Page 12 of Pack Kasen: Part 3
We wouldn’t have found her if we hadn’t come back to the house and pored over maps of the old mines. After pairing up, we headed out in our cars, searching every single one in the area.
She was in the sixth mine, miles away from the road I had been running down.
He lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “A little of both. She’ll come around.”
“Would you if I locked you in a silver cage that nearly killed you?”
The pause before he speaks is answer enough. Finan is one of the most patient, forgiving people I know. Fuck knows I’ve pushed every button he has and then some, yet he hasn’t run screaming from an Alpha who howls at the sky when things piss him off.
I would not be as patient, yet I’m asking Kat to take me as I am.
“It might take a while,” he eventually says. “She just needs time.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“You have to show her that her heart is safe with you.”
I twist around to peer up at my bedroom window. She’s probably back in bed now, and her parents aren’t going to beleaving her side in a hurry. “Do you see her parents leaving Burning Wood without the daughter they thought they lost over fifteen years ago?”
Kat is the lost Lake Prairie child, long thought dead until Tagge, the Wolf Lord of Starling’s Peak, and my closest neighbor, figured out who she was.
Before Cristofer abducted her, her memories of her parents were slowly returning. The moment they do, she’s gone.
I’ll be lucky if she says goodbye before she walks away.
Finan doesn’t respond. He doesn’t have to.
I don’t have long to convince her to stay with me.
Maybe she’ll stick around long enough to hunt Cristopher and rip out his throat. She likes the hunt too much to walk away now. At least, I hope she does.
But after?
I get to my feet.
“I need to speak to Gregor. Can you get her parents set up in the guest cabin?” I ask Fin. The two-bedroom cabin, with its own bathroom and kitchen, is tucked behind the bunkhouse, where most of the pack live. It’s almost always empty since we rarely have guests. “Kat’s dad already punched me in the face before, and he blames me for Kat nearly dying. The more distance I put between us, the better for everyone.”
He'll try to fight me. I won’t let him, and the last thing I need is to be responsible for killing Kat’s dad.
On my way to the bunkhouse, Silas, one of my enforcers, steps out onto the deck of the log-cabin style main house, calling out, “Aren, can I talk to you?”
“Are you dying?”
His forehead wrinkles. “Uh, no.”
“Is someone else dying?”
He shakes his head.
“Find me later,” I tell him, continuing to the bunkhouse. “I have something to do first.”
Gregor, our pack healer, is straightening light green sheets on the infirmary’s three beds.
It’s rare for a shifter to need to stay in the infirmary for long. Bruises, scratches, and bites heal in seconds. Bigger injuries require a bandage and a stern talking to by Gregor.
Only the things that nearly kill us mean someone spends a night in one of those beds.
Kat has stayed here twice.
