Page 19 of Pack Kasen, Part 1 (Caught #1)

18

KAT

“ D o you have to drag me around with that chain?” I ask.

His smile is mirthless. “Have to? No. Need to know I have you on a tight leash? Absolutely.”

The criticism I’m about to level at him withers and dies on my lips as I remember Finan’s words. The last feral to escape from the cage behind me killed his mother, three of his pack, and his dad.

He lost his entire family in one day.

Now he’s leading me, a feral in his eyes, out from the cage he seems to believe I belong, and toward a log cabin style home.

To his pack.

Conscious he’s watching me, and that his past doesn’t come close to forgiving the way he treated me, I take in my surroundings.

It’s beautiful. A perfect blend of tranquility, silence, and rustic simplicity.

“What is this place?”

When he doesn’t answer, I turn to look at him, and I catch him observing me with a searing intensity I wasn’t expecting.

I almost back away from the look in his eyes until I remember he’s holding a chain attached to my throat, and that I’m not the least bit afraid of him.

After a probing stare, he lifts his gaze over my shoulder. “You can go, Finan.”

And Finan, the silent presence at my back, walks away without another word. In his hand is the bottle of water and the sandwich I hadn’t eaten.

Does that mean I’m not going back to the cage?

Is this visit to see civilization the last thing I ever do?

He walks toward the big house with two stilts at the front, and as I watch him, I’m conscious the Wolf King is still observing me.

I stumble when he pulls on my chain, yanking my focus from the man disappearing up a staircase at the side of the house.

“Burning Wood is home. Come on.”

His voice is tight, and when I recall his accusations of me trying to flirt my way to freedom, he must have yanked on my chain on purpose to stop me from looking at his friend.

If I wasn’t so sure he wanted me dead, I’d think he was jealous.

He leads the way.

“Why is it called Burning Wood?”

Nothing is burning.

All around us are pine trees, and on my right is a creek with clear blue water trickling through it.

No one is outside, but I hear faint sounds of laughter and male exclamations coming from the big log house he’s leading me toward.

“That—” He nods at a small log cabin in the distance, “—is our generator. We have everything we could possibly need this far from the city.”

Information, rejection, and a warning all rolled into one.

This is the civility I wanted to show you, he’s saying, and no, you don’t get to hear about why my home is called what it is, and we’re far from the city, so don’t even think of escaping.

I get it.

“We’re not one of the largest packs,” he continues as he pulls me along, “but we’re close and we are strong.”

I notice he doesn’t actually say how many are in his pack. That feels deliberate.

My eyes stray to his large, tanned hand. He’s wrapped the end of the chain tight around his wrist and he’s holding it too. As if he wants to be doubly triply sure I can’t escape.

And for the first time I think about what kind of damage a feral can do for him to be so careful with my chain.

A feral goes into a kind of bloodlust, the Wolf King said.

How out of control would someone have to be to kill five people in such a short time? If the previous leader was my captor’s dad, he’d have been a big guy as well, with powerful shoulders. It can’t have been easy to kill someone that size.

“I feel you looking at me,” the Wolf King says without turning to face me, his deep, low voice vibrating with an unidentifiable emotion. “Stop doing that.”

“I’m confused,” I say.

He looks at me.

Reading his expression requires a map because I’m lost every time I look at him.

“You call yourself the Wolf King and you have a small pack in the middle of nowhere. Why? The leader of the pack is called an Alpha. Why not call yourself that?”

“Because I’ve earned the right to be Wolf King.”

“In the Wolf King Trials?” I still have no clue what that is, but it must be some kind of battle. Considering this caveman, I wouldn’t be surprised if they pound on their chests and grunt to determine the winner.

He scowls at me. “Finan has been talking, I see. What else did he tell you?”

I shrug. Finan didn’t tell me not to mention the feral who killed his family, but it feels like something I shouldn’t know. “Just that you're stubborn.”

“Says the man who feels every decision requires a meeting,” he grumbles, still scowling.

“What kind of meetings?”

He starts to explain when he must remember who he’s talking to. His expression hardens as he spins around. “This way.”

I trail him, trying to take everything in at once, but it’s overwhelming, and not in a bad way. It’s not just the beauty of the place. It's the peace. The sweet, earthy scents. The perfect wildness of it all.

For someone who has spent years struggling to cope with a miasma of scents, sounds, and light, it’s bliss. Or it would be if I wasn’t being dragged around by a man in a band T-shirt, bare feet, his long blond hair tied back with a piece of brown leather.

Here, I don’t have to tune out a million different perfumes, cigarette smoke, and other annoyances and irritants the way I would back on campus.

It would almost be heaven if I didn’t suspect I’m going to die here.

“We spread out across the house and the bunkhouse,” he says, walking faster now, as if he regrets letting me out of the cage and is eager to get this over with as soon as possible.

He could just stuff me back in that cage if he wanted this to end, but I’m not about to tell him that.

“Who decides where you?—”

“We have a hunting cabin we use to skin our deer and meat before we bring it into the house.” His voice is hard, angry even, and I don’t know what I’ve said or done to piss him off.

I glance over at him. Not only are his nostrils flared, he’s angled his head away from me, like he doesn’t want to even accidentally look at me.

We approach another cabin. A smaller one with sweet looking lace curtains covering a long, narrow window. It’s tucked between the bunkhouse and the main house, in a protected space between the two larger buildings. Something about it feels like falling into a dream.

“This is?—”

“The schoolroom,” I quietly interrupt. “Where pups learn how to survive in the world.”

I don’t know who's more shocked. Me or him.

His eyes narrow. “How did you know that?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

“Has Finan been spilling our secrets?”

“No,” I deny.

His lips thin. “Fine, don’t tell me then.”

He pulls me along, harder now, as if he wants me to fall. I stumble along, too surprised to care if I fell. I couldn’t have told him how I knew about the schoolroom if I wanted to. It just… slipped out.

We walk up the same steps Finan took, and into an open concept, rustic looking cabin with a massive gray stone fireplace.

My eyes go to a long, roughhewn wooden table big enough to seat twenty. I’d thought it was only men at the table, but a woman sits among them. She has a short white-blonde pixie haircut, and all appear focused on a card game.

They continue their game as the Wolf King leads me past them, but I feel their eyes linger on my back.

We pass through the open concept space.

This place is as beautiful inside as I thought it was outside.

There’s a large wall of glass that faces mountains and the creek. It’s like there’s no separation between inside and out.

As we head toward the decking outside the wall of glass, a woman on the other side of the room, in a pair of black skinny jeans and a navy T-shirt, is looking for someone. She’s doing it dramatically, peering in one corner then sighing heavily before she moves to the next.

I don’t understand why until I give the room another sweep and spot a little boy, maybe six or seven, with light brown hair and big blue eyes, hiding on one side of a large unlit fireplace. He’s clutching a lion cuddly toy almost as big as he is.

Our gazes connect, and he lifts a finger to his lips.

Hide and seek.

My eyes dart back to the woman who is slowly creeping around the room, doing a terrible job of looking for someone.

I refocus on the boy and mime zipping my mouth shut.

He flashes me a grin and I wince when the Wolf King yanks my chain.

“This way.” He continues to pull me to the sliding glass door and the decking that overlooks mountains in the distance.

As I follow him out, I feel someone staring and glance back at the table. It’s the woman with a blonde pixie haircut.

She’s holding cards in her hands, but her expression is thoughtful as she studies me.

“Aren?” a woman calls out.

“Marisa?”

A beautiful woman comes into sight, and her scent, orange and jasmine, is familiar. Her . She doesn’t look at me as she aims a bright smile at the Wolf King. “Finan was looking for you. He said something about an urgent phone call. He’s near the generator.”

The Wolf King’s expression darkens. “When will that man learn?” he mutters.

“I can watch the feral if you want?” she offers.

After the way she spoke to me before?

Yeah, I don’t like the sound of that, but I like the thought of going back to the cage even less.

The Wolf King’s hand tightens around the end of the chain, and I sense a refusal is on its way.

“I mean, unless you wanted to keep hold of the feral for another reason,” Marisa says, watching him closely.

The smile he aims at her is so false she has to see through it. And he slowly, and I think reluctantly, passes the end of my chain to the woman, not letting go until she’s gripping it. “Hold it tight,” he warns her. “Stay on the decking. I won’t be long.”

“I know what a feral is capable of, and I’d die before I let something like that happen again,” she says firmly.

That seems to reassure the Wolf King because he hurries down the staircase at the side of the decking. I didn’t see any stairs, and we didn’t enter the house that way, but there must be another way down.

Marisa is quiet, and she’s holding the chain so tight I couldn’t snatch it out of her hand even if I wanted to. But I keep a close watch, because escaping from her has to be easier than escaping from the Wolf King.

Still gripping the chain in her fist, she walks over to stand at the decking edge, yanking me along.

Swallowing a yelp, I have no choice but to follow. I can’t break free, and I can’t change into my wolf form even if I wanted to because of whatever this chain is made out of.

But if I can knock the chain out of her hand or get her to loosen her grip, I’ll be gone so fast, she’ll have no hope of catching me.

“Marisa, you need a hand?” a man calls from inside.

She turns to smile at one of the men from the table. He looks to be in his late twenties, with long black hair, gray-blue eyes, and olive skin. He’s holding his cards in his hands, but there’s a line between his eyebrows as he watches us.

“I’m fine. Aren told me to stay here.” Her voice is pleasant and warm, a stark counterpoint to how sharp and abrasive she spoke to me when she paid me a visit at my cage.

The moment my gaze connects with his, he holds it for a beat. Then another man at the table claps his arm and, distracted, he looks away.

One sharp pull and I jerk forward, startled, a scream tearing from my mouth as suddenly I’m falling.

I scrabble to grab onto something.

There’s nothing to hold on to.

There’s only the chain around my throat strangling me.