All Chapters of Pursuing My Rejected Luna: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

JaxonBenjamin Marco, my son, weighs seven pounds and has his mother's eyes and my mouth and has been in the world for approximately eleven minutes when I understand, with complete and devastating clarity, everything I threw away. Everything I could never fully comprehend until this very moment. I watched him be born. Was present for every moment of the final hour—Skye's hand crushing mine, her voice breaking on a sound I'd never heard her make, the particular courage of a woman doing something enormous and doing it without complaint, without fear, just doing it because there was no version of not doing it.I thought I understood what this would mean. I didn't.Nothing prepares you for the specific quality of silence that exists in that gap between your child being physically here and actually crying. The way time does something strange in that space—stretches, or stops, or simply ceases to be the thing you thought it was. Three seconds. Four. The longest unit of time I've ever experi

SkyeIt’s been six weeks since Benji was born. At least I think it has. I’m pretty sure. To be honest, time has stopped making sense.But regardless of time or my inability to keep it, here are the things I’ve learned so far:I can spend forty-five minutes on a single feeding—trying to get Benji to latch, repositioning, trying again, succeeding, losing it, trying again—and then look up and discover it's 4 AM and I haven't eaten since yesterday's lunch and somehow the entire day has both lasted forever and not happened at all.Well, that’s not entirely true. Nicolai would never let me go a whole day without eating. But the principle stands. I’ve definitely lost all concept of time or schedule.I mentioned this to Dr. Chernov at the two-week appointment. He just looked at me like I was stating the obvious and said, "Yes. That's newborns." Very helpful.Here is what nobody tells you about loving a baby: It's not soft. It's not the warm, gauzy feeling implied by the imagery. It's sharp. Im

NicolaiThere's a version of me that other Alphas know.There’s the version of me that delivers threats with the cadence of pleasantries. The version who never needs to raise his voice to end an argument because it’s understood, by anyone who’s listening, that I’ve already won. The version who is always the calmest person in the room, because showing fear is a death sentence.This week alone I handled two such situations that required the Woolf family's particular brand of resolution. The first involved a shipping partner who had developed the impression that our arrangement included a renegotiation option I had not offered. Dimitri handled the preliminary conversation. I appeared at the end of it to reinforce our stance on the matter. The partner revised his position immediately and permanently."Did you have to say it like that?" Dimitri asked after."Like what?" I raised my eyebrow, feigning ignorance. "Like you were commenting on the weather." He grumbled. “Would it kill you to lo

Jaxon Eight weeks have flown by in the blink of an eye. I can’t believe how much my son has grown in that short period of time. I also can’t believe how much I’ve already missed. Every day he’s doing something new. Something he wasn’t doing when I left the day before. And it guts me that I’m not there to see it.When Skye walked away from me at the same moment I realized I couldn’t live without her, I thought that was the worst thing I’d ever have to face. I was wrong. Because as much as I loved her, still love her, it’s nothing compared to the profound loss I feel every time I have to kiss Benji goodbye.He’s developed his own little personality, full of coos and cries that mean something. He’s even starting to smile. And he has, as I discovered two days ago and have not yet finished processing, a strong preference for Nicolai Woolf's baritone.I was holding him while he cried. Doing everything I've learned in eight weeks of nearly daily visits—the right angle, the right rhythm, the

SkyeBenji is asleep before midnight for the first time in eight weeks. I stand in the kitchen, and register this fact the way you register something you stopped believing in—with suspicion first, then cautious acknowledgment, then something close to wonder.The monitor is quiet. Actually quiet. Not the held-breath quiet of a baby who's about to wake, but the deep, even breathing of a small person who has, for reasons entirely his own, decided that tonight he'll sleep before midnight.I stand at the counter in the dark kitchen eating toast over the sink and think, this is the best toast I’ve ever had. I feel, for the first time in eight weeks, like a person who exists in a body rather than a mechanism for keeping a newborn alive. And that feeling just makes everything better. Even toast. That feeling lasts all of five minutes before my brain, released from the immediate tyranny of feeding schedules and sleep windows and decoding the specific register of Benji's various complaints, cat