Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 283

Ch.53

Noah

I expel a very un-Alpha-like groan, closer to a whine, as I slam my car door and put it in drive. My weekly check-ins with Dr. Lukas are my least favorite part of my existence. I’d rather be doing almost anything else.

Sometimes it’s not so bad. She comes in, she shows me the panels, the numbers have held, we talk about symptom management, I leave. Efficient. Almost routine.

But for most of them, I don’t get that lucky. It’s almost as if the woman gets off on lecturing me. I didn’t get a lecture last time. I have a feeling I’m due.

Sure enough, from the moment she walks in and closes the door, she’s wearing that disapproving expression that tells me she’s preparing to hand me my ass, in a very professional manner, of course.

“Let’s look at the panels,” Her tone holds an exasperated quality, the verbal equivalent of rolling her eyes, as if she knows they’re fine and I’ll use that as an excuse not to take her seriously.

As predicted, my blood work is stable. I don’t even need her to read it to me-I’ve learned enough over the past months to understand what I’m looking at. The markers that were advancing before Cassandra arrived are no longer rising. The headaches and the temperature dysregulation are rare now too.

Ironically, when I do get a headache, it usually has something to do with the woman whose presence saves me from them otherwise. Apparently, I’m not immune to stress.

“The proximity variable is still significant.” Her use of formal language grates on my nerves.

“Yes, I’m aware. Don’t talk to me like you’re discussing a lab experiment, Sera.” I snap impatiently. “But…” I wave my hand for her to continue because I know there’s more she wants to say. Might as well get it over with.

She takes a calming breath and I almost smirk at her obvious attempt to keep from biting back at me.

“Her presence alone isn’t going to hold this off indefinitely, Noah.” She manages not to growl at me, but just barely. “I’ve been tracking the rate of slowing.” She sets the panels side by side-current, previous month, the month before that. “The curve is flattening.”

I look at the comparison. I can see it. I’d been seeing it and telling myself it was within normal variation. But when she lays it out for me this way, I’m forced to admit It’s anything but normal. It’s Goddess-damned concerning.

“Which means,” I grit out the words, my jaw clenched tightly.

“Which means the window is closing,” she states plainly. “Proximity buys time. It doesn’t replace the solution. Without a completed bond-fated or chosen the progression will resume.”

I stare at the panels for a moment longer, gathering the courage to ask the thing I desperately need an answer to

“How long?” I look her in the eye, daring her to lie to me.

She doesn’t want to answer directly. I can see the reluctance of a doctor who knows that timelines have their own kind of damage that six months becomes something you carry into every room you walk into.

“I need to know,” I say more forcefully.

“Months,” she sighs quietly, like the words themselves are fragile. “Not years.”

“Be. More. Specific.” I demand, clenching my fists to keep from shaking the answer out of her.

“I wish I could, Noah. I really do. My best guess? Six months, possibly. Maybe eight if the slowing holds at its current rate. After that-” She doesn’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t need to. I’ve read enough of the historical records to know what ‘after that’ looks like.

1/3

+15 Bonus

And if I bond Piper?” It’s not a fair question, but I ask it anyway.

The look she gives me straddles the line between aggravation and pity. “You know I can’t answer that with any certainty, Noah. I’m a doctor, not a research specialist. And even if I was, there isn’t enough data. One documented case with any number of unknown variables tell us nothing useful,” she says. Carefully. The way she always says it-making sure I hear the weight of it.” It could work. It could not.”

“I get it, doc. I got it the first hundred times you said it. I’m just asking for your opinion. If you had to guess, what are the odds bonding Piper will work?”

This time she does growl, tugging at her short blonde bob like she wants to pull it out. “I don’t have odds, Noah. I have one data point from sixty years ago. That’s basically nothing to go on.”

I nod sharply and get up to leave. I can tell when I’m fighting a losing battle. No matter how hard I push, she’s not going to tell me what I want to hear. How can she, when I don’t even know what that is?

“Noah,” she calls my name and I turn. “The longer you wait,” she says, “the fewer options you have.”

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