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.’

as much as it is yours,’ Kortan

are you talking

than expecting her to accept us as

do

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

not agree with them, but they have what we want. I think we need to see how it is that they achieved that,’

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 in their mates’ bellies. All of these Alphas will have heirs long before I do, possibly before my mate even allows me to

Jocelyn POV

have good news and bad

“Good news first.”

vitamins for some deficiencies you have.

so. I was

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 lot of instances, that didn’t happen,” he

and

wolf returns, because I think she will, she can

it is, doctor. I tried to kill myself. It was

say slowly because without your wolf, the healing process will be long and slow. You’ll have to heal at a

and you can

ask, having attached to the biggest concern of everything he

my understanding is that you have the option to remain here as long as you’d like.

say that?”

shrugs. “This pack

mate said.” I watch as a huge

“Brooklyn would know.”

You don’t have to be a

we start?” I ask. If there’s an option to get my body back to

on your right side. There’s more damage there,” he says, drawing a line with his finger from

Breathing is still painful, and any twisting

that recovery will be more difficult. My suggestion would be to wait and see if your wolf returns. A

do it,”

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

me. Yeah, that’s what