffee then say goodnight. I walk her out and she kisses me again at her car.

“This was good,” she says.

“Yes,” I agree. “It was. Let’s do it again soon.”

She waves, a huge grin on her face as she drives away. I watch her go, in no hurry to go back inside.

When I finally do return to the Alpha house, I don’t go through the kitchen. I take the other corridor, the longer way, the route that doesn’t require me to pass the place where I knew Cassandra was standing. Because I don’t want to smell her.

I know her scent. I know what distress does to it-the sour edge that registers whether I want it to or not. I know what I smelled when I kissed Piper and I’m angry about it.

I’m angry that I staged something for her benefit. I’m angry that I used Piper-who deserves better than being a prop in something she doesn’t know she’s in-to make a point to a woman who has no claim on anything I do.

I’m angry that the point mattered enough to make.

I’m angry that I sat in my own kitchen kissing a woman I’m genuinely fond of and was aware, the whole time, of exactly where Cassandra was standing.

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Ch 29

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I try to force those thoughts from my mind and go to sleep but sleep doesn’t come. It’s not because the room is

oo cold like it was weeks ago. Not because my head hurts too bad or any of the reasons I couldn’t sleep before she came back.

No, I lie in the dark and think about the distress in her scent and the retreat of her footsteps. I think about what it means that I noticed. I think about what she’s doing for me and doesn’t even know it, the way these things are related to each other and to her presence in this house.

I think about Piper’s words from earlier, “you’d say that either way.” She wasn’t wrong.

I’m angry, I decide, because Cassandra hurt me and then she came back and the bond is using her nearness to slow my deterioration and she doesn’t even know she’s doing it, and somewhere in that tangle of things I staged a kiss for an audience that had no right to be there.

That makes me angry too. At myself, mostly.

Mostly.

Cara Anderson Author

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