The Claiming by Cooper Book 4
The Contest by Cooper (Jaxon & Evangeline)
Chapter 28 (Jaxon)
I hold Eve, not caring who is standing around watching. I hold her until both of us start to breath more easily.
“Alpha Jaxon,” Alpha Jonas says. I look at him and he tosses me some shorts. “We prefer our guests wear clothes.”
I smile, grabbing the shorts out of the air and pulling them on quickly.
“I’m sorry to barge onto your pack lands like this, I just needed to know that Eve was okay.”
“You’re leaving?” Eve asks and I hear the desperation in her, the same one I feel, needing to be near her.
“No,” I say before turning to Alpha Jonas. “I’d like to stay if that’s okay with you, Alpha.”
This is his pack. I need to respect him as its leader.
“I’ll call your sister, let her know you’re here,” he says.
“That’s not necessary,” I tell him.
“Our packs almost went to war several months ago, believe me, it’s necessary,” he says.
Both Eve and I look at him. “What?”
“Jaxon, it’s good to see you,” Melinda says coming over to us.
“What did he mean by that Melinda?” I ask her, forgetting myself. “Sorry, I mean, Luna.”
She frowns at me. “Don’t you know the story?”
“I guess not.”
“Come sit, I’ll fill you in and we can all hope that history won’t repeat itself with you two.”
She takes Molly from Isabella who goes to watch Ryder and we sit down to talk. There’ s a two-person glider and I sit Eve there and sit beside her.
“You both know the story of me recognizing Jonas as my mate before I turned 18?”
“Yes,” we both say. I reach out and take Eve’ s hand.
“And do you both know that my mother refused to allow me to take Jonas as my mate?” she asks.
“Yes, but you fought that,” I say.
“Of course, I did. He’s my mate. Nothing and no one was going to keep me from being with him. Only, it didn’t work out the way I had planned.”
She looks at Eve. “Unlike you, my father isn’t an Alpha, so I couldn’t threaten to reject him and the pack. Not only that, but it was my mother who was the issue, not my father. Once I became an adult, I was ready to leave Alpha Mason’s pack and join this pack, but Jonas wanted to try and work things out with my mother, he wanted her approval.”
She sighs, rocking Molly who has started to fall asleep. “So, rather than run off to my grandmother’s pack like you did, I seduced my mate and made sure I got pregnant,” she says, smiling at Ryder.
“And that should have been the end of it, but it wasn’t. My mother was furious, but she couldn’t keep me from Jonas and now he had a stronger reason to push her to agree to our marking.
“Ryder was born here, Jonas at my side. After a month, I left to go home to get my things and bring them back here. Jonas had a trip he needed to take, and I told him that I would be able to get my things and bring them back on my own.”
Tears fill her eyes and I see Jonas’s head pop up from inside, looking at his mate. He can feel her emotions. He ends the call and comes striding outside, putting his hands on Melinda’s shoulders. She looks up at him and gives him a teary smile.
“I didn’t see you again for six months,” she says to him, and a tear slides down her face.
“Melinda…” he says gently, wiping the tear.
She shakes her head and looks back up at us. “Jonas didn’t even know I was pregnant. I figured it out right before I left, but I wanted to wait to surprise him once I had moved in.”
“What happened?” Eve asks, her hand clutching mine tighter.
“My mother,” she says, gritting her teeth.
Jonas picks up Melinda and Molly, moving to put them both in his lap. He sits in the chair she was in before settling them both and wrapping his arms around them protectively.
“My mother found a human who hacked our phones, making it so that we couldn’t reach the other person. We both received emails from the other’s email account that basically said that we were sorry, we couldn’t do this, and it was over.”
She leans her head against Jonas’s chest as she gets more upset. He shushes her quietly, cooing at her before turning to us. “Both of us believed it, not at first. But when the phones acted like our numbers had been blocked, when neither of us could reach the other person, we began to believe it,” Jonas says.
“I was not going to let my son grow up without knowing his father,” He says, stroking Molly’s cheek. “I didn’t even know about Molly. Melinda had her in your pack this time.”
I look at her. “Is that why you moved out of the packhouse? Because you were pregnant again?”
“I was devastated, heartbroken and pregnant. I didn’t want to be around anyone, didn’t want them to see that I had been rejected by my mate. So Alpha Jordan put me into one of the houses on the pack lands.”
Jonas’s jaw is ticking with his anger. “After six months, I’d had enough. I called your father and sister and told them that if Melinda didn’t let me see my son, I would wage war on their pack.”
Melinda looks up and continues. “Imagine my surprise when Alpha Jordan called me into her office to ask me why I had lied to her, why I was keeping Ryder from Jonas. I, of course, had no idea what she was talking about, and I told her so.”
She looks at Jonas and my heart hurts. I turn to Eve. This can’t happen to us. I won’t allow it to happen.
“Alpha Jordan got me on speaker phone, and I finally got to talk to Melinda for the first time in months. When I did, she told me that she received an email that I had never sent, and I told her that I had received the same email. I told her that when I called, she never answered, and she said it was the same for her. Neither of us had received any calls from the other. Imagine my shock at finding out that I not only had a son, but also a daughter,” Jonas says.
He strokes Melinda’s cheek before tucking her closer against his body. “I was out the door and on my way to get them in minutes. This time, no one and nothing was going to stop me,” he says.
“I went back to my house, packed up the kids and was waiting when he arrived,” she says, smiling at Jonas before turning back to us. “Alpha Jordan ordered my mother to tell the truth and that’s how we know what she did. I haven’t spoken to her since I left the pack. I refuse to take her calls and I refuse to allow her onto my pack lands.”
She turns looking at Jonas. “As soon as we got here and got the kids settled, we did what we should have done years ago.”
Jonas smiles at her. “She didn’t even ask me, she just snapped those canines into my neck like a damn vampire.”
“You weren’t the only one that wasn’t letting anyone get in your way,” she says, smiling at him.
“Why didn’t I know about this?” I ask, astonished that my sister has been keeping something so serious from me and the rest of the pack.
“I asked you father and Alpha Jordan to keep it quiet. What would it look like, Jaxon, if the previous Gamma family was keeping their daughter from taking her mate, an Alpha from another pack? Nothing good would come of that.”
“You’re right,” Eve says. “My mother and grandmother were outraged that Gamma Brynn wouldn’t allow you to take Jonas as your mate.”
“Those are the type of things that cause alliances to break, rifts to form and wars to start. My mother has been removed from the packhouse. My father is devastated, not having known what she was doing.” She looks down at Molly, smiling softly.
“But I’ll say this, your sister is going to make one hell of an Alpha. She handled this better than I would have ever expected. I wish I could see her take her oath, but I won’t step foot on your pack lands if my mother is there.”
“This is what Jace meant, when he told me that I needed to talk to you. He knows, right?”
“Yes.”
I turn and look at Eve. “Evangeline, I don’t know what we’re going to do, but I have no intention of living without you. I don’t even care about the contest anymore. I won’t allow our families to keep us apart.”
I swallow hard, looking at her. “Unless you tell me you don’t want to see me….”
Her hand comes to my face. “I’m here because I refused to let my father tell me that I couldn’t see you. I don’t know what our next steps are, but I have no intention of going three months without seeing you either.”
The tightness that had taken hold of my chest relaxes. At least I know she agrees. “Then, we’ll figure it out,” I tell her.
She smiles, just as her phone buzzes. She looks at the caller ID.
“This is my mother. I have to take this,” she says, standing and moving away to answer the call.