Page 10 of Pack Kasen, Part 3 (Caught #3)

KAT

I t’s the middle of the night, and I can’t sleep.

I stretch out on the bed, my arms wide. It’s a big bed.

Aren is over six feet tall, he has shoulders like doors, and…

Stop it, Kat .

Everything about him is big, including his presence.

And even though I’ve spent most of today and probably the last couple of days in this bed, it still smells of Aren. The Wolf King of Burning Wood.

My mate.

A man I hate, but a part of me needs.

I toss and turn for the better part of an hour before I finally get up and cross over to stand at the floor-to-ceiling windows. Below me is the creek, and beside the creek, something stirs.

I bite my lip as I stare. Then I walk out of the room and downstairs.

I don’t bother with shoes. I’m in a pair of baggy shorts, a T-shirt, and my hair has half-fallen out of my messy braid with all my tossing and turning.

Dragging my fingers through my hair, I tease it into some semblance of order so I won’t look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backward.

The house is quiet.

A couple of lights are on in the bunkhouse. The small guest cabin that my family is staying in is dark and silent. Only Aren sleeps in the main house, a beautifully rustic, log-style two-story home.

It’s dark, but with wolf sight, it’s easy enough to spot Aren sitting on a flat stone beside the creek. He has a folded blanket next to him.

“I thought you were joking,” I say, sitting beside him.

“About?” Aren skims a stone across the water's surface.

“Sleeping beside the creek.”

It takes more courage than I thought I had to pretend everything is fine and that my heart isn’t racing. But I’m studying the dark forest opposite, telling myself I’m just imagining I see a glint of metal.

It’s in your head, Kat. Nothing is there. Just your paranoia going into overdrive.

The last time I sat beside the creek, Cristofer shot me in the belly with a crossbow bolt, and the pain was agonizing. I will never forget that pain as long as I live.

Aren brushes his palms on his pants and faces me. His eyes sharpen. “Are you inviting me up to your bed?”

I focus on the water and order myself to stop staring into the forest opposite.

Nothing is there. If someone were, Aren would not be sitting calmly by my side.

His instincts are a thousand times sharper than mine.

He’d have shifted in under a second and be across the creek ripping something to pieces. He seems the type.

“Not exactly.”

I’m not even surprised when the soft weight of a blanket settles on my shoulder. “I’m not cold.”

It’s not the first time Aren has done that, and something tells me this is going to be a pattern of behavior if I choose to stay here with him. He keeps trying to take care of me, and it’s getting harder to convince myself I don’t like it.

“You will be later. What’s wrong?”

“What makes you think something is wrong?”

“You’re down here instead of sleeping.”

I hesitate, hoping I’m not making a mistake by bringing this up. “I was thinking.”

“About me?”

“About the enforcer meeting.” I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

During dinner, where I sat with my parents in the dining room, I was conscious that Aren was watching me. I know he wanted me to sit with him, but he didn’t bulldoze his way to my side, though I kept expecting him to say something he hadn’t said in the meeting.

When I headed up to the bedroom, brushed my teeth, got ready for bed, and crawled under the cool sheets, I was still thinking about the thing Aren had not said.

“You didn’t suggest biting me,” I say.

I turn to find him studying the water with so much intensity that it’s clear he’s only looking at it to avoid looking at me. “Why would I do that?”

“Despite your mistake in thinking I was a feral, you’re not stupid. If you bit me, then Cristofer couldn’t. Because I’d be yours.”

“You’re mine already.”

“The bite would make it permanent.”

I’d expected him to suggest it, maybe saying he would do it to keep me safe. But he hadn’t suggested it, and as the day progressed, I got the sense that he wasn’t going to.

Now I’ve brought it up again, and he still isn’t suggesting what has to, even in my mind, seem like a good way to get Cristofer to abandon his plans to abduct me.

But Aren is breathing harder than he was a second ago, and when he turns to look at me, his expression is indecipherable. “ Do you want me to bite you?”

My turn for avoidance.

I stare at the creek, my belly tightening in what I tell myself is fear, but it feels an awful lot like anticipation. “I had a dream before.”

The tension between us crackles, a living, breathing thing that whispers across my skin.

“What happened in this dream?” he asks.

I shouldn’t tell him.

That is not the reason I came downstairs to talk to him.

And yet my mouth opens and words fall out.

“You bit me. We were…” I swallow hard, the memory of silken sheets, his hard body pinning mine to the bed, and his cock thrusting inside me overwhelming me.

He bit me, and it was the most intensely erotic thing anyone had ever done to me. I clawed the bed and his back when I orgasmed from how good it was.

It was like throwing a match into gasoline. He put me on my hands and knees, slammed my wrists to the bed, and he fucked me with a fury that exploded my brain.

I have never been so gutted to open my eyes and realize it was a dream. Like a fool, I’d tried to fall back into it, but I couldn’t.

I’d lain there like a sex-crazed idiot with my eyes tightly squeezed shut, my heart racing, desperately willing myself into a dream that’d set my body on fire.

“Kitty cat?” His voice is husky. “What was I doing to you in this dream?”

Before I ran away from Burning Wood—and him—he’d said he’d had a dream about me.

The dream was a sign that we were fated mates. It was the universe’s way of opening both our eyes to each other. He told me he was fucking me in his dream, and I want to ask how. What exactly was he doing to me? Was his dream identical to mine?

Since that way lies madness, I get up.

Strong fingers circle my wrist, and he tugs.

Suddenly, I’m in his lap, and I know exactly why his voice was husky.

He wants me.

Badly .

He gives me a long, searching look.

“A run,” he declares, surprising me when I was half expecting him to throw me down on the ground and throw himself on top of me.

My wolf pricks her ears at the thought of a run that ends with a still-kicking bunny for a late-night snack.

But the woman…

The woman wants things she should not want with a man who hurt her so badly. He saved me from Cristofer—likely saved my life in that old mine—but should I forgive and forget everything because he saved me?

“A what?”

“How about a run to work off this… energy.” He lifts me and springs to his feet with such perfect grace I can’t help but admire it. “Come on.”

He walks away, stripping his shirt off and tossing it to the grass as he heads into the forest.

I eye his T-shirt and wonder what happened to the last one he wasn’t wearing or carrying after our short walk with Leo. “Do you leave your clothes lying around everywhere you go?”

“Yep.” The smile he flashes me is equal parts adorable and annoyed. “And now I have barely any T-shirts. The animals must be using them to create dens or something. I can never find most of them. Let’s go,” he adds when he notes I haven’t moved.

“Where?”

“A run.”

“I told you I didn’t?—”

“That was with Leo," he says, turning to face me and gripping the waistband of his sweatpants, but his eyes stay fixed on mine. “This is different.”

“Different how?” It takes brute force to keep my eyes on his face and not on his hands.

“You need to hunt and kill something, and I need to chase those shadows from your eyes.”

I blink, surprised. “What shadows?”

“The ones I saw when you were sitting beside the creek.”

He noticed. I hadn’t thought he would.

“It always helped me,” he says when I don’t respond.

I cock my head.

“When I lost everyone, and I needed to feel in control of something, I ran, I hunted, and I felt stronger because of it.”

I frown. “We’re not the same.”

“The universe decided you were perfect for me, and I’m perfect for you. I figure there’s more that connects us than I like the way you look, and you like the way I look.”

I walk toward him despite telling him I wouldn’t. “You like the way I look.”

His eyes go on a slow and deliberate journey over me. “I love the way you look,” he says softly.

I walk past him.

His hand snags my wrist, and he tugs me.

I bounce off his chest as my eyes fly to his.

“You don’t need to hide it. I like the way you look at me.” He leans in.

I press my fingers to his belly, but I don’t shift my fingers to claws. “Do it, and I will hurt you.”

His grin is infectious.

He takes a step back and shoves his shorts down.

I direct my eyes to the sky. “It’s a good thing you live in the middle of nowhere, because that is a crime in the city.”

And I jump when something wet and rough swipes the back of my hand.

A large blond-brown wolf sits on its haunches, staring at me.

Back in the old mine, after I’d fought Cristofer off me and just before I passed out, I thought I was imagining him.

My fingers grip his fur. It’s softer than it looks, thicker too. He leans into my touch as if he craves more of my touch as much as I crave his.

Is our mate bond growing?

“Thanks for coming after me,” I whisper.

He gives me a look that implies I’m stupid for thinking he wouldn’t.

I smile when I didn't think I had a smile in me. “Idiot wolf.”

He licks my knee, and I yank my leg back, glaring at him.

And I hesitate, my eyes moving from him to the dark forest behind him.

I’m not sure I want to go on a run with Aren. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to be taking my clothes off anywhere near him either. But the thought of going back up those stairs, and crawling into bed to fall into nightmares and half-formed memories of my past life is something I want even less.

“Turn around.”

He blinks at me.

Muttering a curse at stupid alphas, I peel the shirt from my head, toss it aside, and shimmy out of my pants, throwing those aside as well. Since I’m barefoot, I don’t need to take off my shoes.

It’s only when I drop into a crouch that I lift my eyes to find Aren staring, breathing hard. Still a wolf, but his gold eyes burn.

I reach for my wolf, diving headfirst into the beast that lives inside me. I bolt past the staring Aren, and into the forest to run from the terrors I can’t pin down long enough to fight.