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Page 2 of Pack Kasen, Part 3 (Caught #3)

KAT

T he pain is excruciating.

I’m lying in a puddle of water with my cheek on the hard ground, and I don’t understand how I’m here and not at Joy and Emilio’s party.

Except, it’s not water. The copper tang of blood is heavy in the air, and the scent of the blood is familiar.

Mine .

I was sitting by the creek after arguing with Aren.

I heard a sound. There was pain. Then…

Nothing.

How did I end up here?

Someone is coming.

My wolf growls a warning, and I whimper as I roll over, clutching my stomach and trying to breathe through the pain.

I blink my eyes, and my world is dark. I don’t know where I am, but there’s no light here. No sound either, just the soft treads of something—or someone—moving closer.

Aside from the stench of blood, it smells damp and musty, and it feels like the walls are closing in on me.

Am I in another cage?

Underground?

Where the hell am I?

My wolf growls another warning in my head, and I reach for her, trying to shift to protect myself. It’s like sticking my hand into quicksand.

Everything goes black.

I jerk my head away from the wet swipe against my cheek.

My eyelids flutter open.

What happened? Did I pass out again?

I’m flat on my back, the smell of blood is heavier than it was before, and a thin, gray wolf with silvery-gray eyes stands over me.

I don’t know his juniper sage scent—don’t recognize him —but as he peers down at me, something in his gaze makes me think I do know him.

“Who are you?” I choke out the words as I feel around for a weapon.

My head feels heavy and my body light, and it is taking everything I have to keep my eyelids open.

Why am I so weak?

My fingers brush against something sharp and hard. I grip it as I glance down at it, and suddenly, all my pain makes sense. A crossbow bolt. The end is wet, which explains my pain, and the pool of blood I’m lying in.

Someone shot me with a crossbow bolt, and whoever it was yanked it out of me.

The wolf steps back before I can use my newfound weapon on him, and I watch as the wolf slowly gives way to a man with the long, wiry muscles of a runner.

He’s naked, like all shifters are after a shift.

And his face…

I shake my head.

This doesn’t make sense.

“You’re dead,” I whisper.

Cristofer, the library technician with terrible allergies, who I had always considered a friend, smiles at me. “The old me died. The person I’ve spent the last seven years pretending to be. I decided it was time to embrace who I truly am.”

The Gregson College Killer preyed on my exes, stalking the campus for nearly a week. Cops thought an escaped animal from the zoo had been tearing into the students, chewing on their guts, and ripping their throats out.

The cops had been wrong. I knew it was someone like me, even though I’d never caught their scent.

A shifter.

“You’re like me,” I whisper.

“I knew it was only a matter of time before you figured out it was me,” he says, crouching close beside me.

He’s right.

I was connecting the dots. Just far too fucking slow.

All my exes were dead, then Aren kidnapped me, brought me to Burning Wood, believing I was the killer on campus. I nearly died proving to him that I was a shifter like him and not a feral.

When I left Aren to return to the city, Cristopher asked me out, but I refused. I’d only ever viewed him as a friend, and I couldn’t tolerate being around him for long because of the herbal medicines he used for his ‘allergies.’

He tore his apartment to pieces, making it look like a wild animal had broken in. The cops never found a body like they had with all my exes he’d killed, because there wasn’t a body. It was a fake crime scene.

His eyes slide to my belly. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“Because you shot me,” I accuse.

“I was—” He jerks back as I take advantage of his distraction to stab the crossbow bolt at him. He shakes his head as if disappointed, and with painful ease, he rips the bolt from my grip and tosses it to the other side of the cave-like room we’re in.

“You don’t need to feel threatened by me,” he says with a gentle smile. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

My vision blurs, and I blink my eyes to clear them. “You already have. Stay the fuck away from me.”

It’s agony to move away from him, but he’s too close, and I don’t trust what he brought me here to do. And I should be healing faster than I am.

As I edge farther away from him, something tugs on my right leg.

A silver chain is wrapped around my ankle.

I look from the chain to him.

“It’s just for a little while,” he says, something like sympathy filling his gray eyes. “You need to understand a few things, and then I’ll take it off.”

“Take it off now,” I demand.

The chain is looped around my ankle, but it’s not tied to the wall. There’s a padlock on it, and I’m not nearly strong enough to get it off easily. It’s silver. That’s a big problem. I’ll heal slowly, and I can’t shift as long as I have it on me.

“After we talk.”

“Where are we?” I look around the room again. Aside from a handheld lamp near an open door, there’s nothing else here, and the walls are dark rock.

We're underground or deep inside a cave.

“That isn’t important right now,” he says soothingly.

But panic is setting in at all that rock. “Are we underground?”

“An old mine,” he answers.

I stare at him in horror.

“Just so we can talk. Once I’ve bitten you, we can start our new lives together,” he says happily, as if it’s something I should be pleased about.

I press my back against the wall, panic rising. “ Bite me?”

“You were mine first. I thought I was the only one like me, then you turned up at the college.” He smiles. “And I knew it was meant to be. I waited for you to realize it, too, but you never did.”

“I’m not yours.”

His expression darkens. “You only think that because of him. Aren Kasen.” His lip curls, and his gray eyes grow cold and steely. “I found out all I could about the Wolf King.”

I stare at the hatred in his eyes, and I remember all the dead bodies he left on campus. “If you hurt him…” My fury catches me off guard.

I don’t forgive Aren for hurting me, but no one gets to kill him.

My eyes flick behind him.

“You won’t escape, Kat,” he says, reading my mind.

My gaze returns to him. “You had better kill me, or you had better run because I promise you one thing: put one hand on me and I will rip it off.”

He smiles as if I haven’t just threatened him, rising from his crouch in a smooth motion. “I didn’t think you’d bleed so much once I pulled the bolt out of you. Rest, and I’ll be back soon. I wasn’t sure if the bite would work with you unconscious, so I’ll have to do it before we leave.”

“You’re not biting me,” I whisper. “Stay away from me.”

He continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “I checked, and he hasn’t given you a mate bite yet, so it looks like I got to you in time. When your bleeding has slowed, then we’ll go.”

He walks away, and I stare after him in horror, a cold settling deep into my bones.

Aren is too strong for him, or I have no doubt he’d have killed him before he grabbed me.

And he did it for me.

To claim me.

If he bit me, then what would it mean? That we’re tied together forever?

I don’t know, but I’m fucking terrified.

My fingers skim over my neck, desperate to make sure he didn’t bite me while I was out cold.

There’s no groove or indentation.

Yet .

My eyes linger on the silver chain wrapped tight around my ankle.

Hunching over is like someone stabbing me in my belly. Tears roll down my cheeks, and I brush them away as I fight to yank the chain off.

He said he’d be back soon, and he probably meant minutes rather than hours. He must know Aren will come after me, so wherever we are, we can’t afford to stay here for long.

I yank at the chain, fighting with it, my fingers burning, then blistering from the silver in it. Nothing works. My head pounds as my vision turns hazy again, so I reach for my wolf, desperate.

Pain punches through me, killing my ability to think. Then to move.

I slump, my eyelids fluttering shut.