Page 23

23

AREN

“T he cops are getting nowhere with their investigation, Aren.” Finan places the newspaper down in front of me.

I scan it.

There’s still no word about the killer, and due to lack of new attacks, the cops believe whatever animal was killing students has moved on.

“That’s because the killer has to be looking for Kat,” I say.

There’s a knock on the door and Kat walks in and glances around the empty room, frowning. “I thought you said there was a meeting.”

“There is. Sit down.”

She doesn’t move.

“Out, Fin,” I say, not taking my eyes off her.

Finan exits, sidestepping Kat and gently shutting the door behind him.

“We need to talk,” I say.

“About?” She lifts her chin, a sign we’re headed toward another argument.

I know why.

That kiss.

It very nearly turned into something more than a kiss. And she’s been wary around me ever since then. “It’s okay to want me.”

She’s turning to leave when the door flies open. Emilio and Joy burst in, both of them grinning.

“We’re having a baby!” Joy beams.

I’d suspected that news was coming with Emilio’s increasing overprotectiveness.

“That’s great news,” I tell her and Emilio, half my attention on Kat, who smiles at them.

“Congratulations,” Kat says to Joy.

“We’re having a party, right?” Emilio asks me.

“Whenever you want one.” We celebrate every event, and welcoming a new pup is one of the most significant occasions for a pack to honor.

“Tonight or tomorrow. We’ll speak to the others.” Emilio looks at me and Kat, picks up on the tension between us, and grabs Joy’s arm, tugging her back out of the room. “Let’s leave them to it, baby.”

He closes the door, leaving me and Kat alone again.

I get up from my desk and walk over to her.

“I want you,” I say.

“That’s nice.”

I’d laugh if I weren’t so afraid of losing her. “Would it be so bad to stay with me?”

“I don’t trust you,” she says after a long moment.

A door opens.

“Aren…” It’s Finan.

I don’t look away from Kat. “I’m talking to Kat.”

The door closes again.

She lifts her chin. “It could be important.”

“If it were important, Finan would have said. Look.” I struggle with my frustration. “We are trying to help. That is what pack does. Help. Lean on us.”

Her eyes narrow. “Lean on you, you mean?”

“I’m not trying to trap you here,” I snarl.

“That is exactly what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work.” She spins around to leave.

“There is strength in a pack. If you can’t trust me, then trust the pack to help you.”

She stops.

I think I’ve gotten through to her until she turns around and says quietly. “Do you know what happened the last time I trusted someone who said I could lean on them?”

I have a feeling I won’t like what she’s about to tell me. That doesn’t mean I don’t need to know. I do. Especially the things that hurt her.

I shake my head.

“I told him how I’d wound up in foster care. When I refused to sleep with him, he spread it around the school that I was Rylie Cooper, AKA Trash Girl, the girl that cops found scrounging for food beside a dumpster.”

I briefly recall the headlines. “That was you ? Why?—”

“And when I confronted him about it,” she continues in that same quiet, tense voice. “He turned vindictive and spread around the school that I’d fucked half of the football team and would open my legs to anyone who would pay for it. I spent my senior year having people throw dollar bills at my head, write filthy messages on my locker, and treat me like a leper. But senior year was important, so I turned up every day, went to class, did my exams, and graduated so I could get the hell out of that city and rebuild my life.”

I stare at her, shaking with rage.

"Then, in my freshman year of college, I met a nice guy. You can imagine, after Blaine, I was hesitant to trust anyone.” Her voice carries bitterness, yet her eyes reveal pain. "He was so sweet to me. Do you know what happened when I trusted him?”

“You don’t have to tell me this, Kat,” I tell her quietly.

All this is doing is hurting her and I’ve done plenty of that already.

I want to know more about her. I want to know everything about her.

But not if it hurts her to tell me.

“I was a bet.” Her laugh is bitter. “And I didn’t find that out until after we slept together. My first time with anyone and I was a fucking bet. I’ve learned that what happens when I trust is I get a knife in the back.”

I watch her go.

When the door snicks closed behind her and I can no longer hear her footsteps, I drive my fist into the nearest wall, wishing it were her ex’s face.

The door swings open.

Finan’s eyes move from me to the hole.

“Get out!” I snarl.

He retreats, shutting the door after him.

But it’s not Fin I’m vibrating with fury at.

It isn’t her ex who made her senior year hell, or even the guy who slept with her for a bet.

It’s me.

Because I hurt her even worse than they did.

She said she liked Doug. She’d defended her ex-boyfriend when I’d accused him of dumping her for a cheerleader. He’d treated her right and was the type to walk a girl home to make sure she got home safe. Someone tore out his throat and spilled his guts.

Does she wish I’d been the one who had died?

How the fuck can I compete with a guy who made her happy?

Is she thinking that I’m just like the guys who stabbed her in the back when I tossed her into a silver cage and left her there so long she nearly died? Because she has every right to think that way.

I can deny it, but actions speak louder than words.

I don’t know how long I stare at the hole I punched into the wall, my rage fizzling out. When the door clicks open, I’m as calm as a man can be after hearing things he wishes he didn’t know. I don’t turn to see who it is. I know the scent.

“Talk to her, Aren.” Finan’s presence doesn’t surprise me. Neither does his suggestion.

I walk over to my office window and peer out. She’s sitting cross-legged beside the creek, her long, slightly wavy chestnut brown hair being tossed around by the wind.

She sits straight and tall. I can’t see her face, but it will be still. Quiet.

She’s so strong.

And she holds everything inside, so much that you wouldn’t know how strong she is just by looking at her.

The strongest person I’ve ever met. And even if she wasn’t my mate, I’d have fallen just as hard for her.

And I have fallen for her.

My mate.

A woman I nearly killed and who wants nothing to do with me.

“I don’t know how to talk to her.” I would never admit to anyone, except Finan.

Uncertainty makes me sound weak.

I’m not weak.

Finan’s footsteps are almost soundless as he crosses the room to stand beside me. His shoulder brushes mine slightly, the touch a sign that he’s there, and he’s listening.

Shifters are tactile. We don’t just like touch; we crave it from our pack and our mates. Keeping my hands off Kat hasn’t been easy, and it won’t get any easier the longer I’m around her.

He meets my gaze steadily. “You talked to me and the others when we lost our Alpha and Luna. You talked to Dania when her mate left her high and dry. You know how to talk to people, Aren.”

I shake my head and rake a hand through my hair, frustrated. “This is different. I can’t…”

“She’s hurting,” Finan says. “This is fear you’ll say the wrong thing.”

But I still hesitate. “And if I say the wrong thing?”

“Then you apologize and say something else. Because you’ll have learned from it.”

We’re nearly the same age, Finan and I. I’m loud, while he’s quiet. He’s calm while I rage often. We’re opposites, but there’s no one else I’d have as my beta. “How’d you get to be so wise?”

“You make a lot of mistakes, and I learn from them,” he says with a smile, as I glare at him.

He nudges me. “Go on. I’ll deal with this hole.”

It’s not the first time one of us has punched a hole in a wall and it won’t be the last.

I walk outside.

An apology.

That’s what Kat wants from me. Two words shouldn’t be such a hard thing to say. I’m sorry. That’s it. Whether she’ll forgive me is another thing entirely.

I glance at the cabin with the cage on my way out, remembering how she said she would never forgive me when I realized I was wrong about her, not even if I begged.

By the time I’ve reached the bottom of the decking stairs and turned to the creek, I’m kicking myself for not having followed sooner.

I’ve missed my chance.

She’s still sitting cross-legged beside the creek, her long brown hair blowing in the wind, and beside her is Leo, with his massive lion toy propped up against a rock.

His profile is toward me, but even from this distance, with the wind blowing their scents away from me, I can see his mouth moving fast. He can and will talk to anyone who will listen.

Leaning against the side of the house with my hands stuffed in my pockets, I smile as I watch Leo chatting away and Kat nodding or smiling.

Leo’s life fell apart when his dad, a new prospect who was unwilling to settle in Burning Wood, deserted Dania. He had mistreated her and failed to offer the stability and security she required after leaving the pack with him.

It had been a mistake letting her go with him. I’d known it at the time, but Dania had fallen in love. She wanted to be with Quinton, and I wanted her to be happy, even if I’d suspected I was making a mistake by giving them my blessing.

I’d quietly warned the beta to look after Dania. He’d said all the right words, but they’d been hollow. What he thought I wanted to hear rather than words he had meant.

Dania returned four years later with Leo, but there was no sign of the man who had promised to take care of her. She had lost so much weight that she’d been near starving. And she’d been ashamed. If she’d been a wolf, she would have had her tail between her legs.

I knew that if she didn’t have Leo to care for, who needed the security of a pack, she might have been too ashamed to come home.

Leo had been different then. He was quiet, timid, and always alone.

I bought him the lion so it could be his first friend when he didn’t have one and didn’t seem to want any. Finan had prepared a suite of rooms in the bunkhouse for Dania and Leo, filling it with everything he thought they would need—more clothes, furniture, and more—a sanctuary so they could have space to recover.

And slowly, Dania had ventured out of her rooms in the bunkhouse with Leo to eat with the rest of us in the log house.

But he’s bloomed ever since then. When I see him, his mouth is moving at a rate of fifty miles a second. He’s running, hiding, and talking to anyone who will listen to him.

And he seems to have found a friend in Kat, or she’s found one in him.

I can’t interrupt them now.

I turn back to the house to discuss with Emilio, Joy, and the kitchen staff what they want to do with their celebration. The pack is growing and the party will be a big one.

* * *

I’m in the office when my door opens, and Marisa sticks her head in. “Can I come in?”

I return to my emails. “If it’s to talk your way out of your punishment working in the kitchen, then no, I don’t have a minute.”

She huffs. “ Aren …”

I look at her. “You nearly killed Kat.”

“So did you, and I don’t see you scrubbing a burned pan.”

I growl.

She shows me her throat.

I return to my work and assume she must have left when she speaks. “Is she really your mate?”

I glance up at her. “She is. Why?”

She hesitates in the doorway. “I heard she was the missing pup from Nebraska. Kataleya Prairie. How did she end up in Montana with another name?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

From what little Kat has shared with me, neither does she.

I had thought that her memories would quickly return now she has her real name and she’s met her father, but her memories don’t seem to be returning. Are they lost forever? Or are they so bad that her subconscious doesn’t want to remember? Hadn’t Gregor said something about a basement when she’d been in the infirmary after Marisa had tried to kill her?

“You were eavesdropping when she came to talk to me in the kitchen, weren’t you?” Marisa asks.

“ Eavesdropping ?” I raise my eyebrow, but I don’t deny it.

Damn right I was eavesdropping.

She snorts. “I bet you’re going to call it observing over a delicate situation.”

I stare at her. “Was this going somewhere?”

She stands there, picking at her fingers, surprisingly hesitant, which isn’t like Marisa at all. She’s the sort of person who will barge into any room she likes. Not the hovering kind.

Unless…

I eye her closely. “Did you do something you think I’ll kill you for?”

She rolls her eyes, exasperated. “No, I didn’t.”

“So…”

She continues to hover.

Her gaze is suddenly evasive, bouncing between me, the window, and my laptop. “I just wanted to say sorry for what I did to Kat,” she says in a rush. “When you’re jealous, it consumes your entire world and you stop using your brain.”

She ducks out before I can say a word.

I sit back in my seat, shocked.

Cruz sticks his head in, frowning. “Was there a reason Marisa bolted from your office like that?”

“She apologized for nearly killing Kat,” I explain, still shell-shocked.

“ Marisa !”

I slowly nod. “Yeah.”

He stares at me, then shakes his head. “ Damn . We are truly in the age of flying pigs if Marisa is admitting to being wrong about something.” He squints at me. “What about you?”

“Go away,” I snarl.

Lips quirking, he retreats and closes the door behind him.

I stare at the door and ask myself what the fuck is wrong with me that I cannot say two fucking words.

It’s two words.

Just two.

I think it. I say it in my head. But out loud?

I can’t do it, and I don’t know why.

“Joy!” I yell.

Seconds later, she sticks her head in. “What?”

The disrespect.

I stare at her.

“Yes, Alpha.”

“What would you do if I brought you a dead deer?”

She cocks her head, eyeing me curiously. “Is this about your refusal to tell Kat you fucked up?”

“Get out!” I growl.

“If you can’t even say it, how can she know you mean it?” she says as she leaves, taking her sweet time.

I look at my overflowing email box, and I close my laptop.