The Second Chance Of The Rejected Moon (Celine and Bastian) novel Chapter 187

Chapter 187

own and lift my head to look directly into his eyes.

“Is that a threat?”

“You’re going to test my trust. How do you plan to do that, Bastian? Johan doesn’t decide what place he has in our family. That depends on me and the bond that exists between us.”

Bastian stands and extends a hand toward me. I take it and let him help me to my feet. His hand remains wrapped around mine, but before doing anything else, my gaze drifts toward the bed, where Oana sleeps peacefully beneath the sheets, her tiny hands curled beside her face.

I approach her and carefully take her into my arms. Her little body still holds that soft warmth of a newborn, and she shifts/ slightly against my chest before falling deeply asleep again. I take the small knitted pink blanket Sonia left on the bed and arrange it around her, covering her delicately while leaving her face uncovered.

As I adjust the blanket around her tiny body, a question crosses my mind. Did he even hold her while I was in the shower? He never told me. I never had the chance to ask him and, for some reason, I never thought to do it either. Bastian waits by the door and, when I reach him, the three of us leave the room.

Everything looks the same. The long, carpeted, cold hallways, the stone walls illuminated by the lamps, and the same guards standing at their posts, motionless and alert to any movement inside the castle. Yet, as I walk with my daughter against my chest, I have the strange feeling that I’m walking through a familiar place that somehow no longer feels the same. Everything has felt different since I returned. Maybe I’m the one who has changed. Maybe it’s because I’m walking through these same hallways with a daughter in my arms and a second partner I still don’t know how to fit into my life. Bastian remains silently at my side until we reach the main corridor.

The silence ends in the worst possible way.

“All I’m saying is that I’ll allow him to stay close to you. Close enough to make sure you don’t suffer in any way, but you will not consummate that bond, and I will not allow him to live under our roof.”

I stop and slowly turn toward him. Bastian continues walking for a couple of steps before realizing I’m no longer beside him. He stops and turns toward me with a calmness that is almost insulting, as if he had just told me it was going to rain

tomorrow.

His posture is completely relaxed, but there is something about it that puts me on alert. His shoulders remain firm, his jaw is tense, and his hands rest at his sides without a single nervous movement. He doesn’t look like a man presenting a possibility. He looks like a man who has just communicated a decision.

“I accepted him as my partner this very morning, in front of you. Do you even know what Johan will feel when the two of us are together?” My voice rises before I can stop it. “That’s cruel!”

Bastian’s expression changes completely. The transformation is so quick that for a moment I don’t know what I’m looking at. His black eyes darken, and the warmth I know disappears from his face, replaced by something much colder. His jaw tightens, and his features lose every trace of softness. There is anger in his eyes, but there is something deeper too, something primal that needs no words to make itself clear. A shiver runs down my spine when he takes a step toward me.

He doesn’t raise his voice, nor does he need to. His presence seems to fill the hallway as he approaches, and when he stops in front of me, he lowers his gaze toward Oana for a second before fixing his eyes on mine again.

“Cruel?” he repeats quietly. “Then what about me? I have to go to sleep with my daughter some of these nights while I let you sleep with him. Do I have to accept you letting him mark your neck right next to where I marked you?”

His words hit me with a force I wasn’t expecting.

For several seconds. I can’t find anything to say. I look at him and, as I keep Oana protected against my chest, I begin to

The Second Chance Of The Rejected Moon

recognize something I had forgotten.

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row the Bastian who exists with me, the man who loves me, who protects me, who has been capable of facing the entire world for me and who has just become a father. I know his hands when they caress me, his voice when he speaks to me in private, and the way his eyes change when he looks at our daughter. But somewhere along the way, I forgot that there was another Bastian before me.

A cruel, selfish, dominant wolf who never used to negotiate when something stood in his way. If something bothered him. he eliminated it. If someone represented a threat, he didn’t wait to find out how far they could go. He simply did whatever was necessary to remove them. I met the man who changed because of love, but perhaps I never stopped forgetting that beneath that man is still the wolf the entire kingdom and the entire continent fear.

And now Johan is a problem for that wolf.

I watch him in silence and realize that Bastian isn’t trying to learn how to share me, nor does he need time to get used to the existence of another man. He isn’t trying to convince me that the bond doesn’t exist either. He knows it exists, and he knows I can’t break it. What he refuses to accept is that bond giving Johan a place equal to his own. Bastian does not intend to share

Not while he is alive.

And judging by the way he holds my gaze, I’m beginning to suspect that if Johan becomes an obstacle to keeping me by his side, my partner will have no problem deciding what to do with him.

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