12. The Choice

Chapter 12

The Choice

NIKA

Thorin's arrival seemed too good to be true, especially since I hadn't forgotten the warning that Selene gave me. She said neither of my mates would present as a good option in the beginning. So far, Thorin had proved her wrong. That meant I was left waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It was a problem that would have to be dealt with later, though I couldn't imagine how anyone could be worse than Aiden. Then again, before I saw his behavior with my own eyes, there was no way I would have believed Aiden capable of hosting an Alpha's Harem or throwing his moon-blessed mate away. It would make more sense if someone told me it was all a joke, or he'd been magically drugged or something.

Those were the thoughts that plagued me as I chose a seat with Janella for the ride to the Grasslands Pack. I had been there once as a teenager with my family when they accompanied Aiden's father on a mission to secure an alliance with Johann Greywolf, who had been the Alpha of the pack then. It was odd that I had never met Thorin. I wondered, if I had met him then, if we would have recognized the potential mate bond back then. There were tales of mates recognizing one another early throughout history.

"I had hoped you might sit with me for the ride back." I glanced up to see Alpha Thorin's dark-eyed stare aimed my way. I offered a smile and patted Janella's leg. "She has been on that island since she was a pup. This is her first time away, so forgive me for not indulging you. I think it is more important that my pack mate feel comfortable for her first time traveling away from that forsaken island." I expected him to react harshly. That was just me waiting for that other shoe to drop, though. Instead, he inclined his head, nodded, and then turned his attention to Janella.

"Do you know how you came to be on Mirage Island?"

Instead of going back to his seat at the front of the bus, Thorin sat down in the seat just across the aisle from my own. Janella leaned forward, so she could have direct line of sight to the Alpha. "I was very young, and there was a car accident. The car seemed to aim for me. A man came out of nowhere and scooped me up afterward and took me away."

"Did this happen outside your home?" Janella nodded then shook her head back and forth a moment later. The change made Thorin laugh. "Were you too young to know?"

"I think that I was playing outside of my house, but It feels wrong to say that, so maybe we had just been visiting there or something." She shrugged her dainty shoulders and then leaned back against the window. "I don't remember any other adults. I had been left outside to play. The man who picked me up brought me to the island and left me there. I don't know if I had family, where they might be, or why the man didn't return me to the house I'd been in front of. As hard as I have tried over the years, I can't seem to remember anyone else."

"We can try to see if a child close to your age and likeness were ever registered in the missing wolf database. I'm not promising anything, but it could help us to track down your parents or other information that you might not know."

Janella nodded. "Can you…?" She hesitated. "Can you find out the information and tell me things like my birthday or where I came from in a vague way?"

"You don't want to know about your family?"

She adamantly shook her head. "I don't think I could handle knowing if they just let me go. Maybe they hired that man to take me and the car just happened to hit me first. Maybe my parents were the ones in the car. I don't know and it doesn't seem smart to look for people who might have been involved in shipping me off to an island for rejected mates."

"What if they didn't do it?"

She shrugged her shoulders and stared down at the floor. "They couldn't have tried too hard to find me. I've been on that island all this time. The first place I would look for someone who was missing would be that island."

"Janella?" Thorin called to her. He spoke softly to my friend when she finally looked up to meet his questioning eyes. "I looked for my mate for many years, but I never thought to check on that island precisely because it is for rejected mates. It never occurred to me that some shifters might be dumped there for other reasons. It's possible that your parents, or whatever family you had, never thought to look there."

"I'll think about it if you find that they've searched for me. Something tells me that they haven't though."

"That's fair. I am sorry to bring up bad memories for you."

"You can't bring up what isn't there. I don't remember my family at all. Nothing exists before the day of that accident and all that exists afterward is the island and the people there." Janella turned so that her body angled toward the window and her back and shoulder faced toward Thorin and me.

"We appreciate any help you can provide on the matter. Thank you for offering to look into it."

"There's no need to thank me, my Luna."

"Nika, please. Nothing is formal or set in stone yet. I'd prefer we refrain from calling me your Luna until we get to that point and make it official."

The gorgeous man grinned at me. "Afraid I'll do something terminally stupid or completely unforgivable?"

"Something like that."

"Would you be comfortable telling me how you ended up on Mirage Island?" Thorin reached out and took my hand in his and set it on his lap. He was turned with his long legs in the middle of the aisle, and they nearly touched my own seat. "I was serious earlier when I told your friend about not looking on the island because I didn't think a future Luna would ever be placed there."

I blew out a frustrated breath and then looked Thorin in the eye as I explained how I came home from university, after having a vision from Selene about my potential mates, only to find one of them knee deep in an Alpha's Harem.

Thorin wasn't the only one who overheard my explanation. Several of the men on the bus hissed, sucked in deep breaths, or outright growled their displeasure at hearing that. Thorin squeezed my hand tighter in what was meant to be a reassuring gesture.

"Are you saying that he put you on that island and rejected you, so that he could keep a harem?" The Alpha asked.

"That is exactly what I'm saying. Aiden denied that he was rejecting me. As he put it, ‘It just wasn't our time yet'." I made the effort to add in air quotes as I rolled my eyes.

"Your previous Alpha thought you would wait patiently for him to come collect you after he had his fun with the pack's women?" One of the men sitting near us asked.

"Yes, that's what he thought. I did tell him that he was dead wrong and that if he made that choice, knowing that I was his mate, he would never have me stand by his side, as his Luna. Could you imagine being treated that way in front of all the important people of your pack and then trying to be a leader to them later?" I rolled my eyes again. "Nope. Threat of violence wouldn't make me change my mind, and I let it be known loud and clear that I would never return as Luna of the pack if Aiden made that decision. I needed the pack to understand that it was his choice to claim me then or lose me forever."

"Maybe he has already gone mad?" One of the men stated.

I shook my head. I only had the mate vision the day before I returned to the pack to tell Aiden. I'm unsure why his father left him in charge of the pack early. Maybe it was because he knew I would be along soon, since his father knew when I graduated and also felt very sure that Aiden and I would be mates."

"That was one hell of a gamble for the previous Alpha to make." Thorin wasn't wrong. Many people had made the mistake of thinking they knew who their mate would be, and they acted on those impulses only to be faced with impossible decisions later when it turned out to be someone else.

It happened from time-to-time when young shifters fell in love and thought they would end up being mates, only later to find out that they weren't. Cases like that are why there were so many women on Mirage Island to begin with. And that's another reason why shipping rejected women off was such an awful thing to do. The woman who is rejected, when her moon-blessed chooses a different mate, gets her heart broken twice. Once when she finds out her mate doesn't want her, and then again when she's shipped off to be a prisoner on Mirage Island. The only crime she committed was to be fated to the wrong person. I think the mate that did the rejecting should have to be the one shipped off and punished as they were the ones who went against the gods. If I had anything to say about it, that would be law. If you reject your moon-blessed mate, then you should be the one banished from the packs, not the person who already has to deal with the heartbreak.

"You're thinking awfully hard over there."

I glanced up, having forgotten that Thorin was even sitting with me, and explained exactly where my thoughts had gone. He nodded solemnly. "I think that would be fair, but there are always exceptions."

"What kind of exception would put the blame on the person being rejected?"

"What if the rejected party was involved with someone else first? What if they had a pup with another shifter?" Well, damn. That changed things, but only a little bit.

"Then I would consider them to be the one who offered the rejection up first, even if they didn't say it out loud, their actions spoke for them. I didn't mean that the rejector always had to be the male. Sometimes, it is the female. Obviously, when shifters take a chosen mate, sometimes that mate was meant for someone else as well. Or in the case of Aiden and his harem, all those women have mates out there. Well, except the widowed shifter, but the rest had someone out there waiting to claim them. I think if their mate refused them after that - since the harem members were all willing participants, then the willing harem participants should be seen as the party who offered the rejection, and they should be the ones banished. Truthfully, in their case, I believe they should suffer a harsher punishment."

"Why?" Thorin asked.

"It's not because I'm bitter, it's because they put themselves before their pack, before their mates. Their loyalty is in question at that point because what they did will mean the downfall of the pack eventually. If a strong Alpha doesn't come along to take over, their actions should be seen as treasonous."

Thorin nodded. "I suppose you're right, especially in the case of your old pack, since they were warned exactly what the outcome would be." He seemed lost in thought for a moment when one of the other men spoke up.

"What about if a shifter has looked high and low, for years, for their mate and hasn't been able to find them? Would you begrudge them taking a chosen mate then?" The way the man looked at his Alpha then made me wonder if either he or Thorin had been in that position. Since the Alpha did not have a mate and set out to find and claim me, I had to believe it was the man - or someone he knew.

"Well, I supposed that would depend on a few things."

"Like what?"

"Status for one. If it is an Alpha, we all know that Alphas always have a moon-blessed. If they don't it is because they are not fated to live long. An Alpha would be remiss in taking a chosen mate unless they had a smaller pack and could handle the fact that their Luna couldn't channel as much power. In the case of other wolves, I don't know. What if it is their fate to wait? What if the gods had a plan for them that required they can't be together until later? Maybe one of them had to grow up or had another responsibility that took precedence over finding their mate. What if they had to care for orphaned children or something and finding their mate meant having to leave them?" I shrugged. "Would it be fair when they got to look for their other half if their mate was already in a chosen pairing when they finally found them?" I glanced at my seat partner. "What about the girls who were orphaned and left on Mirage Island? They had no way to leave to look for their mate. What if, like your Alpha stated, her mate never sought her out on the island because he wrongly believed only rejected mates were sent there? Should she be punished again when she finally does find him because he took someone else instead of searching high and low for her?"

"You should probably be a professor in one of those fancy college classes that always ask questions like, if a loved one was tied to a train track would you divert the train to save them if you knew that 20 other people would be killed by diverting the train?"

"Sociology does pose some heartbreaking questions. I get what you're saying, though. There are a lot of shades of gray involved, but some of the rejections are downright awful and none of the women who were on that island with me deserved to be prisoners for someone else's actions. Only one woman volunteered to go to the island to help the rejected and that was because her mate died, and she needed a new purpose."