Page 14 of Pack Kasen, Part 1 (Caught #1)

13

KAT

I ’m talking myself out of doing something stupid when the door slams open with enough force to make me jump.

Touching the bars again, even with my hands wrapped with the T-shirt I considered removing, would not have been a good idea. I’m already a prisoner here. The last thing I need is for the Wolf King to walk in and find me topless.

The Viking stalks in, bristling with rage. If this was the first time I’d seen him this enraged, I might fear for my life.

I passed that point hours ago.

Maybe even the day before.

I can smell my pee, smell how desperately need a shower, my teeth feel like they’re covered with a layer of fuzz, and I’m stuck in a situation where absolutely none of this is my making.

And this jackass is the one responsible for it.

Behind him, Finan, the reason I’m not gasping for water, slips in to stand against the wall next to the door. His expression is blank.

To my surprise, the Wolf King pulls a small, perfectly ordinary looking silver key from his sweatpants pocket and unlocks my cell door. “You’ve been flirting with my enforcers.”

I force myself to glance casually at the key, note which pocket he returns it to, and away again, feigning boredom.

I don’t care what I have to do, but that key is mine, and I mean to take it.

As he steps into the cage with me, his amber eyes briefly flare gold, and I know for that split second I was looking at his wolf.

I remain sitting cross-legged on the floor as he stands just inside my cell, heavily muscled arms crossed over an equally powerful chest. “No, I haven’t.”

“Aren…” Finan steps forward, looking concerned.

The Viking lifts one hand in a sign for silence, but he never takes his eyes off me. “None of my men will let you out. Flirt all you want. It won’t happen.”

“Is that why you’re here? To show me what you’re made of?” I peer up at him, resting my elbow on my knee with my chin in my palm, feigning boredom as I calculate how I can bring this jackass down. “Well, I’m very impressed. Well done.”

His lips flatten and he uncrosses his arms. “You’re trying to provoke me into killing you.”

“Wrong. I’m trying to provoke you to leave .”

Anger tightens his face, and I watch it melt away like he’s using brute force to not let it overwhelm him. His smile is taunting when he glances at the bucket in the corner of my cell. “You really have been fully embracing living as an animal.”

“If that was true,” I tell him calmly, “I would be flinging my shit at your head. You know, like a monkey.”

His fingers curl into fists.

It’s been years since I’ve been in a physical fight, if I don’t count the ambush under the bleachers. I was fifteen, nearly sixteen, when my seventeen-year-old foster brother snuck into my room in the middle of the night.

He thought I was sleeping. I broke his jaw, and I’d like to think he learned a valuable lesson that night to keep his hands to himself.

After that, Iwan, my social worker, took me to Robert.

“My beta suggested I try talking to you. Since there’s no reasoning with a feral, I imagine I’m just wasting my time.”

I eye him for a beat, and then I figure why not? As strange as it seems, this is actually the most reasonable he’s been since he stuck me in this cage. If I can get him talking, he won’t be ready when I spring at him, take him down and get out of this cage. “Okay, fine. I’ll bite. What is your deal with ferals?”

He smirks. “Bite. Funny you should use that word. A feral comes to being when a shifter, in his wolf form, bites them. When did a wolf bite you?”

I might not know much about my past, but I know one thing.

“No one bit me. And before you ask, I don’t have a scar on me.”

He shrugs. “A feral will heal from a bite during their first shift. Not having a bite means nothing.”

“This is me. I’ve always been like this.” Before Robert and before the basement, I knew there was something inside me itching to get out.

“Then where is your pack?” he demands.

“Like I told you before, I don’t have one.”

“A wolf bit you and for whatever reason, you’ve decided to pretend it didn’t happen. But the bodies speak to the fact it did happen. Those students died, and a feral was behind them. The only feral in campus my men found was…” He points. “ You .”

He looms over me, and I know he’s doing it on purpose, an attempt to intimidate me.

Getting to my feet requires more effort today than it did the day before. But he’s taken a step closer toward me, which means he’s one step further away from the open cell door at his back.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right. Someone living their ordinary life gets attacked and bitten. Their mind can’t handle this new violent change, which makes them lose control. Then you come along, and as if they haven’t suffered enough, you lock them up in this pretty little cage, and when they no longer entertain you, you rip their throat out. Did I miss anything?”

He steps up to me. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I lift my chin. “I think I do.”

He peers down the length of his nose at me. “So I bet your suggestion is to talk to these ferals, perhaps try to appeal to their logic?”

“If someone had just changed me into something that I believed was only myth and legend, I might appreciate someone talking to me instead of treating me like a wild animal that needs to be muzzled and on a leash.”

“There’s no talking to ferals,” he snarls.

I step even closer to him, trying not to notice how good he smells. “Then what , might I ask, are you doing with me?”

He opens his mouth. No sound comes out.

Behind him, his beta drops his head, though not before I spot the smile that slashes across his face.

The Viking spins around, takes a couple of steps, then stops, his back to me. “You’re as ignorant about this world as a child. No, our young have more understanding than you. There is no reasoning with a feral. You are only in a conversing mood because of where I’m keeping you.”

I prepare to leap at him, but he must have eyes at the back of his head because he chuckles. “Go ahead. I’m curious how easy it will be to kill you.”

He takes another step forward, and sensing my one and possibly only opportunity to escape is slipping away, I call after him, “I was flirting, by the way.”

His back stiffens, radiating with tension a split second before he spins around. His eyes are burning. “What did you say?”

“I was flirting. Troy seemed nice.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Seems a lot nicer than you. Is he single?”

I’m not the least bit interested in his friend, but if I have to tell a little white lie to buy time to get past this idiot, so be it.

His nostrils flare, and his lips are a flat line as he stares down at me. Then he chuckles. “I see what this is. You’re trying to make me jealous. You want me, but you can’t have me, so you’re trying to make me jealous.”

I swear, if I didn’t think I’d end up with a broken neck, I’d slap that smug look off his face. “There are some leaps you’d need to be on the moon to make, and that was one of them. Why would I want you?”

“All women want me,” he says with perfect seriousness.

Is this guy for real?

I look at his friend.

He’s staring at the ground, arms folded behind his back, so there’s no gaining any knowledge from that direction.

I look back at this arrogant, egotistical ass . "Do you think your pretty looks will sway me, Wolf King?”

He smirks. “You wouldn’t be the first to have been swayed by them.”

I take my time looking him over. “You are handsome, I’ll give you that, but I can do better.”

I spin around to return to my seat in the middle of the cage. He is far too alert to sneak past. Escape will only happen when he’s not standing right in front of me.

He doesn’t make a sound as he moves.

And he is fast .

No sooner have I turned away from him than his hand is like a manacle around my wrist as he’s twisting me back to face him.

“ What did you say?” His voice vibrates with barely concealed fury.

I ignore the burn of his hand on my arm as I stare him right in the eye. “I can do better.”

He shakes his head. “There is no one better than me.”

"I disagree. A man who dumps food on the floor for a woman to eat and threatens to kill her on a daily basis has set the bar spectacularly low. A guy pissing on the side of a dumpster on a Friday night and forgot to wash his hands before he shakes mine would be a better prospect."

He’s breathing hard, veins bulging in his neck when Finan calls out, “Aren. Perhaps?—”

He has his hand wrapped around my throat the next moment, and his eyes burn with fury.

I fight to drag in enough air to say what I need to. "A tantrum. Really? To kill a person, you would need to squeeze harder. So, harder, Wolf King."

His eyes flare and he snatches his hand from my neck, spins around, slamming the cage door and locking it before he stalks out.

I look at Finan as I process how close I came to death by strangulation.

Finan looks as surprised as I am by how quickly things ended. He slips away without a word.

The moment the door closes behind him, I lift a shaking hand to my throat.

I’m not sure if I’m suicidal or stupid for provoking him like that.

And I must have been seeing things because I could’ve sworn he didn’t want to choke me.

He wanted me .