Page 22 of Pack Kasen: Part 2

“He’s stubborn. Not unexpected for a Wolf Lord.”

I frown up at him as he enters a pale green dining room, where everyone has spread themselves across long rustic wooden tables. No one is eating, though.

“Wolf Lord?”

There is so much I don’t know about this world I’ve stepped into. So much I want to know. I haven’t dared ask the Wolf King because right from the start, he’s wanted more from me than I was prepared to give. If I told him I knew almost nothing about my past, including how I came to be a shifter, how can I trust him to tell me the truth when he’s already told me that he means to claim me as his mate?

I don’t trust his motivations, and I don’t trust him.

The Wolf King is heaping rice and gumbo onto two plates when Tagge walks in, tucking a cell phone into his pocket. Before I can ask who he’s planning on feeding all that food, he thrusts a plate my way. “Here. I’ll explain everything tonight in bed.”

“In bed?” I echo.

“Tonight.” The Wolf King walks to an empty table with his plate, leaving me with two choices.

I can sit down, eat, and do the thing that I came here to do—find someone to play bait to lure a killer. Or I can put this heaping plate of food down, walk out of here, get into my car, and go back to a frustrating search for a killer that was going nowhere.

Tagge is watching me as he dishes up his meal, head tilted to the side, his expression openly curious.

Get rid of him, and you’re halfway to dealing with a killer

I follow Aren to his table and take a seat beside him. I could sit opposite him, but I’d have my back to the open door, and I refuse to put myself in such a vulnerable position.Especiallyin a place where I nearly died.

Aren picks up a fork and starts digging into his meal.

Only once he’s eaten his first bite does everyone else start eating.

Strange.

“You said your name is Kat, huh?” Tagge calls across the dining room as I fork a piece of shrimp and prepare to take a bite.

I meet the staring Wolf Lord’s blue-green gaze. “Yes, it is.”

But it wasn’t always. The name I had before didn’t feel like me. Neither did that life. So I changed it. The changing my life part was much harder to do. And expensive. Between changing my name in county court and my college tuition, this new life was not cheap.

He slowly nods as he chews his meal. Still staring.

He swallows. “And you’re Aren’s mate?”

“I’m—”

“She is,” the Wolf King speaks over me.

But Tagge doesn’t take his eyes off me. “How did you meet?”

“He thought I was a feral and locked me in his cage,” I say.

Tagge bounces his eyes from me to the Wolf King. When Aren doesn’t respond, a deep, rumbling laugh pours out of him. He throws his head back and laughs for so long that he wipes the tears from his eyes as everyone studies him.

Still laughing, he picks up his plate and walks out of the dining room.

I turn to Aren. “What was that all about?”

He shrugs, unconcerned. “Don’t care. Hopefully that means he’s leaving.”

Across the room, my gaze connects with a beautiful blonde when she enters the room carrying a large silver pot.

She’s familiar, painfully so. It wasn’t all that long ago that she tried to hang me from the decking. Marisa. The Wolf King’s former lover, if I can believe what he said about ending things with her after she tried to kill me. She’s wearing a stained light gray apron, belted at the back as she adds more gumbo to one of the large, empty serving dishes.

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