Page 43 of Pack Kasen: Part 1

“If that was true,” I tell him calmly, “I would be flinging my shit at your head. You know, like a monkey.”

His fingers curl into fists.

It’s been years since I’ve been in a physical fight, if I don’t count the ambush under the bleachers. I was fifteen, nearly sixteen, when my seventeen-year-old foster brother snuck into my room in the middle of the night.

He thought I was sleeping. I broke his jaw, and I’d like to think he learned a valuable lesson that night to keep his hands to himself.

After that, Iwan, my social worker, took me to Robert.

“My beta suggested I try talking to you. Since there’s no reasoning with a feral, I imagine I’m just wasting my time.”

I eye him for a beat, and then I figure why not? As strange as it seems, this is actually the most reasonable he’s been since he stuck me in this cage. If I can get him talking, he won’t be ready when I spring at him, take him down and get out of this cage. “Okay, fine. I’ll bite. What is your deal with ferals?”

He smirks. “Bite. Funny you should use that word. A feral comes to being when a shifter, in his wolf form, bites them. When did a wolf bite you?”

I might not know much about my past, but I know one thing.

“No one bit me. And before you ask, I don’t have a scar on me.”

He shrugs. “A feral will heal from a bite during their first shift. Not having a bite means nothing.”

“This is me. I’ve always been like this.” Before Robert and before the basement, I knew there was something inside me itching to get out.

“Then where is your pack?” he demands.

“Like I told you before, I don’t have one.”

“A wolf bit you and for whatever reason, you’ve decided to pretend it didn’t happen. But the bodies speak to the fact itdidhappen. Those students died, and a feral was behind them. The only feral in campus my men found was…” He points. “You.”

He looms over me, and I know he’s doing it on purpose, an attempt to intimidate me.

Getting to my feet requires more effort today than it did the day before. But he’s taken a step closer toward me, which means he’s one step further away from the open cell door at his back.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right. Someone living their ordinary life gets attacked and bitten. Their mind can’t handle this new violent change, which makes them lose control. Then you come along, and as if they haven’t suffered enough, you lock them up in this pretty little cage, and when they no longer entertain you, you rip their throat out. Did I miss anything?”

He steps up to me. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I lift my chin. “I think I do.”

He peers down the length of his nose at me. “So I bet your suggestion is to talk to these ferals, perhaps try to appeal to their logic?”

“If someone had just changed me into something that I believed was only myth and legend, I might appreciate someone talking to me instead of treating me like a wild animal that needs to be muzzled and on a leash.”

“There’s no talking to ferals,” he snarls.

I step even closer to him, trying not to notice how good he smells. “Thenwhat, might I ask, are you doing with me?”

He opens his mouth. No sound comes out.

Behind him, his beta drops his head, though not before I spot the smile that slashes across his face.

The Viking spins around, takes a couple of steps, then stops, his back to me. “You’re as ignorant about this world as a child. No, our young have more understanding than you. There is no reasoning with a feral. You are only in a conversing mood because of where I’m keeping you.”

I prepare to leap at him, but he must have eyes at the back of his head because he chuckles. “Go ahead. I’m curious how easy it will be to kill you.”

He takes another step forward, and sensing my one and possibly only opportunity to escape is slipping away, I call after him, “I was flirting, by the way.”

His back stiffens, radiating with tension a split second before he spins around. His eyes are burning. “What did you say?”

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