As I approach, Kat is complaining as footsteps pound toward us from the house.
Finan appears, out of breath and annoyed. “I was calling you to warn you.”
I drop to a crouch in front of the wolf, watching it shift back to a dark-haired human in his mid to late twenties. Torn clothing, dirty face. Unfamiliar.
There’s no bite on its body, but I have a feeling I know what I’m looking at.
A feral.
“Silas spotted him. He got past him,” Finan says.
“And does something like this just happen?” Kat asks.
“No.” The feral is still unconscious, and I have a feeling Kat isn’t going to like what I’m about to say. “I can kill the feral or I put it—him—in the cage.”
Kat doesn’t say a word.
I twist my head to look at her. “If I let him go, he could get past us and hurt someone. Maybe someone in town who doesn’t have a wolf inside them to fight back.”
Like a child.
She says nothing.
I continue, “It’s the safest place there is until we decide what to do with him.”
“We?” She blinks at me.
“We,” I say firmly. “I know you don’t like this, but we don’t have a choice. He dies, or he goes in the cage, and we don’t have long to decide. Hewillwake up.”
Her eyes bounce from me to the feral and back again. “He might not be dangerous.”
I don’t remind her that the first thing he did was attack. “It’s a temporary solution.”
The feral snarls, still mostly unconscious, but a threat nonetheless.
Kat’s troubled gaze slides from me to the feral. She chews her lip, and I watch her, waiting for the inevitable.
“Fine,” she reluctantly agrees. “But I’m not happy about this.”
19
KAT
Ihaven’t felt right since Aren put the feral in the cage.
He said it was necessary, and I had seen how violent the feral was.
Iknowhe’s a threat to everyone here, but it still feels wrong.
Guilt is a million red ants burning in my belly.
Aren is having a meeting about patrols with his enforcers, and I told him I’d sit in on another shifter lesson in the schoolroom. Mainly to distract myself from the feral in the silver cage that is slowly killing his wolf.
“I have to go,” I tell Gregor, pushing myself up from my tiny, kids ' size seat.
Five pairs of curious eyes watch me from their seats, and as I step back, I smile apologetically.
“That is not a good idea,” Gregor says mildly, giving nothing away to the openly curious, eavesdropping pups.
