Page 7 of Pack Kasen, Part 1 (Caught #1)

6

KAT

I linger on campus until it’s dark.

I’m on edge. My wolf is on edge, and I can’t stop thinking of Doug.

He took me home for Thanksgiving. Surrounded by his perfectly ordinary, lovely family, I’d known we couldn’t be together. There would always be a part of me I could never share with him and he would always feel I was holding something back.

I broke up with him the week after we got back to school, and I went home, crawled under my sheets and spent the rest of the night crying my eyes out.

I loved him.

Letting him go was the right thing to do, but that hadn’t meant it didn’t hurt knowing I couldn’t have a future with the first guy who actually seemed to care about me.

When the back of my eyelids prickle, I choke down my tears, and I straighten from the tree I spent the last fifteen minutes leaning against, just out of sight of two talking cops.

Tonight, someone is going to die.

I’m in all black to hide any blood if I have to be human to end Doug’s killer. Thankfully, none of my friends were around to see me when I slipped into my room to change before I started my hunt.

Guilt burned in my gut as I’d dressed.

I could have done something about this killer before they got Doug. I’d told myself it had nothing to do with me, and it does. It has to.

Low-level security lights illuminate the buildings I pass. I keep my head down as I stick to the shadows, my long brown hair braided and out of my face as I skirt the open spaces to reach the parking lot near the stadium.

The site of the last murder.

Doug’s.

Whoever killed Doug had to have known he liked to train late. They had to have waited, maybe set up an ambush as he made his way to his car. And he’d have been alert. He knew someone was picking off my exes. Yet it hadn’t been enough to save him.

He used to walk to his dorm, same as most other football players, but I overheard students whispering that since the murders started, their coach told them to drive to the stadium or walk in pairs or groups.

Doug had been alone. Why?

My Nikes ensure each step I take is silent as I duck under the bleachers so I can find a nice dark place to strip, hide my clothes, and change into a wolf.

We have to be careful, I tell my wolf for maybe the hundredth time.

She’s been simmering with rage since the cops found Doug’s body. She’s not the only one. I went to class, acted perfectly normal, but inside, I don’t think I ever stopped wanting to tear apart whoever killed him.

She knows that.

For her, hunting is fun. Not tonight. Tonight is serious.

I can’t imagine a single student is wandering around campus tonight, and not only because the principal sent a message to all the students that we weren’t to leave our dorms at night.

Donnie’s was closed, so even if I’d wanted to work tonight, I couldn’t have. No students mean no beers or shots to serve.

Hidden in the shadows of the bleachers, I wait and I watch.

Every now and again I spot a pair of cops or campus security patrolling with small bright torches and guns holstered in their belt, on the search for the elusive Gregson College Killer.

As the last of the cop's torch lights fade, I turn away from the front of the bleachers.

I’ve toed my sneakers off and I’m getting ready to strip out of my pants when a soft creak makes me freeze.

I strain to listen but… nothing.

That doesn’t mean something isn’t there.

I peer out through a gap in the bottom row of the bleachers. Across the football field, in the gap under the opposite seat stands where the traveling supporters sit, something stirs. I’m trying to figure out what it is when a face comes into view and my gaze clashes with a familiar hazel gaze.

“The creep,” I breathe.

His hazel eyes, more green than brown, flash a vivid jade green.

The breath sticks in my throat as feral intelligence hooks me to the spot.

Oh my God, he’s like me.

I’m frozen by shock and indecision.

The Gregson Campus Killer is like me. I know it, even if the cops don’t. I’ve never seen this guy before, but just because I haven’t, doesn’t mean he hasn’t been keeping his distance as he quietly picks off my exes for some strange reason.

I start stripping out of my jeans, then stop when he retreats into the shadows.

Fuck.

If he’s gone, he might be gone for good.

What if this was his hunting ground and now I’ve found it, he takes off and hits another college campus?

Abandoning changing, I warn my wolf to stay on high alert as I sprint around the bleachers toward the creep. This might be a trap—hell, it’s definitely a trap—but if he killed Doug, I can’t let him get away. I might never see him again.

There’s not even a whisper of sound as I sprint toward the traveling side bleachers.

Then I catch his scent: fresh pine and sharp apple.

My wolf snarls a warning as I duck his grab when he springs at me from behind one of the thick metal poles supporting the seats.

“Always like when my prey comes to me.” He grins and lunges.

I leap away, wheeling around as I think fast. He’s big. 6’3 or more and two hundred pounds. If he’s like me, he’s a hell of a lot stronger than the linebacker he looks to be. The element of surprise just went out the window.

I lift both arms, palms to him as I slowly back up, feigning fear. “Why are you here?”

He stalks toward me, his move slow and graceful. “Funny thing is, I was about to ask you the same thing.”

His right hand blurs as he slashes it toward me. I duck and leap over the leg he sweeps out, hitting out with the flat of my palm in a move I learned in a self-defense class.

Hit, hit.

He stumbles back, blood streaming from the nose I broke.

But he’s still smiling.

And he is definitely like me for that broken nose to be healing right in front of me.

“A fighter. Fun.” When he speaks, his teeth aren’t human anymore.

White canines glint at me, lethal and sharp enough to tear through flesh.

Wolf teeth.

That’s not my only problem.

His right hand elongates, fingers stretching and curling to resemble wolf claws.

He punches those claws at my throat.

I leap back, spin around, and sprint away.

I don’t hear him follow, but he’s there. I feel him eating up the inches between us and breathing down the back of my neck.

It’s practically the middle of the night. The only sound this late is my increasingly ragged breaths.

Cops and campus security can’t be far away. If I were to scream, they’d run right this way.

But that isn’t what I want.

If this guy killed Doug, he’s not going to jail. He needs to be six feet under.

Two minutes.

That’s all I need. Two minutes to rip these clothes off me, change into my faster four legged self, and I won’t be running from him; he’ll be running from me.

Deep in the back of the bleachers, it’s nearly pitch black as I seek the perfect semi-dark corner to stage my ambush. My sharp wolf eyes are no help.

My instincts scream a warning.

Too late.

I slam into something I assume must be a pole. It’s not. Poles don’t trip you. Nor do they smell of fern and wild mint.

Another werewolf.

I catch myself using both hands and shove myself up, only to yelp when someone kicks my legs out from under me.

A man appears when I thought there had only been one.

He’s built like a linebacker, just like Corvette Guy. The cell phone he’s holding in one hand illuminates his dark blond hair and dark forest green eyes.

A grin splits his handsome face. “Time for lights out.”

I’m scuttling backward to escape the ambush I walked into so I miss what happens next.

My head rings and I’m suddenly horizontal.

Male voices move closer as I fight to stay conscious.

“You got the?—”

“Here.”

Snap .

For one terrifying moment, I don’t hear my wolf anymore.

An oppressive midnight silence opens its jaws and swallows me whole.

I’m flat on my back when a door creaks open and footsteps pass so close beside me air brushes my cheek.

The footsteps briefly stop right next to me and my nose twitches. Wild forest and dewy snowdrops in the deep of winter. The scent stirs something in my belly. I blink my eyes open to investigate that alluring scent.

My world spins and I wait for the sensation to fade because if I get up now, I won’t stay up.

Shadows stretch across a glossy hardwood floor, and a hint of light creeps around the edges of a large window covered by dark blue drapes.

It’s late or it’s early, which tracks given the last time I was conscious, I was being chased under the stadium bleachers by a werewolf.

I must be in a dream or someone transported me back in time to a place where there are real life Vikings.

He’d be big if I was standing. Flat on my back, he’s like a giant. Has to be 6’4 or 6’5, and everything about him is all hard edges and harder muscle.

His cleft chin is barely visible through a short, dark blond beard. He has surprisingly long, thick dark blond eyelashes, and a straight nose with a slightly curved bridge. Definitely not someone who can walk into a room and you can ignore. At least, not easily.

Like a Viking I once saw on a TV show.

Except this Viking is wearing a band T-shirt, black jeans, and bare feet, not… well, furs and leather or whatever the hell Vikings wore.

And there is an honest to God throne . He takes a seat on that impossibly real throne and holds a large, tanned hand out expectantly.

A man with short blond hair steps out from the shadows, badly startling me.

The man flicks me an impossible to read rapid glance as he places a file in the Viking’s palm.

It’s strangely hypnotic watching his fingers as he flips through the mystery file.

My eyes snap back to the blond man standing in the shadows.

I know him.

He was under the bleachers. There was another man who was driving a Corvette. I’d thought it was just him, but he led me—or chased me—into an ambush.

Now I’m here.

As I lift my throbbing head, a metallic clink rings out.

I look down.

A metal chain dangles from my throat.

Why the fuck is there a chain around my neck?

"This is the feral?" The Viking’s voice is bored, but I feel the power in each word and I instinctively want to lower my head.

It’s a strange response to have, and it’s not one I like, so I ignore it as I push myself to my feet, setting aside the issue with the chain until I’ve convinced this Viking—whoever the fuck he is—to let me go. "I am not?—”

"Why isn't it on the floor?" He continues flipping through the thin black file.

A gasp tears from my throat as pain explodes at the backs of my legs and I crash to the floor, landing heavily on my hands and knees.

There was someone behind me. My wolf should have warned me, but my wolf’s voice—and her presence—is muted, and I don’t know why.

"Now. There was another body?" the Viking calmly asks.

I move to get up.

He looks directly at me for the first time, amber eyes framed with dark blond lashes piercing me into place. "The next time my beta puts you where you belong, your legs will no longer be attached to your body."

As threats go, that one does the trick.

I stay where I am.

"Cruz. The body?" the Viking repeats.

Another man, wearing all black, steps from the shadows at the right side of the black throne. His head is down, arms tucked behind his back. I can’t see his face, but he will have hazel eyes more green than brown.

I listen in mounting horror as the man reels off details about me he could only know if he had been watching me. My class schedule, where my dorm room is, and about how only I could be the feral.

The creep driving the black Corvette wasn’t a creep; he was stalking me.

The Viking snaps the folder shut, passes it off to the man who handed it to him, and yawns as he sits back in his seat. "Put it in the cage."

It doesn't hit me what it is until someone grabs my shoulder and yanks me upright.

I struggle.

An unfamiliar scent moves closer. Warm amber and clean lemon.

A mouth brushes my ear. "The Wolf King does not care what happens to you. Easy or hard is the only thing that matters to me. How will you make me do my job?"

The metal chain chinks against the hardwood floor, and I can easily envision it being the thing they use to hang me from the chandelier above my head.

I’m not stupid.

I’m graduating top of my class, summa cum laude, the class valedictorian elected to give a speech I might not survive long enough to give. I know how to pick my battles. “Easy.”

“Then you might surprise him by living through this.” He breathes the words into my ear.

I swivel my head, surprised.

Pain shatters my skull, turning everything black.

Just before I slam into the ground, it hits me that maybe I’m not as smart as I think I am.