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KAT

A s always, the mall on a Saturday afternoon is hell on earth.

My wolf hasn’t stopped snarling and sneezing from the insane amount of perfume clogging up our nose and the shrill, high-pitched screams that little kids let off for no apparent reason.

And the people…

Everywhere I go, there are people.

I power walk to the cash register with my armload of bland office attire.

I’ve had enough of this shit.

I just want to pay, get in my car, and find the nearest green space, where I can spend an hour pretending people don’t exist.

My wolf brings up an image of the lush, green surroundings that is Burning Wood, northern Montana as I wait to pay.

Yes , I tell her sarcastically. Let’s go back to the place where that Viking nearly killed us.

She falls silent.

Instantly, I feel guilty.

It’s not her fault that people don’t control their shrieking kids or that teenage girls like to empty entire bottles of perfume over their heads.

I didn’t mean to snap at you; I tell her.

It isn’t the mall that’s the biggest problem. I’ve been in the mall before and it’s been busier than this, but it hasn’t pissed me off to this extent.

It’s that Viking.

He might not be an actual Viking, but he damn well looks like one.

I hadn’t thought I liked Vikings, but, like cheese before bed can invite weird dreams, sometimes you like things that aren’t good for you.

My mind fills with the stupid dream I had of naked, sweaty skin, and a big, muscled man pinning me to the bed and filling me up with one hard thrust that made me ache with need.

Aren. Wolf King of Burning Wood, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean. A place filled with rustic cabins, a creek, and towering pine trees every which way, and they call the place Burning Wood ?

That dream had been so intense. So hot. I’d woken up so needy I’d been reaching a hand between my thighs to quell the ache before I realized what I was doing.

He’d been groaning into my ear with each hard thrust into me. I’d wrapped myself around him, my nails in his back, wanting more until he’d rumbled something about a hungry Kitty cat, slammed my wrists to the bed over my head, and he’d…

Shit . He had given me exactly what I’d needed.

I fidget.

It had felt so real. I had needed it to be real.

Needed him to?—

“Ma’am?” A woman’s voice cuts through thoughts I should not be having in the queue of a women’s clothing store.

I hurry forward with my armload of clothes.

“How’d you find today?” She smiles brightly at me.

Hell. Every single minute of being in your store was hell.

“Great, thanks.” I smile back. “You had everything I need.”

“New job?”

I nod. “Start in two weeks.”

“What do you do?”

“Uh, I’m going to be an accountant. Just graduated.”

Her hands never stop moving as she scans and packs each item of corporate clothing that will make me fade into the background. Identical, in other words, to the clothing worn by my co-workers when I did my summer internship at the accountancy firm last year.

She folds up a pair of smart dress pants. “The corporate grind, huh? I could never be a corporate girlie. Hours stuck behind a desk, living for the weekend, staring at a screen, counting down the seconds until it’s time to clock out. Then the Sunday scaries hit, so you don’t even get to enjoy your only two days off.” She shudders delicately and flashes me a smile. “Cash or card?”

But I’m staring at her, the sound of my heart like a terrified deer being run down by a lion for its dinner.

Is this what it feels like to have a heart attack? Because I think it might be.

“Ma’am?”

“Uh, sorry.” I yank my wallet out of my pocket and hand her my credit card.

Once I’ve paid and I’m out of the store with my bag of work clothes, her words continue to ring in my ear.

Hours stuck behind a desk.

Tired eyes from staring at a screen.

Counting down the seconds until the weekend.

The Sunday scaries…

My fingers tighten around the handles of my shopping bags.

That sounds…

I gulp.

All of that sounds like even more of a hell than the mall on a Saturday afternoon.

What am I doing?

The summer internship was fine. Not super exciting, but I knew it would be since the senior staff supervising me gave me the jobs they didn’t want to do. I was there to learn, and I was there for the higher ups to select the interns they wanted to hire when they graduated.

And it was only eight weeks.

It had an end date.

My new life will not have an end date.

I’ll be doing this for…

A long time.

Years. Maybe even decades.

Someone bumps into me, and I sneeze, swiping my hand over my sensitive nose when I’m hit with an overpowering waft of jasmine. Not the real stuff. Overly sweet, artificial, and not all that nice. I get out of the way before I can inhale any more of her floral perfume.

On my way out of the mall, I swing by a homeware store to pick up a brand new sheet set. I washed my new ones after Aren rolled over mine, and I swear I can still smell him on my sheets, so I donated them, and I’m starting fresh.

They cost me nearly two hundred dollars, which was more than I wanted to spend, but it’ll be worth it to go to sleep and not smell the Wolf King in my bed.

Giving in to temptation, I pull into a drive-thru and pick up a twelve piece bucket of chicken, fries, biscuits and gravy. Because…

Just because.

My wolf is pleased because it’s not sushi and I’m pleased as I inhale my bucket of greasy chicken and fries facing a nearly empty park, surrounded on three sides by grass and nature. And more importantly, no people.

Ten minutes later, I’m licking my fingers clean when my phone vibrates in my center console.

I ignore it, thinking the Wolf King has learned to stalk me in other ways. But when I glance at the screen, it’s Rachel, my old roommate's number, flashing up. I lick my fingers and answer her call.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“It got Cristopher,” she wails and bursts into tears.

I sit up tall, fingers tightening around the phone I’ve pressed to my ear. “What are you talking about?”

“The campus killer got Cristopher. You know, the library guy with the insane allergies and the glasses that always slid down his?—”

“I know Cristofer,” I interrupt as I try to breathe through my panic.

What if she’s wrong?

The Wolf King was just here, acting like a stalker, and I was speaking to Cristofer after I told Finan I wasn’t interested in seeing the Wolf King again. Finan saw us talking, and he was on the phone as he drove away.

What if he did this?

“Kat? Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

Her voice is distant as I kick myself for not doing more to find the killer.

Rachel is telling me about the cops searching the campus, but all I can think about is how Cris made sure I got to my car safely when I left Doug’s wake.

Now he’s dead. The cops just haven’t found his body yet.

What was it the Wolf King said?

That whoever has been killing on campus doesn’t seem to like me being with a guy.

What if the killer saw me and Crist together and thought there was something between us so killed him?

“I have to go,” I talk over Rachel, hanging up while she’s still speaking.

My wolf is filling my head with her snarls as her rage mingles with my own.

We didn’t do enough to protect him. I should have done more. I should have saved him, but I failed.

Someone has been getting away with killing for far too long.

I have to do something about it.

Whatever it takes.