Page 43 of Pack Kasen: Part 2

I had my bedroom soundproofed as much as I could, wanting at least a little privacy from the rest of my pack when I closed my door at the end of a long day. Now I’m regretting that decision because I’d give anything to know what they were talking about.

Is Kat going to pick up her duffel and walk out of my life to start the life she should have had all along with Pack Prairie?

Tagge grins at me, smug. “IknewI was right about her.”

I glower. “At any point, did you even think of telling me who she was?”

“Nope.”

I study him for a beat, then shake my head. “You weren’t sure, were you?”

He opens his mouth.

“You can’t bullshit me,” I warn him. “You didn’t know, did you?”

He shakes his head. “I thought she was dead, too. But something about her expression made me think I’d seen her before. I called Patric, and he didn’t believe it could be her until I described her, and he said he would come and check her out.” He scratches his jaw. “Then there was her name. Don’t know how you didn’t put two and two together, Aren.”

“It wasn’t her name before,” I explain. “Practically her whole past is a black hole. She changed her name to Kat Meadow. I think her subconscious was telling her who she was.”

He whistles between his teeth, shaking his head. “Crazy.”

“So she doesn’t know how she was lost?” Finan asks.

“Nothing. Maybe those memories will start returning now she’s met her father.”

“Maybe,” Finan says.

I was a teenager when Kataleya Prairie died. I think my parents, who were still alive when she disappeared, had tried to help find her.

Dad wasn’t Wolf King. He wasn’t even a Wolf Lord. Not because he couldn’t have fought his way to a position. He was never interested in pack politics. I can’t remember if it was him, my mother, or Gregor who told me about the missing pup.

“I should have put the pieces together,” I say.

It’s obvious now that I think about it.

She knew about the schoolroom when only someone who had grown up in a pack would know. Gregor had said she recognized the tale of the first shifter, something she would have learned in the schoolroom with other pups.

If Tagge hadn’t been here, would I have worked out who she was?

“We all thought she was dead. You are not at fault for this, Aren.” Gregor walks into the room with a mug of steaming tea and takes a seat in an armchair in front of the fire. “She has broken memories. Helping her recover them will prove more useful than blaming yourself for something you couldn’t have known.”

“Something happened to her. She left Pack Prairie, maybe she got into an accident and hit her head.” I look at the others as I speak. No one has an answer.

It’s just guesswork until Kat can remember what happened to her.

Had someone taken her from her pack?

What had happened to them?

She had been a toddler then, too young to care for herself. Someone else must have looked after her, at least until she could look after herself.

Footsteps thump down the staircase, and I twist, eager to find out what Patric has discovered. Or maybe something is wrong with Kat.

His lips are a flat line.

“What is it? Is Kat—” A fist flies toward me and I slam onto my back with a grunt, my head ringing and my jaw throbbing. The pain doesn’t last long. Shifters heal fast, alphas more so than others.

“You’re her dad.” I scrub the blood from my already healing split lip as I heave myself up. “So I get why you’d need to do that.”

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