My Fiancé Chose Her So I Chose Myself Chapter 36
She looked thinner than the last time I’d seen her on the news.
She was seated in a remote room at the Lakecrest registry with a supervisor beside her. The protective order was still active, so she could look only at the chair and could not address me directly.
“I support the protection rules,” she began softly. “Without them, I might not even be alive.”
The Lakecrest representative asked, “What part of the old system do you believe should be preserved?”
“Protection contacts should have the right to make decisions for vulnerable members in emergencies. When we’re not well, we can’t always say what we need.”
She lifted her eyes, her gaze briefly flickering over the screen.
“Some strong wolves don’t understand that kind of fear. They think one blanket, one meal, one little thing that helps someone calm down doesn’t matter.”
My wolf raised its head at those familiar words.
Not from hurt.
Because Jenna still believed that if she called something she wanted a *need*, then it ought to belong to her.
The chair pulled up Brooke’s statement.
“The owner of this music box explicitly stated that it was her birthday gift. Why did you keep it for three years?”
Jenna bit her lip.
“Brooke told me I could take it. Travis agreed, too.”
“Did either of them own that item?”
“We were all very close back then.”
“That is not an answer.”
The softness in Jenna’s face began to crack.
“Natalie didn’t need that box anyway. She became an Executive Vice President. She could buy as many as she wanted. Back then, all I had was them.”
Pages rustled around the room.
Once again, she had proved with her own words that her standard was never ownership. It was who needed something more, who deserved to be yielded to.
The Lakecrest representative tried to pull the discussion back.
“Ms. Collins, please limit your comments to medical support.”
“I am talking about support!” Jenna raised her voice. “If you have to ask first for everything, then what kind of protection is that?”
The supervisor beside her reminded her to control her wolf.
She closed her eyes and took several deep breaths.
The chair did not continue questioning her. Instead, he played a clip from the video she had posted after her arrest.
*This was all Natalie’s plan.*
The image froze on those words.
“You had already been released from custody and had legal counsel at that point. Why did you still publicly accuse the applicant for the protective order?”
“Because I was scared.”
“Fear does not make every choice for you.”
As soon as those words fell, Jenna burst into tears.
“You’ve already taken my job, my friends, and my life. Now you want to take away protection, too.”
No one answered her.
Her job had come from unsupervised authority. Her friends were people she had repeatedly taken from. The consequences had come from the tumbler she had swung.
The old rules had called all of it care.
The public record had separated those things again.
After Jenna’s statement ended, a medical representative raised an objection.
“I’m still concerned that emphasizing accountability will leave genuinely vulnerable members without immediate support.”
The room wavered again.
I turned on my microphone.
“Then put immediate support in the hands of professional teams with duty logs, and list food, medication, transportation, and safe temporary housing as pack public resources.”
I looked at him.
“Stop tying one person’s survival to whether some private contact is willing to favor them.”