Page 10 of Pack Kasen, Part 1 (Caught #1)

9

KAT

M y earliest memory is a field of sunflowers taller than I am.

When I’m alone, my thoughts usually turn to what it might mean and why I would dream of it. Like now.

Now, I have all the time in the world to think about sunflowers.

And my growing rage.

I’m not sure at what point I stopped waiting to die and start getting pissed off that he’s not just getting it over with. The moment sneaks up on me as I count down the seconds, then the minutes, then the hours, until I lose all track of time.

I have a graduation speech to give, the end of my semester to wrap up, friends and acquaintances I wouldn’t mind saying goodbye to before we all go our separate ways, and preparations to start a job in one of the best accounting firms in the city.

Instead, I’m caged up like an animal.

Called it by a band T-shirt wearing Viking meathead.

So maybe he’s not actually a meathead or even a Viking, but what gives him the right to steal me from my life?

Yes, the guy is hot, but he’s also a tool.

Hours later, the Viking with the terrible excuse for manners, returns as I’m struggling with an unexplainable bout of fatigue probably caused by lack of water.

My head is pounding, my mouth is dry, and all I want to do is sit. Standing feels like too much effort. Lying down is easier, so I do that.

I can only assume he must know how thirsty I am because he walks into the room like he owns it, sipping from an icy cold bottle of water as I’m struggling to remember what water tastes like.

“Four dead, and they were all connected to you,” he says, sipping from the water bottle that every time I look at it makes my mouth feel gritty like the Sahara Desert. “You’re like a black widow.”

“It sounds like you’ve been doing homework.”

Those guys who were watching me on campus must have been talking to the other students for him to know the victims were my exes. Watching me from a distance wouldn’t have been enough.

When he takes another long draw from his bottle, I can’t help studying the condensation forming on the outside. “My enforcers are good at what they do. I’m surprised the cops didn’t take you in for questioning.”

Enforcers .

Another unfamiliar word to go along with all the others.

I drag my eyes from the bottle. “They were looking for an escaped animal from a zoo.”

“Yes,” he says with a smile so smug I itch to smack it off his face. “Seems I’ve put you in the perfect place.”

I don’t dignify his comment with a response.

“That last one. My men heard whispers that you and he were dating for a while. So why’d you kill him? He dump you for a cheerleader?”

I stare straight ahead, wishing him away. “I didn’t kill him, and he did not dump me for a cheerleader. I broke up with him.”

He laughs. “Yeah, right. He cheated, right? He was a jock, and not just a jock, the star quarterback.”

I can see where this is going, and there is no way I’m going to sit here and let it.

Getting up from the floor makes me briefly lightheaded. I shake off the sensation and walk over to him, looking him in the eye.

“Doug was a nice guy who would walk any girl home at night to make sure she got home safe. Didn’t matter if he knew her or not. He deserved to have a normal life with a normal girlfriend instead of thinking that I was out cheating on him because I could never tell him what I was,” I say with quiet intensity. “ That’s why I broke up with him. So joke all you want, laugh, mock me, but don’t you dare say another word against him. He was worth ten of you.”

For one second, his sneer slips.

He doesn’t make a sound as he leaves, but he tosses the half-empty water bottle to the ground, as if he wants it to taunt me. And it does taunt me because I watch the rest of the water in the bottle spill across the floor.

The jackass.

The other guy who followed him in but remained standing near the door frowns slightly as he watches me.

“Your friend is a tool,” I say, turning away from the spilled water before it can make my mouth feel even drier than it does already. “You know that, right?”

“There is more to Aren than you see.”

“I’ve seen more than enough.”

When he doesn’t respond, I glance over to find he’s gone.

Alone again, I stare at the bars as I think of Doug. Someone killed him and I haven’t found his killer. And I need to. He did not deserve to die alone and probably afraid, ravaged by a wolf in the middle of the night.

Not Doug.

When the back of my eyelids burn, I squeeze my eyes shut and tilt my head back.

Whoever killed Doug will pay for it. Even if I never make it out of here, I will haunt the person forever.

I have no guards, and haven’t since I got here, so I push myself to my feet to test my strange reaction to the bars of my cage.

I’m strong. Surely breaking out can’t be that hard, can it?

When I find myself still hesitating, I tell myself I’m just being paranoid about these bars the way I’m being paranoid that something is wrong with my silent wolf.

“It’s all in your head, Kat. Just do it,” I will myself.

I wrap my hands around the bars and my world shatters into white-hot agony.

“Stop, Blaine.” I push him away as he presses more of his weight onto my side of the couch in his parents' den.

We’ve been dating for nearly a year, and we both graduate high school soon. I’m moving to another city, and he’s going across the country to an Ivy.

There was no way I would be comfortable going to an Ivy League college. Even with scholarships, I’d wind up graduating with way too much debt for me to be comfortable with. Blaine isn’t just handsome, he has a trust fund big enough he didn’t have to worry about where he wanted to go to college. He just decided and if he got in, he was going.

“You don’t mind?” I ask, suddenly nervous.

Sleeping together is a big deal. We’re both seventeen, but even though he’s ready for more, I’m not sure I am. I love him and he loves me, but sleeping together feels like a massive step I’m not ready to take yet.

He flashes me an easy grin as he rakes a hand through his blond hair. “It’s no big deal, babe. Let’s just watch the movie.”

I’d thought he would be annoyed since this isn’t the first time it’s come up and I’ve told him I’m not ready to do more than kiss.

But he doesn’t mind.

Of course he doesn’t. Why did I think he would have minded?

I relax into the couch and enjoy the rest of the movie, the reason I came over to his house. After the movie is over, I get a bus from the much nicer part of town to the not so nice apartment belonging to my foster mom.

The next day, I think nothing of the long looks and whispers as I hurry to my locker to dump my bag and head to my first class.

Until I see the newspaper clipping that someone taped to the front of my locker.

In the picture, a girl in ragged clothes dangles from a cop’s grip. The headline reports a girl found near starving near a downtown dumpster.

Someone has scrawled at the bottom of the clipping with a thick black sharpie: Trash Girl.

I only told one person about how I wound up in foster care.

One person.

The guy I loved and who I thought loved me back.

Blaine.

I rip the newspaper off my locker, crumple it into a ball and toss it inside my locker, slamming it shut with more force than I intended. Now the whispers make sense. So do the stares.

Now it’s hitting me that he didn’t even offer to drive me home the way he did when I went to hang out at his house. I told him it was getting late, and he said bye.

I go looking for Blaine.

As usual, he’s sitting with his friends on a bench outside. They’re all rich, all popular, all so confident and assured that I couldn’t believe Blaine and his friends accepted me into their group.

“Blaine, can I talk to you?”

He smiles as he gets up, following me to the side of the building as the rest of his friends cover their mouths and whisper to each other as they track me with their stares.

I thought they’d all accepted me when Blaine and I started dating. I’m starting to wonder if maybe I was blind or willfully na?ve because I don’t think they did.

“The newspaper. Who did you tell?” I ask.

He looks bored. “I don’t know what you mean.”

I lower my voice when his friends glance over. “You told someone about me.”

He glances at his watch, a top of the line smart watch I could never afford in a million years. “I have to get to class.”

I step in front of him, blocking his way back to his friends and lower my voice when they look at me. “You told someone about me. Is this because of last night?”

He yawns. “Because you’re not as much fun as I thought you were?”

I take a slow step back. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He steps closer. “I’d have thought a girl in foster care wouldn’t be a prude, but I guess that was just with me, huh?”

“I haven’t slept with anyone, Blaine,” I whisper, blushing.

His handsome face is no longer so handsome. It’s cold. Distant. “It’s over.”

“Because I wouldn’t sleep with you?” I hiss.

“Because a guy like me never settles for a girl like you.”

Unless it’s for sex, I bitterly tell myself as I watch him walk away.

He laughs with his friends as I stand there, alone, angry. My wolf growls at me to rip his throat out, but even though I want to, this doesn’t feel like a killing offence.

When the bell for class rings, I tell myself it doesn’t matter. What’s one breakup in the grand scheme of things? I’ll just dodge his friends, that’s all.

But that’s not all.

By lunch, the rumor that Blaine dumped me because I slept with half the football team behind his back is all over the school. Even the teachers are giving me long looks.

I refused to sleep with him, and because I wouldn’t, he’s spread my foster care secret around the school and made everyone think I’m a slut.

There’s no way I can kill Blaine and get away with it.

With one year to go before I graduate, I bottle up my rage, ignore the Trash Girl comments everywhere I go, the whispers I’m a slut or a whore, and I focus on studying hard.

I graduate at the top of my class, skip the graduation ball, and spend the evening packing.

The day I turn eighteen, I leave foster care behind me and change my name so no one can ever link me to my Trash Girl past.

I leave early for college with a new name and a determination to build a new life for myself. One where no one can look at me like I’m beneath them. Not again.

That’s all that matters.

When I come back to myself, I’m trembling so hard my teeth chatter, curled up in a fetal position beside a small puddle of sick, and I can’t feel my wolf.

Why can’t I feel my wolf?