Page 55 of Pack Kasen: Part 3
“You’re a good dancer,” Kat says.
“I used to watch my parents dance just like this.” I’d forgotten about it until now. At the time, I couldn’t understand why he had a stupid smile on his face.
Now I get it.
He had the woman he loved in his arms, and his pack safe and happy around him.
Everything was right with the world.
The jazz we’re dancing to comes to an end too soon, and Kat pulls away. I reluctantly let her go. “You want a drink, or are you ready to eat, Kitty cat?”
“What food is?—”
A shot rings out in the distance, and I glance toward the sound, not alarmed. It’s still spring, early for hunting season, but it’s not unusual for out-of-towners to practice shooting in some of the hunting cabins deeper in the mountains.
The next shot is louder, and Kat jerks.
“Kat?” I move closer, concerned now.
She’s staring at me, but she doesn’t see me.
I’m asking her what’s wrong when her eyes roll back, and as I’m reaching for her, she’s shifting. Olive skin giving way to medium brown fur. It’s the only reason I don’t touch her.
Touching someone when they’re shifting can cause complications.
One moment she’s human. The next, she’s a wolf, unconscious and twitching on the ground.
15
KAT
“Don’t go far, Leya. Stay where I can see you. Do you hear me?”
“Okay, Momma.”
My feet slap across hardwood floors, and I barrel down worn porch steps, flipping my long, brown braid over my shoulder. I keep a tight grip on Sophia’s hand, my doll’s hair brushing the porch steps as I run down them and jump the last two.
A field of sunflowers stretches forever, and laughing, I run as fast as I can toward them.
My pack sits on the grass. Some are wolves wrestling.
“Kata, where are you going?” Micah, my pack brother, calls out.
“Sunflowers!” I yell back, running as fast as I can.
Oraya snorts and shakes her gray head. “Not sure what she’s so obsessed with. They’re just flowers.”
“She’s four. She’ll grow out of it soon enough.”
He’s wrong.
They’re all wrong.
The sunflowers are magic.
Trampling fallen flowers and weaving through others so tall I can barely see the sky, I run until my chest hurts, my lungs burn, and I slow down, remembering Momma telling me not to run too far.
Yelping, I trip and tumble forward, crying out when my doll falls. I crash through the sunflowers and down a hill.
