Page 4 of Pack Kasen, Part 1 (Caught #1)

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AREN

“ Y ou have ten minutes,” I tell my beta.

I stuff a mouthful of steak into my mouth. As always, no one in the dining room moves to eat until after I’ve had the first bite.

The Alpha always eats first.

“It’s not really a ten-minute conversation, Aren,” Finan says.

I narrow my eyes at my second in command. When he’s not convincing me to do more meetings, he’s trying to talk me into something I don’t want.

Today is the perfect running weather and I fully intend to clear my plate and enjoy it. Today is not the day to stay cooped up inside when I could be a wolf.

He slides a newspaper across the table, sandy brown hair falling into his light green eyes as Marisa takes the seat next to mine. Smiling cheekily, she leans over to steal a piece of steak from my plate.

Snorting, I drag my plate away from her. “Mine.”

She pouts. “You need to learn to share, Aren.”

“No, I don’t.” I don’t share my food with anyone. If they want to eat, they can serve themselves. I point my fork at Finan. “Eight minutes.”

A news headline on the front page captures my attention as I take another bite of steak. My chewing slows, and I swallow as I read.

I put my fork down, push my plate away, and pick up the newspaper as I shove myself to my feet. “Meeting in my office. Now .” I raise my voice to be heard over the hum of conversation filling the room. “You know who I want to see.”

I stalk out, glaring at Finan, who follows close behind. “Why didn’t you say it was a feral?”

My enforcers, the protectors of the pack’s borders, trail me. Marisa does too. She’s a beautiful blonde, more than a little flirtatious, but dominant enough to be an enforcer, though she has no interest in the role.

I have six enforcers, which is plenty for a pack of twenty-five, and it’s not like Marisa hasn’t been occupying another position over the last three months: my lover.

She takes a seat at the long, black table in my office alongside my enforcers, laughing at Silas when he cracks a joke.

They’ve been friends since childhood, and even though I’ve been sleeping with Marisa for the last several months, I’m sure she flirts with him to make me jealous when I don’t pay her enough attention. I’ve never been the jealous type. If she wants to fuck Silas, it wouldn’t cut me up too badly.

I sit back in my seat, ignoring the newspaper for now to focus on Finan. He’ll have picked out the most important information I need to know now. The rest, I’ll read later. “What do you know?”

“Three bodies so far. The cops are saying a wild animal. They thought it escaped from a zoo, but there have been no animals reported missing, so they’re looking into someone having kept an exotic pet that got loose.”

A feral then.

No other pack in the country has hunted more of them than us.

Usually, when a shifter bites a human in their wolf form, the human dies. Sometimes they become like us, able to change into a wolf at will.

Then there are ferals. Bitten humans who become creatures so dangerous to everyone around them that we hunt them.

“Just on the campus?” I ask.

Finan nods. “So far.”

As the feral loses control, they stop caring about exposing themselves. Initially, they’ll hunt at night, but that doesn’t last. Soon, they start attacking during the day and, possibly, shift where someone could see them. That would reveal our existence to regular humans, a secret we all fight to keep. I can’t let that happen.

“How long?” Usually, we hear about a feral in the first couple of days of an attack. Reporters assume the fatally mauled humans must be the result of an escaped animal from a zoo. It’s a big clue that the murder is unusual enough to be worthy of investigating.

One kill sets off the hunting and predator instinct that a shifter learns to control as a pup. A regular human does not have that level of control, so the wolf’s predatory needs will consume the human side. That doesn’t always happen when a shifter bites a human, but it’s rare for a human to manage the transition without a pack to support them.

That first kill excites their wolf enough to kill the next night, then the next. Three days is all it takes for us to have a feral in glut, and they need putting down fast . Hence the abrupt end of my dinner.

“A week,” Finan says.

I stare at Finan. “A week !”

“That can’t be right.” Silas reaches over to snag the newspaper.

My fingers tighten around it. “ Mine ,” I growl.

I’m not done with it yet.

He freezes and slowly pulls his hand back, angling his head to show me his throat.

My wolf, mollified by his submission, sniffs once and settles down.

“The internet is still down,” Finan explains. “It’s why we missed it.”

I curse.

The problem with living so remote, which for us, is practically in the wilds of northern Montana, is the reliance on generators and the patchiness of satellite internet during bad weather. Spring, in particular, is one of the worst periods of heavy rain for us. That almost always means spotty or no internet for days at a time.

Including now.

No internet meant we wouldn’t have known there was a feral problem until the weekly newspaper hit our mailbox this morning.

“We need to do something about the internet.” I frown.

Finan nods. “I’ve started looking into moving the satellite or trying a different provider.”

I scan the newspaper as he speaks, grateful he doesn’t require micromanaging.

According to the reporter, the feral has been killing for nearly a week. Three dead so far, with the latest body found in a bush near the science building late last night by one of the campus security guards.

A feral killing three students over the span of a week, with no sign of a glut?

This sounds like a mystery and I’ve always liked those.

My wolf is alert, eager for the hunt, but after what happened last time I went hunting, I’m a little less eager to charge into battle lest it happen again.

Finished with the paper, I put it down as I ponder another mystery. “Why were the victims all male? They prefer females who can’t run as fast.”

Joy’s eyes narrow.

As my sole female enforcer, she’s also one of my toughest. She’s petite with short white-blonde hair and bright blue eyes. If anyone else had said what I just did, she’d have her claws buried in their throat before they knew what was happening. Given I’m her Alpha, she settles for a narrowed glare.

“It’s a biological fact,” Cruz, another of my enforcers, says. “Among regular humans, women are slower and weaker than the males. That’s just the way things are. Google it if you don’t believe me.”

“Goes back to hunter gatherer days.” A brief smile slashes across Emilio’s face. He scratches his short curly brown hair as he reclines in his seat. “Men were out there doing the hunting with their sharp pointy sticks and their little woman was at home nursing the babe.”

“It’s like you want to die,” Finan says, eyeing Joy as he speaks.

He can’t be the only one to have noticed the way Joy’s right eye started twitching at ‘little woman.’

Just because Emilio is Joy’s mate doesn’t mean he’s immune to her temper.

No one is.

Except me, and that’s only because my temper is more legendary than hers.

She pokes Emilio in the chest.

Emilio winces. “Not with claws, mi vida .”

Cruz rolls his eyes at Emilio’s Spanish endearment for Joy. He came to Montana from a pack in South America at eighteen, fell for Joy, and for the last nine years, she’s been ‘his life.’

She growls something. He murmurs something into her ear. She makes a pleased sound, and Wesley blows out a breath. “The things I have overheard those two whisper into each other’s ears…” He shakes his head. “Jesus. Someone needs to wash my ears out with soap.”

I point at Cruz and Wes before we lose track of the reason I called this meeting. “You two are going to the campus. To…” I scan the newspaper. “Gregson College. Find the feral, watch it for other signs of strange behavior, then bring it back here. I want to know why it’s being selective with its victims.”

They usually devolve after a couple of kills. So why hasn’t this one?

“You never send us,” Emilio complains, with his arm slung around Joy’s shoulders.

“You and Joy are easily distracted by fucking or arguing. This is work, and you do your best work when I’m around to growl at you.” I look at Finan. “Get them the credit card. They’ll need a motel for the night.”

Gregson College is only a few hours south of us, but they’ll still be gone a night or two.

My focus returns to Cruz and Wes. “This one is not behaving like normal. Watch each other’s back and check in twice a day. I’m not losing any more of my pack to ferals. If you get yourselves killed, I’ll bring you back to life to kill you again. Remember Missouri?”

They nod.

“This feral needs a different kind of watching. Try that first. Now, all of you leave. I have to talk to Finan.”

Orders delivered, they get to their feet and file out of my office, chatting among themselves about the feral.

They’ll eat. Cruz and Wes will pack, grab the credit card and bring home this feral. Or kill it if capturing it proves too dangerous. In the meantime, we can prepare for its arrival.

“I’m surprised you’re not pushing to go yourself,” Finan says after everyone has left.

In my last hunt, I came face to face with a feral near an outdoor gym at a beach in California that made me lose control.

I hadn’t cared who saw me tear the animal apart.

I’d nearly exposed what we are. That’s how little I’d given a shit about observers. Luckily, it had been nearly 3, too early for most people to be around, but it could have been worse.

A lot worse.

Until I learn better control over myself, it’s best to stay in Burning Wood.

“I had some things I have to deal with,” I lie.

Losing control implies weakness, and no Alpha is weak.

Finan raises his eyebrow. “Is that right?”

“It is. Let’s go. I’m starving.”

He picks up the newspaper.

I shake my head. “Leave it. I’m not finished with it yet. I want to know if there’s any other news we’ve missed. The only good feral is?—”

“A dead feral,” Finan says. “Yes, Alpha.”