Page 50 of Pack Kasen: Part 2

“Yeah, get a room,” Wes mutters.

“We have one,” Joy says sweetly. “We’re just waiting for you to leave it.”

A growl soon refocuses all attention on me and everyone sits up in their seat.

I point at Kat. “She’s the priority here. We need to find out who is leaving a trail of bodies around her and stop it.”

“I thought you were going to play bait,” Kat reminds me.

“And I will, if it comes to it. There has to be a better way than?—”

“Staking you out like a sacrifice, hoping to lure the killer?” she offers sweetly.

My eyes narrow. “That sounded suspiciously thought out. No.”

Joy laughs. “Are we going to strip you first or…”

“Nope,” Emilio adds, “We need to put him in a sacrificial white dress. Or a toga. Hair down, of course. It can be blowing in the wind, or from a fan that one of us points in his face.”

Everyone laughs. Even Kat.

“So you haven’t pissed anyone off,” Troy says thoughtfully.

Kat shakes her head. “Can’t…Oh.”

“That was a suspicious oh,” I say.

She shakes her head. “The thing I’m thinking about was before college and I had a different name then.”

Curious eyes narrow on her.

What she told me came after she had just had the shock of her life from her dad’s sudden appearance. It’s her decision if she wants to share her old name with them. Not me.

“You don’t need to know the ins and outs of it,” I say, glancing at my curious enforcers. “We just need to know who might have a vendetta.”

“Another ex,” she says.

I don’t realize I’m growling until Finan clears his throat.

“And is this one still alive?” I ask calmly.

My enforcers' raised eyebrows suggest I need to work harder at sounding calm. Or maybe I’m just not a calm person.

I used to sneak into my dad’s enforcer-only meetings when I was still a pup and he was Alpha.

He must have always known I was hiding under the table or had tucked myself behind one of the drapes, barely breathing, so I wouldn’t rustle the fabric and give myself away, but he never snarled at me to get out. I learned how he led, and the importance of having enforcers I trusted around me, and listening to their thoughts and ideas instead of relying only on my own.

He was calmness personified when he needed to be. I could have learned so much more from him and I would have if I hadn’t lost him as early as I did.

“He is. I wondered if he was the one behind it, but he’s married, living clear across the country,” Kat says.

“What makes you think he would be behind this?” Joy tilts her head and rubs it against Emilio’s shoulder, like a cat. Mates are tactile, and those two need no excuse to touch each other at any opportunity.

It annoyed me before. Now I want Kat to lean against my side like that. Take my hand and squeeze. But I’m under no illusion that if I tried to take my mate’s hand, I’d have her claws buried in my neck before I knew what was happening.

Trust has to come first.

So does forgiveness.

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