Page 70 of Pack Kasen: Part 1

Other than me and Marisa, who else would this concern?

He holds the door open. “Maybe you’ll understand one day.”

I breathe out a frustrated sigh. “Does this have anything to do with the feral?”

“Perhaps.” His expression tells me everything I need to know and then some.

For a man who says so little, he sure knows the exact words that drive me crazy.

22

KAT

The door swings open without warning.

I’m back to sitting cross-legged in the middle of the cage. My wolf is once again a presence I barely feel but I desperately miss, and I am trying not to think of all the damage this cage is doing to her.

I’m afraid, but I am trying very hard not to show it in front of the Wolf King because he seems like the sort of person who would snatch up your weaknesses, hoard them, and use them against you when you’re at your weakest.

He willneversee me at my weakest.

“So you’re here to finish off what your girlfriend started,” I say, trying not to stare at the plate he’s carried in with him. It smells delicious, probably because I can’t remember the last time I ate.

“Ex-girlfriend.” The door slams shut behind him. “I need answers.”

The emphasis surprises me, as does the mound of food he’s decided he wanted to bring along for this next round of interrogation. It’s nothing less than cruel. He knows I’ve barely eaten, and he’s here to rub it in my face.

I’ve been to the house now, so I know how many places he could have sat to eat his meal before coming here. He’d have had to walk past the armchairs in front of the fire, and the large wooden dining table where some of the pack were playing cards.

Why must he eat his delicious smelling foodhere?

“How’s your throat?” he asks, stabbing his fork into a piece of steak.

It feels scratchy, sore, and it hurts to swallow.

“It’s fine,” I lie.

If I was anywhere but here, I’d have healed by now. The metal in the chain and the metal in this cage steals my strength, prevents me from changing into a wolf, and slows my ability to heal to a crawl.

His gaze drops. “It’s still badly bruised.”

“Someone hanging you by a chain from a deck railing will do that. Was this going anywhere?”

He studies me then, and all I can hear as he observes me is the growling of my stomach that I couldn’t silence even if I wanted to.

“Are you ever not calm?”

“I’ve found it serves no purpose in letting people provoke me into a response.” Robert taught me the value of keeping quiet until I knew exactly what I wanted to say.

He rarely took on fosters, but the ones he did were troubled, prone to violence, and had been bounced from more homes than any other. The ones who would age out of the system and probably wind up on the streets or dead.

The lost causes, some of the social workers and foster carers would say when they didn’t realize I could hear them.

But I wasn’t lost. I knew my way, even if no one else did.

People don’t listen to an angry person, Robert would say. They see you bristling with rage and they think they are better than you.

“Don’t give them that power over you,” he said.

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