Page 42 of Pack Kasen: Part 2

I study her. “Maybe not quite that tall. It’s been a while since he held a council.”

I have never held a council. It’s one of the responsibilities of the Wolf Lords to host it. The Wolf King never hosts.Thank fuck.

She holds her hand out to the side, about two feet off the ground. “They were this tall.” She stares at her palm for several seconds before lowering it. “He called me Kataleya.”

“Kataleya Prairie,” I explain, “The Alpha and Luna lost their only child over fifteen years ago. Everyone thought she had died.”

I was so sure she was dead that it never crossed my mind that she might still be alive.

“But we never stopped hoping we were wrong, Kata.”

The voice comes from over my shoulder. I’d heard the soft snick of the door opening. If it had been anyone else, I’d have snarled at them to fuck off.

But this isn’t anyone.

It’s Kat’s father. Herrealfather.

I don’t know if whoever was raising her before found her or stole her, but Gregor mentioned something in our last pack meeting about her being in a basement.

Alarm bells should have been ringing then. They are now.

“You liked to run in the sunflower fields,” Patric says, crossing the room and taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “They were taller than you were, but you never got lost. Not until the last time. No one could find you. We tracked you to a campsite. There were signs hikers had recently been there, but no one was there. We thought they might have taken you, so we kept looking. Then we picked up bear tracks.”

I stand as Patric clasps her hand and looks down at her as if he’s struggling to believe what he’s seeing.

I want to stay. My wolf needs to comfort my mate.

But right now, she’s not looking at me with tears in her eyes.

She’s looking at Patric, because she needs him more than she needs me.

I take a step back, silencing my wolf’s unhappy whines.

She has another pack;I tell him.

My wolf understands, but instincts are hard to silence, and my wolf doesn’t want to leave our mate. Neither do I.

There’s no missing the anguish on his face. He’s grieving the child he thought he lost.

Perhaps the shock of coming face-to-face with her was what prevented him from rushing upstairs right away.

Almost all shifters know his story. It was one of the rare occasions when Midwest packs came together to try to find the missing Prairie child.

Shifters are strong. We are resilient, but a pup against a bear?

No pup can survive an altercation with a bear.

“Everyone kept saying a bear had killed you, but in my heart, I knew you couldn’t be dead. Something in me wouldn’t let me believe you were gone forever.” His voice cracks as he speaks.

Kat blinks, and a tear slides down her cheek.

I force myself to turn around and walk out.

Kat needs her dad now. Not me.

I close the door behind me, but I can still hear them. Tagge is waiting at the bottom of the stairs, and the sound of Patric and Kat’s conversation is barely audible.

Finan is also standing nearby. The rest of the pack must have returned to whatever they were doing before, or Finan told them to stop hovering.

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