Page 19 of Pack Kasen: Part 1

My head rings and I’m suddenly horizontal.

Male voices move closer as I fight to stay conscious.

“You got the?—”

“Here.”

Snap.

For one terrifying moment, I don’t hear my wolf anymore.

An oppressive midnight silence opens its jaws and swallows me whole.

I’m flat on my back when a door creaks open and footsteps pass so close beside me air brushes my cheek.

The footsteps briefly stop right next to me and my nose twitches. Wild forest and dewy snowdrops in the deep of winter. The scent stirs something in my belly. I blink my eyes open to investigate that alluring scent.

My world spins and I wait for the sensation to fade because if I get up now, I won’t stay up.

Shadows stretch across a glossy hardwood floor, and a hint of light creeps around the edges of a large window covered by dark blue drapes.

It’s late or it’s early, which tracks given the last time I was conscious, I was being chased under the stadium bleachers by a werewolf.

I must be in a dream or someone transported me back in time to a place where there are real life Vikings.

He’d be big if I was standing. Flat on my back, he’s like a giant. Has to be 6’4 or 6’5, and everything about him is all hard edges and harder muscle.

His cleft chin is barely visible through a short, dark blond beard. He has surprisingly long, thick dark blond eyelashes, and a straight nose with a slightly curved bridge. Definitely not someone who can walk into a room and you can ignore. At least, not easily.

Like a Viking I once saw on a TV show.

Except this Viking is wearing a band T-shirt, black jeans, and bare feet, not… well, furs and leather or whatever the hell Vikings wore.

And there is an honest to Godthrone. He takes a seat on that impossibly real throne and holds a large, tanned hand out expectantly.

A man with short blond hair steps out from the shadows, badly startling me.

The man flicks me an impossible to read rapid glance as he places a file in the Viking’s palm.

It’s strangely hypnotic watching his fingers as he flips through the mystery file.

My eyes snap back to the blond man standing in the shadows.

I know him.

He was under the bleachers. There was another man who was driving a Corvette. I’d thought it was just him, but he led me—or chased me—into an ambush.

Now I’m here.

As I lift my throbbing head, a metallic clink rings out.

I look down.

A metal chain dangles from my throat.

Why the fuck is there a chain around my neck?

"This is the feral?" The Viking’s voice is bored, but I feel the power in each word and I instinctively want to lower my head.

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