Page 21 of Pack Kasen: Part 1

And her scent: honeysuckle and fresh fall leaves—heady, sweet, and intoxicating.

Like I said, I expected an animal and instead I got the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life and who smells like heaven.

Finan gave me a pointed look when I got my first look at her. He said nothing, but it was clear he hadn’t missed the way I suddenly halted right beside her.

So I’d left to do the thing I always do when I don’t want to talk or deal with the responsibility I’ve been carrying since I became the youngest Alpha in shifter history.

I’d shifted, spending hours outside, running and hunting rabbits. Then I’d settled down to nap on a big flat stone beside the creek, my favorite place in the world.

It hadn’t mattered how far I’d run. I never got the feral’s scent out of my nose.

My response to it is… extreme.

Tooextreme.

When I return to the house, naked, with no clue where I left my clothes and no desire to hunt them out, Finan’s raised eyebrow makes me sigh.

“Stop looking at me like that. I did not abdicate my responsibilities.” I walk past him and up the stairs that lead to my bedroom on the second floor of the big house.

Most of the pack has rooms in the twelve-bedroom bunkhouse, a long, one-story log building a couple of feet away from what we call the big house. Not me. I get the room with the view.

My room is like the rest of the house: It’s rustic with hardwood floors throughout, fur rugs, and I have my own wood burning stove. Downstairs, a large gray Montana rock fireplace is the centerpiece of the open concept space.

We have a large kitchen where some of the pack are responsible for cooking, a laundry room with a washer and dryer and a couple bathrooms, along with my office, a space I do my best to avoid the never-ending emails that come from being leader.

We’re pretty self-sufficient, with a vegetable and fruit garden, a greenhouse, an electric generator, well, and solar power on the roof. Other than the five-car garage we house the vehicles we share and another smaller cabin that’s going to be home for the feral for the short time before I kill it, it’s fresh Montana air and virgin forest.

I might resent my responsibility at times, but this is home and there is no other place I have ever wanted to live.

“Tagge called,” Finan says, trailing me up the stairs.

I release a tired sigh and scratch my back as I pad through my bedroom toward the adjoining gray stone shower room. “That man is persistent.”

“He’s an Alpha.”

Tagge, Alpha and the Wolf Lord of Starling’s Peak, Washington State, is my closest neighbor, and he’s determined to tie me to his sister. Makes me think something must be wrong with her.

I try to recall what she looked like at the last council meeting six months ago, and there’s a hazy gap where her face is. I couldn’t tell you if she was blonde, a redhead, or a brunette. She was just… there.

I think.

Or maybe she wasn’t?

“I have too many women trying to distract me right now, Fin. I don’t want another one. Tell him I died.”

“That might cause one or two unwanted problems.” His tone is dry as he stops in the bathroom doorway while I walk into my rainforest shower.

Like triggering another Wolf King Trial. I fought to claim the title, and it’s mine for however long I fight to keep it.

Or unless I die.

Since I have no intention of doing that anytime soon, it’s mine. “Probably.”

“Which women are causing you distraction?” he asks.

I start up the shower and bow my head, shivering slightly as the cool water soon heats up to almost scalding hot. Exactly how I like it. “Go away, Fin. You’re ruining my shower.”

His footsteps move away, and as the water soaks my long blond hair, probably too long now with how infrequently I cut it, I think about those distractions.

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