Page 29 of Pack Kasen: Part 1

“I’ve seen more than enough.”

When he doesn’t respond, I glance over to find he’s gone.

Alone again, I stare at the bars as I think of Doug. Someone killed him and I haven’t found his killer. And I need to. He didnot deserve to die alone and probably afraid, ravaged by a wolf in the middle of the night.

Not Doug.

When the back of my eyelids burn, I squeeze my eyes shut and tilt my head back.

Whoever killed Doug will pay for it. Even if I never make it out of here, I will haunt the person forever.

I have no guards, and haven’t since I got here, so I push myself to my feet to test my strange reaction to the bars of my cage.

I’m strong. Surely breaking out can’t be that hard, can it?

When I find myself still hesitating, I tell myself I’m just being paranoid about these bars the way I’m being paranoid that something is wrong with my silent wolf.

“It’s all in your head, Kat. Just do it,” I will myself.

I wrap my hands around the bars and my world shatters into white-hot agony.

“Stop, Blaine.” I push him away as he presses more of his weight onto my side of the couch in his parents' den.

We’ve been dating for nearly a year, and we both graduate high school soon. I’m moving to another city, and he’s going across the country to an Ivy.

There was no way I would be comfortable going to an Ivy League college. Even with scholarships, I’d wind up graduating with way too much debt for me to be comfortable with. Blaine isn’t just handsome, he has a trust fund big enough he didn’t have to worry about where he wanted to go to college. He just decided and if he got in, he was going.

“You don’t mind?” I ask, suddenly nervous.

Sleeping together is a big deal. We’re both seventeen, but even though he’s ready for more, I’m not sure I am. I love him and he loves me, but sleeping together feels like a massive step I’m not ready to take yet.

He flashes me an easy grin as he rakes a hand through his blond hair. “It’s no big deal, babe. Let’s just watch the movie.”

I’d thought he would be annoyed since this isn’t the first time it’s come up and I’ve told him I’m not ready to do more than kiss.

But he doesn’t mind.

Of course he doesn’t. Why did I think he would have minded?

I relax into the couch and enjoy the rest of the movie, the reason I came over to his house. After the movie is over, I get a bus from the much nicer part of town to the not so nice apartment belonging to my foster mom.

The next day, I think nothing of the long looks and whispers as I hurry to my locker to dump my bag and head to my first class.

Until I see the newspaper clipping that someone taped to the front of my locker.

In the picture, a girl in ragged clothes dangles from a cop’s grip. The headline reports a girl found near starving near a downtown dumpster.

Someone has scrawled at the bottom of the clipping with a thick black sharpie: Trash Girl.

I only told one person about how I wound up in foster care.

One person.

The guy I loved and who I thought loved me back.

Blaine.

I rip the newspaper off my locker, crumple it into a ball and toss it inside my locker, slamming it shut with more force than I intended. Now the whispers make sense. So do the stares.

---