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. | thought for sure that Hunter

was just letting Sophie feel like she was in control of the situation. However, | was sorely mistaken. How dare

they think they can keepfrom my mate. She’s MY mate!

Adding insult to injury, | wasn’t even given a guestroom fitting my station as an Alpha? And they are giving

Jocelyn the choice to seeor 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?’ | ask him, not for the first time.

‘What is it you wantto do? She hates both of us. Even Cassidy hates us. She wanted her mate. We weren't

her fated mates. | don’t know that she’ll ever forgive us.”

‘We need a Luna,’ | 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, | think back to my mate, my fated mate, Caralyn. Why did she have to kill herself?

Kortan whines in my head. | loved that woman, loved her with everything in me. But she never returned that

love, never trustedto be a good mate to her.

| 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.”

‘Perhaps the problem isn’t hers as much as it is yours,” Kortan says dryly.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Perhaps rather than expecting her to accept us as we are, we need to consider changing our ways.’

‘Why would we do that?’ | ask.

| get an image of the three Lunas, standing 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. | can feel Kortan’s desire to make his mate happy.

We care about Jocelyn. Not like we did for Caralyn, but | 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. | want that. |

want my mate to seekout, to seek out my affection, my touch. | wish I'd had it with Caralyn, but now, | need

to figure out how to get it with Jocelyn.

‘Then we should do what the other Alphas suggested. We may not like their ways, we may not agree with them,

but they have what we want. | think we need to see how it is that they achieved that,” Kortan says.

I lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Kortan is right. | don’t agree with their ways, but | can’t disagree

that they have what | 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 | do, possibly before my mate even allowsto touch her.

Jocelyn POV

“Well, Jocelyn. | have good news and bad news,” Dr. Caspian says.

“Good news first.”

“Your blood work looks good. You're healthy, although I'm going to recommend svitamins for some

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

is that correct?”

“I think so. | was unconscious for a long time.”

“That makes sense. Now for the bad news,” he says and puts up several x-ray images. “Whoever set your bones

either 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 to set the bones properly and in a lot of

instances, that didn’t happen,” he says.

“Is that why | can’t walk, and I still have pain all the time?”

“Yes. | don’t think there's any way to remove the scarring. When your wolf returns, because | think she will, she

can heal the worst of it, but you'll always have scars from your... incident.”

“Let's call it what it is, doctor. | tried to kill myself. It was a suicide attempt.”

“Right,” he says. “So, what | can do, if you agree, is to sedate you and begin to slowly rebreak and reset your

bones. | say slowly because without your wolf, 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. | would do it in phases, left leg, right leg,

left arm, right arm, and in that way, | can

immobilize one part of your body, and you can heal before we move to the next.”

“Months?” | ask, having attached to the biggest concern of everything he said.

“Until your wolf returns, yes. Now, my understanding is that you have the option to remain here as long as you'd

like. If you decide to stay, I'd guess that your wolf will return more quickly.”

“Why do you say that?” | ask him.

He shrugs. “This pack is special.”

“That's what your mate said.” | watch as a huge smile spreads across his face.

“Brooklyn would know.”

| look back at the x-rays. You don’t have to be a doctor to see what a mess my body is.

“When could we start?” | ask. If there's an option to get my body back to something closer to normal, | want to

do it.

“If you agree, we could start tomorrow. 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 starting there.”

“What about my ribs,” | ask. Breathing is still painful, and any twisting is limited.

“We could start there, if you choose to, but that recovery will be more difficult. My suggestion would be to wait

and see if your wolf returns. A three-day recovery is a lot easier than a two- month recovery if | have to rebreak

your ribcage.”

“Okay, let's do it,” | say.

“I'll get everything prepared. 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 to come

here to protect you.”

I scoff at that. “Protect me. Yeah, that’s what he'll do.”

“No matter the relationship between the two of you, you wear his mark. He'll feel slevel of protectiveness

over you.”

| doubt that, but I don’t say anything. | have to admit that this doctor seems to know what he’s talking about. |

hope he’s right and can heal me.

“Now, there is one thing you should know. | am leaving soon to go to Alpha Dutton and Alpha Amelia's packs.

Alpha Amelia is due to have her pup in a few weeks and my understanding is that they don’t have a good

obstetrician there. Therefore, I'll be gone for a few weeks until she delivers. | will leave you in the care of Dr.

Felicity here, but mostly that will be for any type of emergency. | won't leave until I've released you from the

hospital and when | return, I'll resyour care and treatment.”

“Alpha Amelia?”

He smiles. “Yes. She took over her father’s pack after...well, Alpha Alaric killed her father, and her mother

followed him to the Moon Goddess’ realm.”

“A female Alpha?” | ask, shocked. “I can’t imagine that anyone is supporting her.”

“You'd be wrong. Alpha Hunter and Alpha Dutton both signed alliance agreements with her and both attacked

Alpha Alaric with her.”

| frown. “They agreed to go to war with a female Alpha who is pregnant? What did her mate say?” | don’t usually

gossip, but truly, this is unheard of.

“I'm not sure, | wasn’t there,” Dr. Caspian says, but | get the impression that he does know, he’s just not willing

to say. | like him more because of that.

There's a knock at the door. “Cin, Brooklyn,” Dr. Caspian says, smiling as his focus moves to his mate.

“Jocelyn, Luna Sophie is here.”

Dr. Caspian looks at me. “She needs to know what our plan is. Are you comfortable talking to her about that or

would you rather | do it privately?”

I shrug. “It’s fine.”

Sophie walks in tentatively, a small smile on her face, glancing at Dr. Caspian before looking at me.

“So? Good news | hope?”

| nod at my x-rays that are still on the wall. She turns and sucks in air at what she sees.

“Apparently, I'm humpty-dumpty after he had his great fall. But Dr. Caspian says he’s going to bring all the king's

horses and all the king’s men and try to putback together again.”