Page 11

11

KAT

I ’m stepping onto the decking when a familiar blonde woman staring into the distance with her arms crossed spins to face me.

Marisa.

I hadn’t seen her from inside the house, otherwise I wouldn’t have ventured out here. But with Aren’s mysterious order not to go upstairs, the breathtaking view of pine trees in the distance had drawn me outside.

I hadn’t thought about how I’d nearly died here before I’d taken a step outside, but with Marisa standing in front of the railing she tried to hang me from, I’m seriously regretting my decision.

My memories of what happened after are hazy. I remember choking as I struggled, and then waking in the infirmary with Gregor, a man in his fifties with a salt and pepper beard, who had taken care of me.

She glares as she stalks past me, her sharp orange and wild jasmine scent tickling my nose. I step aside as my wolf tenses, giving her no room to barge me out of her way or do anything worse than that. Like, try to kill me again.

“I bet you’re pleased to have gotten exactly what you wanted,” she says.

“I don’t want the Wolf King.”

She snorts. “Says the woman now sharing his bed.”

“I am not?—”

“I don’t care. Take him. Do whatever the fuck you want. He’ll soon get fed up with you the way he’s gotten tired of all the rest of us.”

“Marisa…” A tall man in his mid-twenties with black hair, gray-blue eyes, and olive skin slides the decking door open and steps outside.

I vaguely remember him sitting at the table playing cards, right before Marisa used the chain wrapped around my throat to hang me from the decking.

He gives Marisa a look of warning. “You’re in enough trouble.”

Her laugh is hard and bitter. “Quit trying to save me, Silas. I don’t want your help, and I don’t need it.”

She stalks inside, leaving me alone on the decking with the guy who looks as awkward as I feel.

I cross my arms. “Well, since you happen to be friends, can you pass on the message that I have nothing she wants? She’s welcome to have him. I won’t be staying.”

Not hers. Ours .

My wolf growls at me, staking her claim on a man I have no interest in. The longer I’m around Aren, the more she wants to sniff and rub up against him. Which means the sooner I leave this place, the better.

I’m walking away when he calls out, “Marisa didn’t mean what she said. She’s just hurting. She doesn’t mean any harm.”

“I’d be more inclined to believe you if she didn’t try to kill me.” I jog down the stairs that lead away from the stilted decking, fishing my cell phone out of my pocket to check for any messages.

Nothing.

When I left town, Cristofer was missing. I keep hoping he went on a spontaneous vacation and didn’t tell anyone, and isn’t lying mauled to death somewhere on campus, his body waiting to be discovered. All because he walked me to my car.

I glance at the cabin that houses the cage.

The door is closed. There’s no lock on it, so I could wander in there anytime I wanted. Cristofer isn’t in there. I’d know if he was there.

I’m debating calling Rachel to ask if she knows anything when another small cabin door, this one farther away, swings open and Finan steps out.

His expression is decidedly wary, which instantly piques my curiosity.

“Something wrong?”

His eyes dart behind me, then settle on me, relieved. “Oh, good. You’re alone.”

I frown. “Why is that a good thing?”

He closes the generator door and walks toward me. “Aren has a project that he’d like my help on.”

“To relegate it more likely,” I snort, remembering the way Aren tossed Finan my bag to carry upstairs to his bedroom.

He smiles. “His strengths do not lie in…” He clears his throat. “Well, I’ll leave him to explain.”

“Explain what?”

He shakes his head. “It’s a surprise.”

I eye him curiously and glance back at the house.

Aren disappeared upstairs hours ago. Other than the occasional faint sounds of banging and drilling, there’s been no sign of him. I spent those couple of hours eating an embarrassing amount of fried chicken with my notebook open in front of me, trying to work out who would have a reason to kill my exes.

In the city, I had to hide the fact that I needed to eat so much more than my friends did. But here, among other people who can change into wolves, no one looked twice at me for consuming enough fried chicken to feed a family of four.

It’s nice not to be different.

“As long as it’s not another chain around my neck or vacation in the silver cage, I guess I don’t need to know,” I say, turning away from the house to refocus on Finan.

“It’s none of those things. How are you finding pack life?” he asks me.

“Uh, it’s fine. Why?”

“Aren mentioned that you had some memories of the schoolroom.”

I blink at him. “So?”

“You recognized it as the schoolroom when no one had told you what it was.”

Right.

“It just seemed obvious, that’s all,” I shrug, uncomfortable.

Anything that relates to my past makes me uncomfortable.

He cocks his head. “It’s not obvious. We created it to look like an ordinary cabin with no sign that could hint at what it was.”

“Why?”

“To protect the pups. If anyone ever got close enough to do us harm, they couldn’t target them first.”

Shit.

“And does that happen often?”

He shakes his head. “Not here, and not recently. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t before. That you recognized it was another clue that you weren’t a feral, but a shifter. One of us.”

“I’m not one of you. I’m just me.” When he looks like he’s about to press the issue, I keep talking. “What’s the deal with the girl who tried to kill me?”

Finan’s pause before he speaks suggests that he knows I’m changing the subject. “Marisa didn’t like the attention that Aren was paying you. She’s on punishment duty for the next month.”

I blink. “ Punishment duty? ” It’s like we’re in the Middle Ages or something.

“Aren is Alpha here. It is his right to decide how to dish out punishment. Hanging you from the decking wasn’t her choice to make.”

He starts walking back to the house.

Since this conversation is juicy, I trail him, not wanting it to end yet. “So he could have done it?”

“He could,” Finan says calmly.

“And you would have let him? Even though you knew I wasn’t a feral?”

He pauses before he says, “The Alpha’s word is law. Punishments can be severe.”

“So he could have killed you if you tried to stop him?”

“Aren wouldn’t have killed me,” he says confidently.

“But he could have?”

“He could. But he wouldn’t have.”

I’m in a world I don’t recognize. The Wolf King’s word is law, and if you don’t fall into line, he punishes you for it.

He must have cared about Marisa to sleep with her. That didn’t stop him from turning around and immediately punishing her when she did something he didn’t like.

“And who’s going to punish him for nearly killing me?”

“I believe he’s paying the price for that.”

“How?”

He stops feet from the house. “You are not letting him off the hook. Aren is used to having his way. He has since he was still in the schoolroom. Ask Gregor what he was like as a pup. Aren would have expected you to have forgiven him by now.”

My eyes narrow. “I’m not even close to forgiving him. He needs to beg.”

A hint of a smile lifts one corner of his mouth. “So he is learning an important lesson.”

“Which is?”

“That you can’t bend everyone to your will.”

I cross my arms as I focus on the creek. “What will happen when I go back to the city?”

“I think you already know the answer to that.”

I do.

Blowing out a frustrated sigh, I turn to look at him. “I have him climbing my apartment balcony to look forward to, don’t I?”

“He needs you.”

I guess that means yes.

“No,” I bite out. “He wants me. Because he’s learned that I’m something special to him. If I hadn’t been his mate, I’d be dead.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Because you would have stopped him?”

“Because he would have stopped himself. When he walked into the formal meeting room and saw you on the floor, he stopped.”

“So he wouldn’t trip over me?” I arch my eyebrow.

A glimmer of amusement flickers in his light green gaze. “He might not have realized you were his mate then, but he knew you were important to him. He wouldn’t have killed you.”

My gaze returns to the creek and the dark green pine trees as the wind blows the woody, slightly sweet scent towards me. “I don’t want him. I have a life waiting for me in the city and he isn’t a part of that.”

“And is it a happy life?” He glances toward the road at the rumbling purr of an approaching vehicle.

He doesn’t seem concerned, so maybe he’s expecting someone.

“It’s my life and one I spent years building. I won’t give it up for anything.”

Even if this place is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and even if Aren, Wolf King of Burning Wood, is the most beautiful man. My wolf and I will be fine on our own, the way we always have been. We don’t need a pack.

“Then he will learn another lesson,” he says as a dark green truck comes into view.

“Which is?” I ask, distracted.

The driver cuts the engine and swings the driver’s side door open.

Aren calls my name, and even though I hadn’t known he was outside until I heard him, I can’t look away from the man climbing out of the car.

I know him.

I have never seen him before, but I know him.

How?

My stomach feels… strange.

And there’s a weird echo in my head. Memories of the basement, a field of sunflowers, and a light wood farmhouse with a covered front porch converge.

Someone is calling my name, but I can’t breathe as I stare at the man in the black denim pants and dark blue denim shirt.

His dark brown hair reaches his ears. He’s in his fifties, maybe a little younger, and the longer I look at him, the more I want to run away.

He hasn’t taken his eyes off me since he stepped out of the car. His hand tightens around the edge of his car door, as if he needs help standing up. Like me, he seems incapable of looking away.

And his eyes…

I know those eyes.

And when he speaks, his gravelly voice punctures through the veil of strangeness filling my mind.

“Kataleya. Is that you?”

I shake my head as I take a step back.

I don’t know that name.

He takes a step forward, eyes searching mine, one hand outstretched as if to stop me from bolting.

“Kataleya Prairie,” someone says.

Not him.

Tagge.

“The Wolf Lord of Lake Prairie had a daughter,” Tagge says proudly. “I knew I’d?—”

The world twists, darkens, as the ground rears up to punch me in the face.

And then…

Nothing .