We weren’t gone nearly long enough to have worn her out.
“Is she okay?” Finan asks.
“Still healing.”
“Leo is quiet,” Finan says.
Leo is never quiet. At least, not for long. “He was worried about Kat.”
I’d thought he would grumble and complain about cutting his run short, then I saw his worried glances at Kat as I carried her back to the house.
Her face was pale, and she’d barely spoken to Leo, smiling faintly at him when he brushed against her leg in a wolfy goodbye. She hadn’t been herself, and Leo had known it. He wouldn’t have turned back from a run that he must have wanted to take Kat on once she woke up. I’m not sure when it happened, but the two of them have become surprisingly close.
I mentally curse when Patric walks into the house and looks right at me.
“We need to talk,” he says.
I tense at Patric’s terse words.
I haven't had many dealings with Kat’s father, Patric, the Wolf Lord of Lake Prairie, Nebraska, but now he knows I locked his daughter in a silver cage, he’d like nothing more than to rip my throat out.
“My office.” Turning, I lead the way, stepping aside to let him in.
Finan gives me a warning look as I close the door before he can walk in. He usually sits in on my meetings, more to remind me of the benefits of diplomacy than to advise me, but this is personal.
This is about Kat.
“Push the enforcer meeting back an hour,” I tell Finan. “Kat wants to be at it.”
The meeting was scheduled to start after I returned from our walk. It was actually due to start after lunch, but I pushed it back. After Leo intercepted Kat in the dining room, there was no way I was missing out on a walk with her.
Finan nods and leaves to let my enforcers know the meeting isn’t happening now.
I motion Patric to the chair opposite my desk as I head to my seat.
Within seconds of my ass sinking into my desk chair, his palms are flat on my desk, and he’s bending to look me in the eye. “I’m taking my daughter home. She doesn’t belong here with you.”
So this is how this conversation is going to go.
I expected it, but I hoped it wouldn’t come this soon. I ignore the soft creak of someone leaning against my closed office door.
Finan is probably out there, poised to burst in and stop me from killing Patric if this talk ends badly.
Patric has reddish hair and icy blue eyes. The similar eye color and the fact that this is Kat’s dad mean I can’t kill him forgrowling in my face like that, no matter how much I might want to.
I have to talk to him. Maybe even be reasonable. Neither of those tasks is easy.
“Kat is my mate,” I say as calmly as an alpha can when someone is threatening to take their mate from them. If there’s a little growl in my voice, then it’s only natural I’d be pissed.
“And she ismydaughter,” he says tightly.
“She will die if you separate us. Mates belong together,” I remind him.
“Except in this case. Ever since you entered Kataleya’s life, you have nearly destroyed it. Better you die and let her find happiness with another who can make her happy.”
He’s right. But also, he’s wrong.
Kat deserves more than I’ve given her. But she’s mine. No one can make her happy like I can. No one can give her all the things she needs.
