The One He Claimed by Cooper

Chapter 154: Choices

Zahn

I’m furious. I’ve never, ever known an Alpha who defers to his mate. For anything. I thought for sure that Hunter was just letting Sophie feel like she was in control of the situation. However, I was sorely mistaken. How dare they think they can keep me from my mate. She’s MY mate!

Adding insult to injury, I wasn’t even given a guestroom fitting my station as an Alpha? And they are giving Jocelyn the choice to see me or not? No f**king way. I’ll never see her again!

‘I’m pretty sure that’s what she’s hoping for,’ Kortan, my wolf, says in my head.

‘Can’t you do something?’ I ask him, not for the first time.

‘What is it you want me to do? She hates both of us. Even Cassidy hates us. She wanted her mate. We weren’t her fated mates. I don’t know that she’ll ever forgive us.’

‘We need a Luna,’ I grumble.

‘Maybe that’s your problem,’ he says.

‘What’s that?’

‘You want a Luna. You don’t care if it’s Jocelyn or not. She does.’

‘We need an heir, Kortan.’

“Short of raping her, Zahn, we’re not getting one. Maybe we should accept her rejection and let her go,’ he says sadly.

Not for the first time, I think back to my mate, my fated mate, Caralyn. Why did she have to kill herself?

Kortan whines in my head. I loved that woman, loved her with everything in me. But she never returned that love, never trusted me to be a good mate to her.

I can feel Kortan questioning the claiming process again. The public claimings. They were standard, everyone did them, it was the law. But my mate wasn’t the only one to kill herself after being claimed. Alpha Ezra’s mate had killed herself too. And there were others, others who lost their mates and either went into isolation or began hunting for a new mate, like I did.

‘We should have waited for our second chance mate,’ Kortan says. This is an old argument; one we’ve had many times.

‘We didn’t and now we have a mate. We need her to accept us.’

isn’t hers as much as it

are you

than expecting her to accept us as

we do that?’

The women hadn’t flinched away or snarled at them. And I’m pretty sure that all three of them were pregnant. They had seemed…happy. I can feel Kortan’s desire to make his mate happy. We care about Jocelyn. Not like we did for Caralyn, but I don’t want her to die. She’s a Beta,

what the other Alphas suggested. We may not like their ways, we may not agree with them, but they have what we

down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Kortan is right. I don’t agree with their ways, but I can’t disagree that they have what I want. They have Lunas who obviously love them, and they have

Jocelyn POV

Jocelyn. I have good news

“Good news first.”

to recommend some vitamins for some deficiencies you have. You don’t have any lingering infections, although it seems

so. I was

were overwhelmed with the large number of bones that were broken. Without your wolf, it would have been up to the doctor to set the bones properly and in a

and I still have pain

I don’t think there’s any way to remove the scarring. When your wolf returns, because I think she will, she can heal

tried to

the healing process will be long and slow. You’ll have to heal at a human pace and for the bones to set, it will take a couple of months. I would do it in phases, left leg, right leg, left arm,

of your body, and you can heal before we move to the

I ask, having attached to the

as long as you’d like. If you

you say

“This pack is

mate said.” I watch as a huge smile spreads across

“Brooklyn would know.”

back at the x-rays. You don’t have to be a doctor to see

get my body back to

which leg, but based on your injuries, it looks like you landed on your right side.

about my ribs,” I ask. Breathing is still painful,

My suggestion would be to wait and see if your wolf returns. A three-day recovery is

do

I’ll let Luna Sophie know that you’ll be here for a couple of days,” he stops, focusing on me. “I understand you may not want to see your mate. If that’s the case, you may want to speak with Luna Sophie about having guards placed on you. In my experience, Alphas don’t appreciate being told what they can’t do and if you’re his mate and you’re in pain, he’ll feel that, and his natural instinct will be

at that. “Protect me. Yeah, that’s what