The Claiming by Cooper Book 4
The Contest by Cooper (Jaxon & Evangeline)
Chapter 40 (Jaxon)
It took me a couple of hours to recover from the morning training session, but by lunch time, I was mostly back to normal.
“Are you gonna make it, Super Hotty?” Eve teases me over lunch.
“If you had asked me a couple of hours ago, I’d have said no, but at least now I feel like I can walk.”
“That was brutal,” Alejandro says, having come to sit with us.
“If you think that was brutal, just wait. If he is anything like Ezekiel, we’ll all be barely standing by the end of the week,” Eve says.
“Yeah, it was about two days before we were all struggling to get through both classes each day and by the end of the week, none of us were able to hold our heads up to eat dinner.” I tell him, enjoying my lunch while my body still can.
“Was it really that brutal?” Magdalena asks.
“Yes,” both Eve and I say together.
After lunch, Eve looks at me. “I was going to spend some time with Maggie this afternoon.”
“Perfect, I wanted to speak to Rowen. She mentioned wanting to talk to me while I’ m here.”
Eve comes over, wrapping her arms around my neck and looking up at me. “See you for afternoon training?”
My arms rest perfectly around her waist, pulling her against my body. “I’ll see you there.”
Her lips start twitching and I raise my eyebrow.
“I’m sure it will get easier for you,” she says, a full-on smile spreading across her face.
“You,” I say, pecking her lips, “are lucky I love you.”
“Every minute of every day,” she says, before leaning in for a d*eeper k*iss. This one lingers until someone, presumably her father, loudly clears their throat. I pull away. No since kicking over the beehive.
Eve shoots a glare at her father before heading out with Maggie. I turn and go in search of Rowen. I follow her scent to her room, where I knock.
“Come in,” she says from inside her room. I open the door to see her sitting on her bed looking out the window.
“Oh, hey Jax.”
“Hey, Rowen,” I say, closing her door.
I move to one of the chairs in her room. By chair, I mean bean bag blob on the floor. I hate the things. Once I’m in, it feels practically impossible to get out of it. But I’m here to see my sister, who said she wanted to talk to me, so I flop down into the makeshift chair.
“What’s up, Rowe?”
Rowan looks outside, then at the quilt on her bed that she’s sitting on before taking a d*eep breath and looking up at me. “How do you know Evangeline is your mate? She’s not old enough yet to confirm it.”
I narrow my eyes at my sister. “Did you find your mate, Rowan?”
“I think so, but I’m not sure. He’s younger than I am, almost a whole year. But he’s in the competition.” She says, looking down before looking back up at me. “How do you know?”
“Well, first, there was her scent. I picked her scent out of every other one that first day of the contest. She was like nothing I’ve ever smelled before,” I say, smiling as I remember honing in on my mate. “And then she made eye contact with me, and it was like everyone else just fell away.
From that moment on, I knew she was mine. I knew I had to have her and that being away from her was going to be impossible.” She nods, looking down again.
“Maybe he’s too young to feel it,” she says.
“Did you talk to Teagan?”
She frowns, looking up at me. “No, why?”
“She and Eve’s brother Alejandro are pretty sure that they are mates.”
Her eyes go wide at that. “Teagan is going to be a Luna?”
“I guess so. But while Teagan is about to turn 18, Alejandro is still a year away.”
She looks down, frowning again. “If he can smell me, if he can sense the mate bond, then why didn’t he approach me?” she asks.
I think about Jace and how he hasn’t told Jordan that he knows that they are mates, because he thinks she deserves someone stronger. Although, it hasn’t escaped me that he hasn’t rejected her either, so maybe he’s still hoping for a chance.
“I don’t know, Rowe. Maybe your strength in the competition intimidated him.”
She snorts. “If that’s the case, then I deserve better. And I doubt it anyway, he’s an Alpha.”
“Who is it?” I ask her smiling.
She looks at me, debating if she should tell me.
“I won’t tell anyone. You know I can keep a secret.”
She looks at me another moment. “It’s Alpha Enzo. Alpha Antonio and Luna Annabel’s youngest.”
I think for a minute. “You beat him in the race, didn’t you?
She nods. “Do you think that could be why? Because I beat him?”
“Hey,” I say, rolling off the death-trap chair and going to stand beside my sister. “If that’s the reason, you’re right, he doesn’t deserve you. He’s an Alpha and I can tell you, as a mate, I love that Eve is strong.”
“Yeah, but she says she only finished the race because of you,” Rowan says.
“She finished because she has the heart of an Alpha, because she’s strong and because she dug d*eep inside herself, just like you and everyone else that finished had to do.”
I sit on the bed beside her. “Listen, I don’t know Enzo very well, but I’ll pay more attention in the next round. If you want, I’ll give you my impressions. Plus, he’ll be older. If he wasn’t sure he was feeling the pull of the mate bond then, he’ll have a harder time ignoring it when we meet up this time.”
She leans forward, wrapping her arms around my neck and laying her head on my shoulder. “Thanks, Jax. I appreciate it.”
I hug her a moment before pulling back.
“And you listen to me. Don’t you dare throw any part of this competition because of him. You fight for what you want. Do you hear me?”
She smiles up at me. “Yes, big brother, I hear you.”
“Good! And speaking of fighting for what you want, I’ll see you at practice this evening.”
She snorts. “Are YOU going to make it?” she asks me, like the bratty sister she is.
“I’m an Alpha, little sis, nothing is getting in the way of me getting my pack.”
Jordan POV
True to his word, Nolan made the evening training even h*arder than the morning and nearly as h*ard as my one-on-one training. I was still feeling the workout from this afternoon during this evening’s
training. But it’s good. I’m already feeling stronger, and I have overnight to recover.
There’s a knock at my door. I look up to see Jace.
“Hey, Jace. Come on in.”
He steps in, closing the door behind him. I set aside the work that I’m trying to keep up on. Something was obviously bothering Jace earlier.
When he sits, he leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together and looking at the floor.
I lean back in my chair, waiting him out.
When he finally looks up, I’m not at all sure what I see in his eyes.
“You know that I’m your mate.” It’s a statement, not a question and it feels like a punch to the gut. Is he here to reject me? After all this time?
“Yes,” I say quietly.
“You never said anything,” he has the audacity to say.
I merely raise what I know is an arrogant eyebrow at him, before leaning forward and clasping my hands on my desk, narrowing my eyes at him.
“And how long have you known that I was your mate, Jace?” I ask him.
He scrubs his hands over his face. “Listen, Jordan, you’re an amazing woman, a great Alpha…”
“Just reject me and get it over with, Jace. Don’t try to sugar coat it for me, I’m a big girl.” I snap at him.
“I’m not rejecting you, Jordan,” he growls at me.
“Then what? What is this? It’s been a year since I turned 18, Jace. You’ve been dating my cousin for years, even after I turned 18. At first, I thought that maybe you didn’t recognize the mate bond. But now, seeing Jaxon with Evangeline and realizing that she knows, even though she hasn’t come of age, that they are mates? Well, all it does is make it that much worse for me. You put on a good show, Jace. I’ll give you that. You have no problem slipping into the Gamma role, supporting me to others, but in the end, you aren’t any better than they are.” I snap at him.
There’s a knock at the door and it know it’ s Nolan.
“Your time is up, Gamma. Was there something else?”
He stands, leaning over the desk. “Jordan…”
I lean in, getting in his face. “You need to figure out what you want, Jace.”
“I want you, Jordan. I broke things off with Taylor.”
“Really?” I chuckle humorlessly. “Because she called me earlier, asking me to let you go for the week so you could train with her at their pack. So, maybe you were as clear with her about your breakup as you have been with me about feeling the mate bond.”
I step back, my eyes never leaving Jace’s.
“Come in.”
The door opens and there’s a moment of silence as Nolan takes in the room and Jace grits his teeth as he smells Nolan’s scent.
“Should I come back?” Nolan asks.
“No, Jace was just leaving.”