Page 26 of Pack Kasen: Part 1

“You went to college. It even sounds like you were about to graduate, so I wasn’t expecting such a stupid question.” He gives me a quick once over and shakes his head as if he finds me lacking. “Guess you’re like all the rest after all.”

“I don’t have a story,” I say calmly.

He clears more food off his plate. There’s little more than a couple of bites of the pasta salad and even less than that of the steak left.

“Every shifter has a story. Only a feral does not.” He points his fork at me. “Where is your pack?”

He keeps throwing out words I don’t recognize. They feel important but don’t mean a thing to me.

Beta.

Shifter.

Pack.

I’m aware of what some of them mean, at least in theory. I’ve seen enough wildlife documentaries over the years to figure it out. But those words mean nothing in relation to me. Before Iwas Kat Meadows, I was someone else, but I had to let her die to become who I am now.

I survived foster care, got into a good college, and I’m building a life for myself. A stable, secure future that no one can take from me. Eventually, I’ll have a home no one can push me out of when they decide I’m not good enough.

I have a pack of one.

Me.

I shake my head. “It’s just me.”

He scrutinizes me some more. “I’ll make it clear, feral. Unless you were born a shifter, you are a feral. A feral who turns killer needs to be put down before they expose the secret. They go on killing sprees because they have lost control of their wolf, if they had control at all. But you are a mystery to me, which is the only reason I haven’t ripped your throat out yet.Youhave been killing selectively, which is not the feral way.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“You do.” His eyes call me a liar. “You’ve been killing students at night, then come morning, dressing and going to college classes or working at a bar. Donnie’s.”

It’s just as creepy to hear how frequently someone was following me as it was before. I don’t think it will ever get old.

The day cops found Doug’s body, I’d felt someone watching me. I’d shrugged it off, told myself it was all in my head or it was students looking at me because they knew Doug and I dated. But it was more than that. A lot more.

I lift my chin. "You had your friends following me. They would know I wasn't the one killing those students."

His smile is cold. "Funny thing is, those murders stopped as soon as I got my men watching you. Curious, isn't it? Almost as if you knew you were being observed. Or were you lining up your next victim under the bleachers where my men caught you?”

“You said a feral loses control. If that’s what I was, then I wouldn’t be able to stop, would I? I wouldn’t care if I was being observed at all. I’d still be out there, killing away.”

His smile grows. “And that, right there, is why you’re still breathing.Thatis the story I want to hear, feral. Tell it to me.”

I don’t respond.

There are times when you know someone has formed an opinion about you. And this guy, whoever the fuck he is, seems to think he knows all about me.

Appetite now apparently satisfied, he places his fork beside the scraps on his plate, but at no point does he take his eyes off me. He’s on the other side of these cage bars I don’t want to touch, yet he still views me like a wild animal he has to keep watching in case I get out.

“I ask again, where is your pack?”

“I told you, I don’t have one.”

“So you fell from the sky in a shower of rain one day?”

My God, this guy is a tool.

“No,” I say tightly. “I did not.”

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