Page 13 of Pack Kasen: Part 2

I’ll be doing this for…

A long time.

Years. Maybe even decades.

Someone bumps into me, and I sneeze, swiping my hand over my sensitive nose when I’m hit with an overpowering waft of jasmine. Not the real stuff. Overly sweet, artificial, and not all that nice. I get out of the way before I can inhale any more of her floral perfume.

On my way out of the mall, I swing by a homeware store to pick up a brand new sheet set. I washed my new ones after Aren rolled over mine, and I swear I can still smell him on my sheets, so I donated them, and I’m starting fresh.

They cost me nearly two hundred dollars, which was more than I wanted to spend, but it’ll be worth it to go to sleep and not smell the Wolf King in my bed.

Giving in to temptation, I pull into a drive-thru and pick up a twelve piece bucket of chicken, fries, biscuits and gravy. Because…

Just because.

My wolf is pleased because it’s not sushi and I’m pleased as I inhale my bucket of greasy chicken and fries facing a nearly empty park, surrounded on three sides by grass and nature. And more importantly, no people.

Ten minutes later, I’m licking my fingers clean when my phone vibrates in my center console.

I ignore it, thinking the Wolf King has learned to stalk me in other ways. But when I glance at the screen, it’s Rachel, my old roommate's number, flashing up. I lick my fingers and answer her call.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“It got Cristopher,” she wails and bursts into tears.

I sit up tall, fingers tightening around the phone I’ve pressed to my ear. “What are you talking about?”

“The campus killer got Cristopher. You know, the library guy with the insane allergies and the glasses that always slid down his?—”

“I know Cristofer,” I interrupt as I try to breathe through my panic.

What if she’s wrong?

The Wolf King was just here, acting like a stalker, and I was speaking to Cristofer after I told Finan I wasn’t interested in seeing the Wolf King again. Finan saw us talking, and he was on the phone as he drove away.

What if he did this?

“Kat? Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

Her voice is distant as I kick myself for not doing more to find the killer.

Rachel is telling me about the cops searching the campus, but all I can think about is how Cris made sure I got to my car safely when I left Doug’s wake.

Now he’s dead. The cops just haven’t found his body yet.

What was it the Wolf King said?

That whoever has been killing on campus doesn’t seem to like me being with a guy.

What if the killer saw me and Crist together and thought there was something between us so killed him?

“I have to go,” I talk over Rachel, hanging up while she’s still speaking.

My wolf is filling my head with her snarls as her rage mingles with my own.

We didn’t do enough to protect him. I should have done more. I should have saved him, but I failed.

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