The Claiming by Cooper novel Chapter 304

The Claiming by Cooper Book 4

The Beta Trials by Cooper (Jace & Jordan)

Chapter 31 (Jordan)

I leave Kyra and Balorto figure things out between them. They have a lot to work through, not the least of which is a large age gap, although Jonas and Melinda have managed theirs just fine. But this is also a mating between species. If the two of them are going to be together long-term, either Kyra would move to the clan or Balor would have to move to a pack, and I don’t see Balor moving and giving up his clan leader status.

As I go to find Dr. Braxton, I reach out and connect with Jace. Even though I broke the mate bond, I’m still his Alpha and I still have a connection to him. 

Now, something inside me is pulling me to ensure that he’s safe. If I’m being honest with myself, it’s not the Alpha in me that’s worried. The Alpha knows that Jace is more than capable of handling this wolf pack, especially with his family and the bears with him. It’s the woman, the mate, that’s worried. I don’t know how he’s doing it, I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he’s slowly working his way back into my heart.

I shake that off as I walk up to Dr. Braxton.

“Doctor, give me some good news,” I say, looking over to where Darryl and Jasun are monitoring the sedated bears. Brynn is staying close, but as a precaution, Darryl agreed to sedation. We don’t need six large bears going berserker all at once.

He turns and looks at me, pushing his glasses up on his face. “That depends on your definition of good news, Alpha,” he says.

“Tell me you can treat these bears,” I say.

“Yes, then it’s good news. I can treat the bears.”

“I take it there’s bad news?” I ask, not wanting to know, but knowing that I need to.

“As we expected, these are strains of feral fever and the claiming haze. And, as we expected, these are strains that come from last generation, so we can hypothesize that the banished wolves that were sent away from the packs did, in fact, mate with humans and produce hybrid children. These children carry the various strains of the viruses that we’ve seen before.”

“Okay, if I’m following you, none of this is unexpected, it’s what we thought, and the strains maybe haven’t mutated? Is that right?” I ask, trying to follow along.

“Yes and no,” he says, looking at me a moment. “What do you know of your female Beta’s first claiming?” he asks.

I frown. “Layan? I know that she was attacked, that the Alpha that caught her had gone feral and the claiming haze overtook him. I know that it was…bad,” I say. It’s not a well-known story, for the obvious reason that Layan is our Beta female, and my parents didn’t want rumors going around about her, making her uncomfortable. But as the next Alpha, I was told so that I would understand the importance of ensuring that we never again had to deal with feral fever or the claiming haze. “He was put down at the claiming, but samples of his blood and tissue were sent to me. At the time, it was to create a case against the Elder who didn’t stop her claiming quickly enough. But it provided me with important information. Now, what do you know about your mother’s attacker? Your Aunt’s mate?”

“Typhon? He went crazy too. He didn’t catch my mother in the claiming, but he somehow got out of the territory without anyone realizing and then he went on some crazy, psychotic hunt for my mother.”

“A pretty accurate assessment. After his death, I was given the opportunity to also test his blood and tissue. Both of them were Alphas. Both of them had packs that they led. Much like your ability to create a vaccine, keeping your pack stable, the Alphas back then that were sick caused their packs to become sickly. They spread the virus, a pack-specific virus, if you will.”

I look at him, not understanding what he’s trying to tell me.

“You’re going to have to spell it out to me, Dr. Braxton. I’m not Kyra.”

“The virus strains that I’m seeing are variants of the ones that came directly from Alphas Camden and Typhon.”

He’s watching me, waiting for me to connect the dots that he feels should be easy to connect.

“Are you saying that the Alphas of these two rogue packs are the sons of Alphas Camden and Typhon? The attackers of my Beta female and my mother?” I ask.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“But how? At least in the instance of Typhon, he wasn’t alone for more than a year before he went into my mother’s claim,” I say.

“I don’t know the age of Alpha Typhon’s son, but it’s possible that he was with a human before he claimed your Aunt, or possibly that he was with a human when your Aunt couldn’t conceive. It was a time when many were afraid of losing their humanity and not having an heir to leave for their pack. Many Alphas were desperate. Alpha Camden’ s pack lands are the ones that Alpha Tobias is taking over. It’s very possible that he and Alpha Typhon were close and decided to mate with humans to conceive, keeping each other’s secrets.”

I think about what he’s saying. I know that my Aunt didn’t have a lot of contact with her family once Typhon took her to his pack. They never saw her again and only rarely spoke to her on the phone, so, it’s possible.