Page 51 of Pack Kasen: Part 2

Kat clears her throat and says to Joy, “Years ago, he did something pretty shitty and made my senior year absolute hell on earth. Not enough to kill him for, but deserving of revenge. I waited until prom night, when he was absolutely shit faced. When he was walking home, I shifted and chased him. Scared him so badly, he pissed himself and ran into a lamppost, knocking himself out. He had a massive bruise on his face that no amount of concealer could hide when he walked the stage for graduation. I loved every minute of it.”

For two seconds, it’s pin-drop silent, then everyone in the room throws their head back, howling with laughter.

And I know in that moment, Kat has won over every single one of my enforcers.

"How can you be so sure it wasn’t him?” Finan asks, still smiling slightly, and there is satisfaction in his smile.

He’s a diplomat, but he’s also a dominant shifter. Someone hurts you, you hurt them back. That’s something all my enforcers can agree with.

She shrugs. “He confronted me about the large dog I’d sicced on him a couple of days later when I was packing up to leave for college,” she explains. “I told him fosters?—”

Her eyes darting to me, and I get the sense she said something she’d have rather I didn’t know. I meet her gaze steadily. I won’t pretend not to have heard something if that’s what she wants. That just isn’t me.

Fosters?

Does she mean…

Ah. Foster care. How could she have wound up in foster care?

She pulls her gaze from mine and continues on as if she hadn’t stopped. “Anyway, I made it clear there was no way I could have been behind it since I didn’t have a large dog. I guess he figured no one had an ax to grind with him like I did. That was years ago. I moved cities, changed names, and I haven’t seen him again.”

“But you checked to find out where he was?” I ask, mentally compiling a list of questions I have for her when it’s just us later.

She nods. “When the murders started, I couldn’t believe there was another shifter on campus. I figured it was my ex causing trouble.”

My wolf growls softly, annoyed that she was alone all that time. No one to watch her back. No pack. What I know of foster care is from TV shows. Kids pulled from home to home to live with someone new, or in homes with other kids where they didn’t eat enough or had ripped clothes. It had never seemed good for any child.

And you snatched her up, stuck her in a cage, and nearly killed her.

The guilt doesn’t feel good. In fact, it feels worse than it did before. The more I learn about her, the more guilty I feel because she didn’t deserve any of what I did to her.

“How’d you track him down?” Joy asks.

“Easy. Some people live their entire lives on the internet. He was all over social media. He was engaged. There was some drama a while later when a girl said he’d gotten her pregnant, and that broke his engagement. He remarried, though, lives in Florida, and I imagine he’s busy cheating still.”

Joy whistles as she sits back in her seat. “Shit. I thought I was a messy bitch. This guy takes the cake.”

I look at Kat and struggle to envision what she saw in this guy who betrayed her so badly. Had he been handsome? Should I do some internet searching of my own?

“So if I wasn’t an ex, then maybe a teacher?” Cruz asks.

Kat shakes her head. “Can’t imagine it would be. And if it were, I’d have caught their scent.”

“Yeah,” Wes confirms. “And Cruz and me would never have … uh…”

“Kidnapped me and stuffed me in the trunk of your car?” Kat helpfully offers.

He winces, looking sheepish. “Yeah. That. Sorry about that.”

“Yeah, me too,” Cruz adds with a small smile.

I wait for Kat to throw their apologies back in their faces.

She shrugs. “I get it. You were doing what you were told.”

I sit up in my seat.

What.

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