Page 23 of Pack Kasen: Part 2

My throat no longer hurts, but I haven’t forgotten what she did to me, nor has my wolf, who is filling my head with her angry growls,

Marisa looks away, her lips flattening as she picks up her empty pot and stalks out of the dining room. I feel Aren glance from me to her, but he says nothing, and neither do I.

Another familiar woman catches my attention. Her shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair hangs over her right shoulder in a loose braid, and her blue eyes are warm as she smiles at me. I struggle to remember who she is until I spot the little boy with a mop of light brown hair and a slightly darker shade of blue eyes sitting beside her. Leo’s mom.

Propped up in a chair next to Leo is a large red and yellow lion named Rupert.

“Dania,” Aren says, distracting me.

I glance over at him, surprised to see he’s cleared his plate. “What?”

He points his chin at the woman. “The woman is Dania, and she wants to thank you for saving her son’s life.”

I look at Leo again. “He’s not a wolf anymore.”

The last time I’d seen him had been just after I’d played a game of chicken against a four-hundred-pound deer that had charged Leo. After I’d scared the deer away, Leo had shifted into an adorable, fluffy-looking gray wolf with blue eyes.

He’d been in his relieved mom’s arms when I ran away from Burning Wood—and Aren—but I had wondered if he was still a wolf or had changed back to his human form.

“The urge comes and goes. He’s the first to shift among his peers, so he is now incredibly popular and cool. He’ll probably want to thank you as well.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t do anything.”

Aren puts his fork down. He grips my chair and twists it around until I’m facing him.

He’s so serious, I can’t help but tense in response.

My fingers tighten around my fork as he leans so close to me, I’m terrified he’s going to kiss me and I’ll have to stab him in the neck to stop him. His beta, Finan, will probably kill me to avenge him or something.

But he stops short of a kiss.

The room falls silent, and I feel all eyes on me.

“You saved the life of one of our young.” His voice is quiet, but I feel the intensity of it like fingers brushing my chest. “That is not nothing. That means more to everyone here than you will ever know.”

I glance around the room.

No one is staring at me like I’m a thing that needs to be chained or caged. I’m no longer a feral in their eyes. Their smiles are welcoming.

“Eat and I’ll show you your room.” Aren stands before I can respond, carrying his plate to the serving table on the other side of the room.

Hungry, I clear my plate in seconds, eager to escape his pack’s attention. I’m not used to being treated like I’m where I belong. I’m used to being the outsider, the loner.

Aren’s plate is emptied of the chicken, shrimp, and sausage gumbo in record time.

He tells me to leave my empty plate when I move to pick it up. “Someone will deal with it.”

I’m complaining that I can do it when an older woman in the same light gray apron that Marisa was wearing enters the room with a dish of rice. She smiles at me. “It’s okay. Leave the plate. We’ll take care of it.”

I follow Aren out of the dining room, up a beautiful wooden staircase, and to a short hallway that splits off in two directions.

We step into a bedroom that occupies at least three-quarters of the entire top floor, with exposed dark wooden beams running across the ceiling. A massive window overlooks pine trees and a beautiful creek.

It’s nearly dark now, but this room must get incredible sunrises or sunsets. It even has its own fireplace, a smaller version of the stone one downstairs. An open door leads to a bathroom from the hint of white stone counters I spy.

It is…stunning.

And then I spot men's clothes sitting on top of a dark wood dresser.

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