Page 79 of Pack Kasen: Part 1

“And if I had broken free when he led me out of this cage?”

His eyebrow lift suggests an impossibility. “He’d have stopped you even if he died in the attempt.”

“So selfless.” My tone is bitter.

Gregor studies me for a beat. “All he’s known is responsibility ever since a feral killed his parents. He makes mistakes, as do we all, but he tries.”

“I’d be more forgiving if I wasn’t sitting in a cage that wasn’t slowly killing me and my wolf.”

Gregor doesn’t deny it. “I could speak to him.”

“But would he listen?”

His silence draws a bitter smile to my lips. “Thanks for the aloe vera,” I say, returning the bottle to him through a gap between the bars. “Maybe save the rest of this for someone who needs it more than I do.”

Because I’m dying in this cage. I don’t know why the Wolf King let me out at all only to stick me back in here. Maybe I was dying too fast for his liking and he wanted to slow the process down so he could continue his interrogation.

The door swings open and one of the men who was playing cards in the house sticks his head in. He looks at Gregor. “Aren’s called a pack meeting. Everyone is to attend.”

“Did he say what it’s about?” Gregor pushes himself to his feet.

The guard’s eyes flit to me. “You’ll find out at the meeting.”

So it’s about me then.

Gregor must think so too because when he turns to me, his expression is concerned. “I’ll talk to him,” he says firmly, and he walks out, the guard closing the door after him.

Silence wraps around me, constricting and cold.

There are no chuffs of amusement from my wolf. No growls or that annoying whine she makes when I do something she doesn’t like, like choosing sushi over steak.

Nothing but an oppressive silence in my head and it’s agony not knowing if she is even still there.

25

AREN

“We’re running a test,” I say, dropping into my seat in the meeting room. I point to one corner of the room without taking my eyes off the assembled pack. “I can feel your smugness from here, Joy. This does not mean you’re right.”

For me to call a formal meeting like this isn’t often. Usually, it’s when something bad is coming—or has happened—and I need to warn my pack about it.

My pack studies me with confusion.

I lower my arm. “Who here doesn’t believe the feral is a feral?”

I have a pack of twenty-five, and I know I was right to hold this meeting when about half the hands go up.

Leo’s mom, Dania, who pushed through devastating heartbreak when her mate abandoned her when she became pregnant at eighteen, is frowning.

She didn’t smile for a year or more. She lost so much weight, and we thought she had given up on wanting to live at all until Gregor placed Leo into her arms.

There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for Leo, and there’s nothing we wouldn’t do for her.

“You have something you want to say, Dania?” I prompt.

“I don’t know her, but I know what a feral is capable of, which is why I nearly had a heart attack when I heard Leo snuck into the infirmary. But I know my son. He’s curious, but he liked her.”

For her to have spoken up at all is unusual. She’s quiet about most things, keeps her head down, and is shy. After her mate treated her so badly, she barely spoke when she came home to the pack, pregnant and ground down by his abuse. The pack came together for her and Leo, and we all regard Leo as our child too.

---