Page 23 of Pack Kasen, Part 3 (Caught #3)

AREN

B ack at my desk to deal with the emails I’ve been avoiding, I stare into space.

I watch my emails pile up, and I have no interest in replying to them.

My mind is on the feral in the silver cage. A problem I have to find a resolution to when there is none. It’s a problem that has existed longer than I’ve been alive.

What else is there to do with a feral other than cage it in silver or kill it?

The cage wasn’t my idea.

It wasn’t even my dad's. But it served as a temporary solution to hold an out-of-control feral.

Temporary became permanent, at least until I recognized that keeping them in it wasn’t right.

Killing them was a way to prevent the out-of-control bitten humans from continuing to kill and risking exposing the existence of shifters.

Every week, there are more ferals I have to cage or kill.

The task feels endless.

Kat wants the feral out. I need to keep her—and my pack—safe.

The feral needs to die, but suddenly, I can’t bring myself to do what needs to be done.

It’s a decision I’ve made over and over again, if not easily, then without hesitation.

I knew I was doing the right thing for everyone.

Now I’m plagued with doubts, and it has everything to do with Kat.

This could mean the end of us.

I’m not sure what compels me to snap my laptop closed, pick up my cell phone, and dial a number from memory.

It rings twice before someone answers.

Tagge, Wolf Lord of Starling’s Peak in Washington State, says, “I assume you aren’t calling to tell me that things with you and Kat didn’t work out and now that I’ve backed off, you want to mate with my sister.”

“I’m confused,” I tell my closest neighbor, sitting back in my seat.

I envision Tagge. Long dark brown hair, golden skin, greenish-blue eyes, and there’s a hint of a smile on his lips that says I don’t intimidate him in the least.

Once, there would have been no choice between spending a day dealing with hated emails from packs around the country and calling Tagge. But now that he’s stopped shoving his sister at me, I don’t actually mind the guy.

“Have you apologized to her?” he asks.

I scowl. “This isn’t about Kat.”

He snorts. “I doubt that.”

“We caught a feral,” I explain.

There’s a reason I’m not calling Finan in to have this conversation with him.

Finan isn’t just my beta; he’s my friend. I go to him to talk things out. Finan would encourage openness and diplomacy, but I’m not sure that’s what will work. Maybe Tagge has a different approach to this problem that could be helpful.

“What about that is confusing you?”

“What to do with him.”

He’s silent for a beat. “ Him ?”

I scrub a hand over my face. “Yeah.”

That's a new development, and one I’m sure is at the root of this confusion.

When I caught a feral in the past, it was uncontrollable. A ‘it’. And that made it easier to see it as a problem that needed to be dealt with.

Now I see a person in a cage. And not just any person.

“I keep seeing Kat,” I say.

He whistles softly. “Ah. I feel guilty for laughing at you now for mistaking her for a feral. That’s really done a number on you, hasn’t it?”

His concern surprises me. “I thought you’d laugh down the phone.”

In fact, I’d been anticipating it. Yet I still called him because I’m out of options. It was call him and see what he thinks or slam my head against a wall in the vain hope it would stir some new ideas.

“There are times I will laugh at you, but other times I will sympathize. Dealing with ferals isn’t something I’d ever laugh about. Do you want me to handle him?”

Again, his offer surprises me.

I briefly consider it and shake my head, though he can’t see me. “This situation will keep on repeating. There are other ferals out there, and I’m the Wolf King. I fought for the right to deal with this problem.”

I lost my parents to a feral. I didn’t want anyone else to lose someone they loved, but my options on dealing with them have always been limited to two. Kill them, or the silver cage will eventually do the job for me.

There is no humanizing a feral. Once a shifter bit them and their mind spiraled, rejecting and fighting that change, there’s no going back. There’s no mending a shattered mind that has utterly rejected its new reality. It’s something my dad looked into, and I doubt he was the first.

My mom thought they could be saved. They can’t.

“What does your beta think?” he asks.

“Not asked him yet. He’ll suggest something diplomatic, and that won’t work, at least, not in the long term.” And what I want is a permanent solution that I doubt exists.

He snorts. “Sounds like he went to the same school of diplomacy as my beta.”

“How is Heath?”

Tagge sighs. “Trying to convince me to improve my communication habits. Talk first, kill after.”

I make a sound of assent.

“He doesn’t seem to understand that if someone is determined to piss me off to the extent that I want to kill him, I’m eventually going to kill him anyway. Might as well skip over the talking and get the killing over and done with.”

“I wish Finan understood that.” It's my turn to sigh. “He likes to lift his eyebrow to show he disapproves.”

“Heath just stares at me until I get the message. It’s distracting when I’m breaking someone’s neck.”

“Kat went to talk to the feral.”

Leather creaks down the line. He must be sitting in his office chair. As Wolf Lord, he held a council a couple of years ago, and I briefly remember his mahogany and brown leather office.

“She did what ?” he growls.

I’m glad he’s as worried about Kat as I am. I’m not anticipating anyone or anything to take me out, but it’s a relief to know that Kat would have Tagge to check in on her. “She said she didn’t want to open his cage, but...”

I know Kat.

If she had thought it was the right thing to do, she’d have opened it. I have the only key, but she’s smart. She’d figure out a way to open it with or without a key.

And I can’t stop thinking about my mom, who opened the cage for a feral she believed was worth saving, and paid for that decision with her life.

When Gregor called to tell me where Kat had gone, my heart stopped.

He’d still been speaking when I bolted out of my office, hoping I wasn’t too late.

“I don’t know what to do.” I scrub a hand over my face, frustrated. “I’m the Wolf King, and I have no fucking idea what to do about ferals.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” Tagge says thoughtfully.

“What is?”

“You're trying to do it all yourself. This isn’t just your problem. It’s a problem that impacts every pack in the country, if not the entire world. As long as shifters continue biting humans, that problem will never go away.”

“So?”

A knock sounds on my door, and Finan sticks his head in.

I take one look at his face and sit up. “I’ll call you back, Tagge. Something’s come up.”

“Call if you need backup,” Tagge says before I can hang up. “We are neighbors.”

“You ever gonna tell me why you were itching to mate me with your sister?”

“Speak soon.” He hangs up, and I shake my head.

Fine then, don’t tell me.

I stand up and drop my cell phone on my desk as I ask Finan, “What is it?”

“Joy and Emilio howled. They were patrolling the western border and found paw prints.”

I frown. “Just one?”

He nods. “Just one.”

“Fresh?” I walk out.

“About an hour old, and it’s not the feral.”

Cristofer.

“Get Cruz and Silas. You’re coming too. We need to end this once and for all.” I stop. “Wait. Wes and Cruz can stay here. Someone needs to keep an eye on the house and stop Kat from going near the cage. Have Troy shift and stay close. If this is a trap, I want him ready to act.”

“I can watch,” Marisa says as she steps out from the kitchen.

“You were eavesdropping.” My eyes narrow at her.

She’s wearing a stained apron from her punishment duties working in the kitchen.

She lifts her chin. “If there’s trouble, I can be more useful out there than scrubbing a pot. I can fight. You know I can.”

I eye her, contemplating it.

She’s a dominant wolf. Strong. Not an enforcer, but she could have been one if she hadn’t been so set on the idea of being my lover.

“Take Cruz or Wes,” she says. “I can watch the house with whoever you leave behind.”

“You never wanted to be an enforcer,” I remind her.

“But I can fight and I can protect.”

“You tried to kill Kat.” Which is the reason she’s on punishment detail in the first place.

I’d be trusting Marisa to watch her when I can’t be around to stop her from going after Kat again.

“Protecting the pack is the most important thing.” She lifts her chin. “Kat is pack now. That means protecting her too. I won’t let you down.”

I eye her for a beat.

She meets my gaze steadily.

“Take that apron off,” I tell her, and I turn to the kitchen, raising my voice. “Marisa is off punishment duty.”

Relieved sighs drift from the kitchen.

I arch my eyebrow at Marisa.

“ What ?” She looks defensive. “I wasn’t causing any trouble.”

“Go find Wes. Tell him you’re watching the house together.”

She walks away, pulling off her apron as I peek into the kitchen, wanting to confirm she hadn’t been causing them trouble.

“How’d she do?” I ask Lorna.

Lorna, the head cook, meets my gaze. She’s in her sixties now, grayer each year than the last, a sturdy woman with serious brown eyes.

“She caused no trouble, but that girl likes to talk. I know you sent her in here as punishment, but next time she does something wrong, send her to the bunkhouse. We like a quiet kitchen.”

The other two women nod their heads, busy with their tasks in their corner of the kitchen.

Chuckling, I salute the best damn cook in Montana, and the woman who’s been cooking in this kitchen longer than I’ve been alive. “Yes, ma’am.”

The kitchen is her domain, and only a fool would get on the wrong side of the person who cooks all their meals.

She snorts a laugh and waves a dish towel at me. “ Go .”