Page 81 of Pack Kasen: Part 2

They stole me from my real parents.

Maybe they found me wandering alone in the forest. Maybe they saved me from the bear that my real dad feared had killed me.

I don’t remember.

But I have become so many people in my life already and I’m only twenty-two.

Could I afford to go to one of the best colleges in Montana? No.

So I made applying for scholarships a part-time job alongside the full-time job I worked every summer since I was sixteen to pay for the education that would help me make something of myself.

And I succeeded.

I was class valedictorian with a job in the best accounting firm waiting for me before I’d even graduated.

I am not stupid.

So what the fuck am I doing running from my feelings?

Only when my lungs burn and my muscles ache do I slow and absorb my perfectly silent surroundings.

I don’t know how long I’ve been running, but a long time to be this winded.

There are feelings inside me I wish I could pluck out like a balloon, cut the ribbons attaching it to me, and watch it fly away into the sky. Then it could become someone else’s feelings. Or it could float away and keep floating forever. Not my problem, but not anyone else’s either.

But feelings don’t work that way, no matter that I wish they would.

I rub the heel of my hand against my heart. I’m certain now that something happened after I saved Leo from the rampaging deer.

Aren, the Wolf King, called me mate and that word did something to me.

His smell is becoming an obsession. I keep wanting to lick his neck.

And bite it.

My heart trips when he smiles.

I hate him so much I wish I could stab him with my fork for all the ways he hurt me but I know I can’t.

Not him.

Even if he deserves it.

“Mate,” I test out the word, quietly, softly, barely audible at all.

There is power in that word and it has tied me to Aren, a weave so dense it’s impossible to separate the strands. They are in my heart.

Marisa told me the bond was unbreakable. Aren told me that before. I hadn’t believed him; I hadn’twantedto believe him. But it’s true.

And I don’t know what to do about any of it.

I could run from him, return to the city, but those feelings are in my heart. They would follow. Probably so would that Viking idiot I hate so much, but I wish would kiss me again like he did before.

This isn’t love. What I had with Doug was love.

It was milky tea.

What I have with Aren is a triple shot of espresso.

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