Page 17 of Pack Kasen, Part 1 (Caught #1)

16

AREN

“ S he’s dying.” Finan softly closes the door to my office. “So whatever it is you intend to do with her, you had better decide soon.”

My gut clenches. It’s closely followed by panic.

I don’t panic. Ever . So why now?

What is it about this woman that is twisting me apart like this?

Shaking my head, I open my laptop. “The only good feral is a dead feral.”

When I open my inbox, there’s an email from the Council, and, for once, it actually contains something I need to know.

If I’d known fighting in the week-long Wolf King Trial would lead to having a dedicated email address and a constant flow of spam, maybe I wouldn’t have fought as hard as I did to win the thing.

Finan doesn’t make a sound, but I feel his gaze penetrating the top of my head. My wolf is growling at me. Hasn’t really stopped since I sank into my chair. The growling is not unusual when I’m neck deep in emails. The day I meet a shifter who likes to sit at a desk and deal with emails is a day I never see coming.

“You’re going to stand there staring at me until I do something, aren’t you?” I sigh.

“My workload is light.”

“And that task you had to do this morning?” I ask, curious. Usually I always know what Finan is doing. Not this morning.

“Is one you will thank me for days from now.”

I snap my laptop lid down and release a frustrated sigh. “Okay, fine. Get Wes and Cruz in here.”

He raises an eyebrow. The man has unbelievable control over that one eyebrow. I’ve asked if he practices at night. He didn’t answer which means he definitely does.

“And the reason you need them?”

“They know more about the feral than I do. And I need to know more about her.”

“It or her?” he asks, his expression blank.

I stare at him until he gets the message. Finan isn’t stupid, so it doesn’t take him long.

He opens the door and walks out.

Two minutes later, Wes and Cruz file in to stand in front of my desk. Finan returns to his usual spot when I conduct my meetings, closing the door before he stands beside it.

He tells me he does it in case I need him to get something. I’m convinced it’s to trip me up or block the doorway to stop me from running when I’m sick of my meeting.

I point at the thin black file on my desk I’ve read from cover to cover. “You wrote everything that happened on campus here. I need more.”

“What do you need?” Cruz asks.

“Your perception of her. You saw her going about her business, acting the student.”

They both stare at me like they don’t recognize me.

Because this is new.

I don’t ask for anyone's opinions and thoughts about a feral. I know everything I need to know about them. So, if there’s any mystery, I solve it, then I kill it.

Game over.

Then I move to the next feral.

“None of you are talking,” I say, sitting back in my seat.

“Well…” Wes’s expression is thoughtful as he folds his arms back and rocks a little on his heels. “She seemed normal. Smelled like a shifter, but she seemed like just a normal student. You know?”

I focus on Cruz.

“She studied a lot,” he says. “She didn’t hang around much with other people. I saw her speak with a girl after one of her classes for a couple of minutes. Didn’t seem to have any close friends.”

They’d reported in after checking into a motel as close as they could find to Gregson College, then they spent all the rest of their time on campus, trailing the feral.

Unfortunately, they arrived the same morning cops found another body. I ordered a new satellite for the internet straight away. Finan and Silas installed it, and everything is looking good so far.

Someone died because we were too slow to deal with the feral. I refuse to let it happen again.

Most of the information they’d discovered had been through observation from afar, so she wouldn’t smell them. Other things they’d garnered from hanging around near her dorm room and eavesdropping on conversations from those who also lived in the building.

“What was your impression of her?” I ask Cruz.

He shrugs. “Just seemed like a typical student.”

“Your impression of her as a feral,” I emphasize.

Both stare at me like I’ve lost my mind. I’m starting to wonder if maybe I have.

“Did she give you any reason to think she was not a feral?” I clarify.

What the fuck am I even asking?

The woman in my cage is a feral.

No pack. No history of ever having a pack. Animal-like murders around her.

Except…

A feral doesn’t care who they kill. Maybe the first is the person closest to them, and that’s only because the human might seek a friend or loved one after that first shift because they’re afraid and might not know what’s happening to them.

Then the wolf’s urges take over.

The wolf doesn’t care who they kill. They’re driven by bloodlust and the predatory instincts bred into every wolf.

Except this one.

This feral targets the men close to Kat Meadows.

Why?

When Cruz starts to answer I shake my head and wave them out. “That’s everything I needed to know. You can leave.”

With my emails dealt with and no more boring admin tasks I can’t offload onto Finan, I have no reason to stay in my office. Yet, I don’t get up from my desk.

I spent last night sleeping on a flat rock beside the creek, unwilling to return to my bed in case I had another of those all-consuming dreams.

I was walking inside the house when Finan said he had something to do. He had a bottle of water in one hand and a suspicious bulge in his hoodie pocket. Before I could ask him what it was, Marisa was trying to claim a kiss. I sidestepped her as my wolf snarled at me, wanting nothing to do with her.

I understood the feeling. I want nothing to do with her either.

It’s like something has turned a switch on in my mind from enjoying Marisa’s company, and I must have to have been with her for three months, to not even wanting her to touch me.

So I’m here, in my office, distracting myself with admin I hate instead of thinking of a way to resolve the situation with Marisa without her questioning why I suddenly want nothing to do with her.

Marisa likes attention. There’s no way she won’t be difficult about this or try to make me jealous by flirting with Silas just to show me what I’m missing. What she won’t like is me telling her that I don’t care. She can flirt with and sleep with whoever she wants, and I’d be perfectly okay with it.

She’s not mine. I don’t want to claim her .

Not like?—

The cell phone rings.

I snatch it up as Finan steps forward. “Aren, I can?—”

“I don’t want your diseased sister, Tagge,” I snarl down the phone. “If you send her here, I will send her back to Washington. If you send her again, I’ll send her back in pieces. Give. Her. To. Someone. Else.”

I slam the phone down.

Finan’s expression is completely blank.

He lowers his raised arm and takes a step back, and I know what he’s going to say before he utters a single word.

“That’s going to have consequences,” he warns.

Yes. It will. Threatening a loved one of a Wolf Lord, one of the ten strongest Alphas in the country who won their position in a weeklong trial by combat, can’t not have consequences. But right now, I don’t care.

I study the file in front of me and I think.

The situation with the feral needs resolving one way or the other. She’s been in that cage for too long. Most don’t last a day or two. Thing is, Kat Meadows is proving to be more stubborn than anyone I’ve ever met.

I prefer to rely on my instincts to guide me in most things. But right now, I’m not sure I can rely on it after my dream and this strange reluctance to kill her. It should be easy. It’s not like I haven’t killed a feral before.

“What would you advise?” I ask Finan.

From the pause before he speaks, it’s clear I’ve surprised him.

“Talk to her,” he says, speaking slowly. “She’s not behaving like a feral and I can only think of one reason why that might be.”

I glare at him, regretting having asked him his opinion at all. “She is a feral.”

He raises an eyebrow. “She?”

“It is a feral.” I scrub a hand over my face because that’s a mistake I keep making over and over. “How did you know the feral was dying?”

“You don’t want to know the answer to that.”

Which can only mean he paid her a visit this morning. He was holding a bottle of water. And that suspicious bulge… He looked like he’d been coming from the kitchens, which means…

I glare at him. “You fed her.”

“Yes.” He doesn’t look the least bit contrite. Probably because he knows I like him and won’t kill him. “I took her food, and she didn’t even realize I was there. You need to do something, Aren, before you kill an innocent woman.”

“She is not innocent. There was no other shifter on that campus. Wes and Cruz would have sniffed them out.”

“They weren’t there for long. And if the feral there is smart, they might have smelled Wes and Cruz and known to take cover.”

“A feral wouldn’t be that smart. They would be devolving.”

“Then maybe this feral isn’t a feral either.”

I cock my head as I roll one word around my tongue. “ Either .” My eyes narrow. “You keep saying I’m wrong in this, but you are not giving me any proof otherwise.”

“Her behavior is proof.”

“Where is her pack?”

“She might be a lone wolf.”

“If she were, then she would still have a pack she chose to walk away from. But there is nothing. No record of her from years before, no pack, and no idea what it means to be in a pack. You saw her confusion when I first mentioned shifting.”

Finan slowly nods.

“So she’s a feral. She has no pack because she was bitten, and those murders on campus all go back to her. All of them. It’s her.”

“She seemed to have feelings for the last one. Doug Hart.”

I order my wolf to shut it when he snarls. Silencing the growl I make in my head at Finan’s soft admission isn’t so easy.

I get to my feet. “Guilt. That’s all that was. He was a jock who broke her heart or whatever. She killed him, knows we’re onto her and is using guilt as a defense. That’s all. Let’s go.”

Finan opens the door and follows me out of the office. “Where?”

I peer over my shoulder. “Where do you think? To do something about the feral.”