Page 84 of Pack Kasen: Part 2

So I stay.

“Why are you telling me?” I ask, leaning against a tree.

“You won’t pity me the way everyone else will.” He glances at me. “They all know how hard Mari tried to get Aren’s attention. She never hid how much she wanted to be with him.”

Not even from me.He doesn’t say those words but I hear them all the same and I wince because shit, that has to fucking hurt if she was going on and on about how much she loved the guy to the person who secretly loved her.

“And you…”How to say this without hurting this guy’s feelings?“Still want her?”

His smile is sad. “Have you ever tried swimming up a waterfall?”

I frown. “You can’t. It’s impossible.”

“That’s how it feels trying not to love her.”

“Are you mates like…” I can’t even bring myself to say it out loud. “You know?”

He shakes his head. “Not mates. Fated mates, for as precious they are, don’t happen as often as we all want them to. But she’s mine. In my heart, she has always felt like mine.”

That must have been torture to know she loved someone else.

I recall the new prospect from Indiana. “You could leave if it hurts too much. Start over somewhere else.”

“The way you’ve left Aren?”

I don’t respond.

He looks at me. “I heard you muttering to yourself that you hate him, but you don’t. Do you? Because if you did, you would have left days ago.”

And that, right there, is my cue to leave.

Yes, I’m still running from my feelings and no, I do not intend to stop doing it anytime soon.

I walk away.

“He won’t give you up,” Silas calls after me.

I halt.

Not because it surprises me. It doesn’t. I’ve seen more than enough evidence of Aren’s stalker tendencies firsthand. And I haven’t wanted to think too deeply about this, but at my graduation ceremony, as the crowd was applauding my speech, something had pulled my gaze to the back of the stadium. Some sense.

I’d told myself Aren couldn’t be there. He wouldn’t just watch my speech and disappear.

But it still felt like he had been there. Watching. And I wanted my speech to not only impress everyone else in the stadium, but also to impress him.

“Even if there was some way to sever the mate bond and you could go your separate ways without it killing you both, after what you did, he never would.”

I twist around, frowning. “After whatIdid? But I’m not the campus killer.”

He’s still peering into the distance. “Not the killing. Leo. You saved one of the pack. If there is one way to crawl into Aren Kasen’s heart and have him sit up and pay close attention, it’s that. You’re his now. And he never lets go of what’s his.”

“I’m not a thing for claiming,” I bite out.

“Shifters are possessive.” He walks away from me as he speaks. “The more dominant, the more possessive. Run if you want, but I think you know what would happen if you did.”

Aren would chase.

A wolf is a predator, and this predator likes to hunt.

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