Page 8 of Pack Kasen, Part 1 (Caught #1)

7

AREN

I expected an animal.

Instead, I got her .

A petite woman with long chestnut brown hair, a slightly upturned nose dusted with freckles, and icy pale blue eyes flecked with hazel.

And her scent: honeysuckle and fresh fall leaves—heady, sweet, and intoxicating.

Like I said, I expected an animal and instead I got the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life and who smells like heaven.

Finan gave me a pointed look when I got my first look at her. He said nothing, but it was clear he hadn’t missed the way I suddenly halted right beside her.

So I’d left to do the thing I always do when I don’t want to talk or deal with the responsibility I’ve been carrying since I became the youngest Alpha in shifter history.

I’d shifted, spending hours outside, running and hunting rabbits. Then I’d settled down to nap on a big flat stone beside the creek, my favorite place in the world.

It hadn’t mattered how far I’d run. I never got the feral’s scent out of my nose.

My response to it is… extreme.

Too extreme.

When I return to the house, naked, with no clue where I left my clothes and no desire to hunt them out, Finan’s raised eyebrow makes me sigh.

“Stop looking at me like that. I did not abdicate my responsibilities.” I walk past him and up the stairs that lead to my bedroom on the second floor of the big house.

Most of the pack has rooms in the twelve-bedroom bunkhouse, a long, one-story log building a couple of feet away from what we call the big house. Not me. I get the room with the view.

My room is like the rest of the house: It’s rustic with hardwood floors throughout, fur rugs, and I have my own wood burning stove. Downstairs, a large gray Montana rock fireplace is the centerpiece of the open concept space.

We have a large kitchen where some of the pack are responsible for cooking, a laundry room with a washer and dryer and a couple bathrooms, along with my office, a space I do my best to avoid the never-ending emails that come from being leader.

We’re pretty self-sufficient, with a vegetable and fruit garden, a greenhouse, an electric generator, well, and solar power on the roof. Other than the five-car garage we house the vehicles we share and another smaller cabin that’s going to be home for the feral for the short time before I kill it, it’s fresh Montana air and virgin forest.

I might resent my responsibility at times, but this is home and there is no other place I have ever wanted to live.

“Tagge called,” Finan says, trailing me up the stairs.

I release a tired sigh and scratch my back as I pad through my bedroom toward the adjoining gray stone shower room. “That man is persistent.”

“He’s an Alpha.”

Tagge, Alpha and the Wolf Lord of Starling’s Peak, Washington State, is my closest neighbor, and he’s determined to tie me to his sister. Makes me think something must be wrong with her.

I try to recall what she looked like at the last council meeting six months ago, and there’s a hazy gap where her face is. I couldn’t tell you if she was blonde, a redhead, or a brunette. She was just… there.

I think.

Or maybe she wasn’t?

“I have too many women trying to distract me right now, Fin. I don’t want another one. Tell him I died.”

“That might cause one or two unwanted problems.” His tone is dry as he stops in the bathroom doorway while I walk into my rainforest shower.

Like triggering another Wolf King Trial. I fought to claim the title, and it’s mine for however long I fight to keep it.

Or unless I die.

Since I have no intention of doing that anytime soon, it’s mine. “Probably.”

“Which women are causing you distraction?” he asks.

I start up the shower and bow my head, shivering slightly as the cool water soon heats up to almost scalding hot. Exactly how I like it. “Go away, Fin. You’re ruining my shower.”

His footsteps move away, and as the water soaks my long blond hair, probably too long now with how infrequently I cut it, I think about those distractions.

Marisa is getting attached. Which is a problem. There’s a reason I don’t stay with a woman for longer than a couple of months, and this is it. She’s starting to get comfortable in her position. That was before she sat by my side for almost every meal, and before she started trying to steal food from my plate.

I don’t want her to get comfortable.

I’d move on, find another pack member to have fun with for a couple of months, but inevitably I’d have the same problem later down the line.

They want more. I never do. I’m holding out for the real deal, the thing all shifters dream of but not all find. My mate. The woman that the universe has created just for me.

Every part of her will call to every part of me, and I’ll want to put my mark on her. A couple of the mated members of my pack say the itch to bite her will surprise me with its intensity.

At 29, that hasn’t come close to happening with any woman yet. Maybe it never will. Maybe I should settle for Marisa, bite her and claim her as a chosen mate, instead of hoping to meet my fated mate.

Then there’s the feral.

I’d snarled at Finan in my meeting room, surprising him and me.

We’ve danced that same dance over and over. We bring back any unusual feral to the pack; I talk to them in the meeting room, sitting in the throne that used to be my father’s and scaring them a little. Finan makes them think they have a potential ally so we can get more information from them.

The chain is a reminder that they are a prisoner here. My prisoner. It’s made of real silver. Just enough to prevent a shift, but not enough to do damage to their wolf. That’s what the cage is for.

Then, once we’ve found out whatever mystery compelled me to bring them to Burning Wood, we kill them. Or I kill them.

Finan had knocked the feral unconscious, as usual, and I’d snarled at Finan like he’d done something wrong.

Why the fuck had I done that?

The run had been an attempt to gain clarity. I’ve been out for hours and I’m no clearer than when I left.

When I finish in the shower, I walk out, snatching a towel that I start to dry myself with until I spot Finan, who hasn’t left.

He’s standing in my bedroom, holding a ringing cell phone.

Grumbling, I snatch it out of his hand.

“I don’t want your sister,” I snarl.

Marisa, on her way into my bedroom with a flirtatious smile curving her full lips, freezes.

Then she starts walking toward me.

I shake my head, reposition my cell phone between my ear and shoulder, and point at the door. “Not now,” I mouth.

She pouts.

I don’t lower my arm.

She swings around and walks out with a little more sway in her hips than usual. Any other day, I’d appreciate that hip swing. Not today.

Today my brain feels scrambled. I head for the dresser, phone still tucked between my ear and shoulder as I dry myself.

“What’s wrong with Shira?” Tagge snarls back.

As my closest neighbor, my response to his question could cause me a lot of problems.

Finan materializes next to me and gives me a pointed look.

I know exactly what that look is communicating: whatever you’re about to say, don’t .

“There’s nothing wrong with her. But…” I pull out a pair of black jeans and a T-shirt from the dresser, tossing both on to the bed and wishing I hadn’t answered this phone.

I should have let it ring out. Now I have this to deal with.

Finan gives me another loaded look as I drop the phone on the bed and spend the seconds it takes me to dress to think about what I want to say.

I pick up the phone and walk out of the room, my feet still bare, which I don’t mind, and my hair still damp, which I need to do something about. But my stomach is growling at me. Need to eat first.

“Surely there’s another Alpha you can pass her onto,” I say, testing out the diplomacy Finan is always trying to convince me to try.

Finan winces.

“ Pass my sister?” Tagge’s voice rises with each word. “Did you make it sound like she was a whore?”

Guess I’m not cut out for diplomacy.

“Not a whore,” I deny. “But you do seem eager to, well, pass her on.”

My stomach growls at me.

Food. That’s what I need. Maybe diplomacy only works on a full belly.

After Wes and Cruz brought the feral back to Burning Wood from the city at the crack of dawn, I’ve been distracted. I missed breakfast and nearly lunch.

The moment I walk into the dining room, everyone stops eating and turns to face me. It’s the usual response when I’ve missed the start of a meal. Some Alphas won’t let their pack eat a meal unless they’ve eaten first.

If I’m in the house, I eat first. Always . As the leader, it’s my right. I relax the rules a little when I’m out. I wouldn’t want my pack to starve because I skipped out on a meal by going for a run instead.

Tagge is still filling my ear with complaints as I approach the long serving table we have permanently set up on one side of the room. It’s laden with bowls of salads, platters of steak and chicken, and jugs of water and juice so everyone can help themselves.

When I’ve had enough of Tagge’s growling, I hang up and toss the phone to Finan so I can serve myself.

“He will demand a meeting,” Finan warns me.

“Then you can have her.” I scoop a generous serving of pasta salad to go along with my rare looking T-bone steak. Exactly the way I like it.

“I don’t want her.”

“Well, neither do I.” When Finan opens his mouth, I point at the serving tables. “Eat.”

I’m digging into my meal as I make my way to my usual seat, and once I’ve started, everyone resumes eating.

By the time Finan is approaching my table with two filled dishes, I’ve cleared mine of everything but the bones from my steak.

He passes me a plate filled with a second serving of everything I just decimated in two minutes, and I take it with a grateful nod.

I wait for him to clear half his plate and I’m nearly done with my second serving before I slow my eating. “What’s happening with the feral?”

The feral has been in the cage all morning. It’s nearly two now, which means it has had plenty of time to consider all the ways it might die and tell me everything I could ever want to know.

“We need to talk about Tagge,” he says.

“It’s dealt with.”

A frown line forms between Finan’s eyebrows. “Hanging up like that is going to cause problems.”

“I don’t want his diseased sister, Fin.”

Someone snorts a laugh.

“I don’t believe she’s diseased,” he says mildly.

“Something is definitely wrong with her. The man has been trying to offload her onto me for three months. If you were a good beta, you’d take her.” I look at him expectantly.

“No.”

I grumble, but I don’t push. It’s not up to me to decide who he wants to take as a mate. And he’s a friend. In a way. Sure, I don’t tell him everything I’m thinking, but who does? I eat a few more bites. “The feral. Is it begging for its life?”

By now they’re sobbing, screaming, ramming their heads against the cage, or yelling at ear-piercing levels. On the rare occasion, we have one or two do all the above.

The ones that make it to the cage, that is. Not all do.

Some don’t even make it out of the meeting room.

But this one…

This one feels different. Don’t know why yet, but I intend to get to the bottom of it.

“Not quite.”

I scowl at my beta. “You’re being diplomatic. You know how I feel about that. Is the feral begging for its life yet?”

“Uh, not exactly.”

My eyes narrow. “What do you mean, not exactly?”

“She seems quite calm, considering.”

Finan and I don’t see ferals the same way. He still views them in terms of gender. I no longer do. I’ve seen what they’re capable of and they are more animals than people.

“So it’s pretending to play it cool so I will let it live?” I scoff. “As if that will save it.”

“I asked her what she was doing sitting with her legs crossed in the middle of the cage,” Finan says.

“And the feral’s response was?”

“Meditating. She says the campus is very loud and one of her dorm mates likes to have her boyfriend over. Sleep is impossible when someone is having loud sex against the wall next to yours. She appreciates the quiet.”

I stare at him, incredulous. “She appreciates the quiet?”

Finan nods.

I get up, taking my plate and the remains of my dinner with me because I’m not about to let a feral ruin my meal. Marisa calls out to me as I leave.

“Later.” I stalk out of the dining room, still eating as Finan trails me.

The muffled sound of vibration makes me swallow a growl of annoyance.

“Tagge is ringing again,” he calls after me.

“Hang up,” I order.

Something just became my new priority.

Finding out what the fuck this feral is doing.