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.’

problem isn’t hers as much as it is yours,’

are you talking

as we are, we need to consider changing

do that?’ I

next to their mates when we arrived. All of them had been touching their mates in one way or another. 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, she’d be a good Luna, but I’ll admit my own flash of jealousy at how the three women interacted with their mates. I want that. I want my mate to seek me out, to seek out my affection, my touch. I wish I’d had it with Caralyn, but now, I need to

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

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 their pups

Jocelyn POV

Jocelyn. I have good news and

“Good news first.”

some deficiencies you have. You don’t have any lingering infections, although it seems that you had some at one point,

was unconscious for a

didn’t know what they were doing, or they were overwhelmed with the large number of bones that were broken. Without your wolf, it would have been up to the doctor

why I can’t walk, and

any way to remove the scarring. When your wolf returns, because I think she will, she

call it what it is, doctor. I tried to

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, right arm,

you can

ask, having attached to the biggest

wolf returns, yes. Now, my understanding is that you have the option to remain here as long as you’d like. If

you say that?”

“This

as

“Brooklyn would know.”

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

ask. If there’s an option to get my body back to something closer to normal, I want

You can choose which leg, but based on your injuries, it looks like you landed on your right side. There’s more damage there,” he says, drawing a line with his finger from the hip bone to the toes. “I would suggest

my ribs,” I ask. Breathing is still painful, and any twisting

you choose to, but that recovery will be more difficult. My suggestion would be to wait and see

do it,” I

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

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