Page 21 of Pack Kasen, Part 3 (Caught #3)

AREN

“ I didn’t agree to this run, Aren.”

Kat pulls on my arm, and although I slow, I don’t stop. “This is about me showing you fun.”

I told Finan I was spending the day with Kat, and that’s exactly what we did.

As evening approached, I decided to take Kat out for a run—just me and her.

I hadn’t planned on it, but I realized after the pack run that Kat didn’t have one with her pack.

She lost her family—was taken from her family—when she was a child.

She wouldn’t have had the pack gathering followed by a meal to celebrate. She wouldn’t have played with the other pups in her pack or been taught how to hunt and where to play by its older members.

It was her first pack run too, and I’m glad she enjoyed it.

Sex is great with Kat, but I wanted to do more with her than just sex.

I want to make her happy, and I think I’m on the right path to doing that.

“You should have told me.” I lace my fingers with hers and lift her hand to kiss her knuckles.

“Told you what?” She wrinkles her nose, tempting me to tug her closer and kiss the freckle on her nose.

“That it was your first pack run.”

She shrugs, looking away. “It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

I stop. “It would have made all the difference. I’d have hunted a bunny for you.”

We were sitting by the creek when she told me her favorite human food was fried chicken, and her wolf’s favorite food was bunny. I want to give her all her favorite things, and I intend to.

She snorts. “And my wolf would never have forgiven you for it. She would assume you didn’t think she was a good hunter if you had to do it for her.”

I loop my arm around her and urge her closer, wondering when or even if this run I suggested is going to happen.

I can’t take my hands off her, and I keep wanting to kiss her.

“You could try telling her that I like giving you things, and I have a lot of wrongs to make right, and that’s part of it. Would that save me?”

Hazel flecks melt away, and for a second, her eyes are icy blue. Her wolf eyes. “You’d get a swipe for the offense, but we would not kill you.”

I laugh, dragging her closer and kissing her again. This woman feels so good against me and tastes so fucking sweet. I can’t get enough of her. “Glad I’m finally doing something right. And you still should have told me about the pack run. I’d have made it special.”

Her expression softens. “You did make it special. I got to have my first pack run with my family, and with Leo, who I love like a little brother. We danced beside a creek, and it was so romantic I wasn’t tempted to shove you in it even once.”

My heart squeezes. “I did all that?”

She nods. “You did. I warn you, though, now you’ve set the bar spectacularly high for the next run.”

“I’ll sail over it. Have no worries.” I wink at her.

She rolls her eyes, but she is definitely hiding a smile from me as we resume our walk.

“We have to find Christopher,” she says a few minutes later.

I’d hoped she wouldn’t bring him up, but I should have known she would want to go hunting. “He’s hiding.”

“Planning something,” she softly corrects me. “And the longer we leave him to his planning, the worse the thing he does. We need to hunt him.”

I smile at her. “I knew you liked to hunt as much as I do.”

“It’s necessary,” she says. “Not a want. A need .”

“And the reason you charged out of the house when you thought our new prospect was a threat?” I raise my eyebrow.

She rolls her eyes. “Would you have preferred me to leave him to kill you instead?”

“Ah.” I step into her, grasping her hips and drawing her closer. “So, you were trying to protect me? Because I have to tell you, the thought excites me more than it should.”

She pokes her finger into my chest. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” I feign innocence.

I still can’t believe she’s still here with me, and that I haven’t broken things between us.

I asked her to give me a chance to prove I can be what she needs, and she’s giving me that chance. I don’t deserve it, but I won’t waste it.

“Finan said something happened the last time you went to hunt a feral,” she says.

I wince.

“What?” she asks, eyeing me closely. “Is the story embarrassing?”

“Was this when he told you that I’m shit at communicating?” I try not to be too pissed at that because he’s right.

“Yes. He said that we need to learn to communicate because if he tells me the stuff you don’t want to, then we will never learn.” She chews her lip. “That was smart of you to have a beta good at the things you're shit at.”

I release a sigh. “Can my mate please stop repeating how shit I am at things and how much better my beta is at those same things?”

Her beautiful eyes, a rare blue with flecks of hazel, sparkle. “Jealous?”

I tuck her against my chest. “Damn right.”

Taking her hand, we continue our walk. “I lost control.”

I feel her looking at me. “During the hunt?”

“The feral looked like the one who killed my parents. I lost control, tore the feral apart, and didn’t give a shit who saw me.”

She’s silent for a beat. “And that’s why you sent Wes and Cruz to Gregson College when you heard about another feral instead of going yourself?”

I nod. “Alphas don’t lose control.”

She snorts. “Everyone loses control sometimes.”

“Not me.”

“You have a God complex.”

I stop walking and turn to face my mate, my eyebrow raised. “I have a what ?”

“A God complex. You like to think you’re right about everything. That you can do everything perfectly. It’s why you refused to believe I was a feral, even though all the evidence was right there in front of your face.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”

And she resumes walking.

I catch up with her, curious about her response. “And is that a bad thing?”

“Yes.”

I stop her then, clasping her hips and peering down at her, confused. “Then why aren’t you angry or walking away from me?”

She rises on her tiptoes and kisses me. “Because no one is perfect, Aren. Not even you.”

When my cell phone vibrates in my back pocket, I ignore it. Finan knows where we are. He can handle almost anything. Kat is being accepting of my flaws, and I’m not sure I’m ready to let her go without another kiss.

“You should get that.” Kat dodges my next kiss, this time by placing her hand flat on my chest and nudging. “It could be important.”

“Finan can handle it.”

“You dump an awful lot on his head.”

“He can handle it.”

“But he shouldn’t have to.”

I look down at her for a moment, ignoring the vibrating phone in my back pocket as I puzzle over what this is about. “Are you volunteering to help?”

“No.”

I steal a kiss and smile at her scowl. Dropping her waist isn’t easy, but I let her go and take her hand instead, squeezing it as I continue to lead the way to my favorite part of our forest. “It’s a lot of work,” I explain. “I don’t willingly dump it all on Fin’s head because I’m lazy.”

Her eyebrow raises, calling me a liar, and I smile. “Okay, so I do that sometimes. An Alpha has a Luna for a reason. Running a pack and being Wolf King are full-time jobs.”

“So, Finan is your Luna?” she asks so innocently I know she’s joking.

I grin at her. “Not exactly. There’s only one person I want in my bed, and it is not Fin.”

“Ah, so you want someone to share the workload?”

I lift her hand and brush a kiss across her knuckles. “Share my life . And one day, have pups.”

Her footsteps slow. I’m taking a big risk mentioning pups so soon. We’ve slept together several times now, but shifter couples have traditionally been slow to conceive.

“You want pups?” she asks, watching me closely.

“Didn’t mind the idea of them before. With you, I actively want them.”

I can envision Kat growing with my child, and it’s everything I never knew I wanted.

She studies me. “I never thought about kids before.”

She told me about her experience in the foster system, which was hell. “You were in survival mode, Kitty cat. I’m not surprised you wouldn’t be thinking about them then.”

We’re approaching a clearing when she looks down. “How many?”

I study her bent head. “How many pups do I want?”

She nods, still not looking at me.

I take the fact that she isn’t sprinting away from me or outright refusing as a positive sign.

“Ten,” I lie.

Her head snaps up, glaring, until she spots my grin. “Funny.”

I wrap my arms around her and bend my head. “As many as you want. We can split the difference.”

And I lift her, kissing her lightly.

She touches my jaw, and I hold perfectly still. There’s a new softness in her gaze that wasn’t there before.

Something new.

"I’m not making a mistake, am I?" she asks softly, and I wonder if she’s speaking to herself or me.

It hurts that she even has to ask, but I know exactly who’s responsible for her doubt. Me. I put that doubt into her mind.

“I won’t fuck things up again, Kitty cat. You’re right to doubt, but I won’t hurt you.”

She’s quiet for two beats, then says, “Three.”

I blink at her. “ Three ?”

“Pups,” she admits softly. “You are handsome, and you make me laugh, but I only want three pups as long as none of them have big heads like you.”

I’m laughing when a wolf bursts through the trees just ahead.

I act on instinct, shoving Kat back and driving my fist into the wolf.

It goes down hard, and the most important thing is that it stays down.

As I approach, Kat is complaining as footsteps pound toward us from the house.

Finan appears, out of breath and annoyed. “I was calling you to warn you.”

I drop to a crouch in front of the wolf, watching it shift back to a dark-haired human in his mid to late twenties. Torn clothing, dirty face. Unfamiliar.

There’s no bite on its body, but I have a feeling I know what I’m looking at.

A feral.

“Silas spotted him. He got past him,” Finan says.

“And does something like this just happen?” Kat asks.

“No.” The feral is still unconscious, and I have a feeling Kat isn’t going to like what I’m about to say. “I can kill the feral or I put it—him—in the cage.”

Kat doesn’t say a word.

I twist my head to look at her. “If I let him go, he could get past us and hurt someone. Maybe someone in town who doesn’t have a wolf inside them to fight back.”

Like a child.

She says nothing.

I continue, “It’s the safest place there is until we decide what to do with him.”

“We?” She blinks at me.

“ We ,” I say firmly. “I know you don’t like this, but we don’t have a choice. He dies, or he goes in the cage, and we don’t have long to decide. He will wake up.”

Her eyes bounce from me to the feral and back again. “He might not be dangerous.”

I don’t remind her that the first thing he did was attack. “It’s a temporary solution.”

The feral snarls, still mostly unconscious, but a threat nonetheless.

Kat’s troubled gaze slides from me to the feral. She chews her lip, and I watch her, waiting for the inevitable.

“Fine,” she reluctantly agrees. “But I’m not happy about this.”