“I amtryingto howl less,” he growls at me.
“By punching an innocent tree instead?” I growl back. “And why are you trying to howl less?”
“Because ofyou.” He leans into my face. “I amtryingto be less of a hotheaded Alpha who howls at the sky whenever something pisses me off.”
“Oh.” It never crossed my mind he’d actively be trying to change because of me.
He cups my face with both hands. “Did you think I didn’t mean it when I promised to change?”
“I wanted to. But I didn’t think it would happen so soon.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“You refused to believe I wasn’t a feral for the longest time. I thought your change would come slowly or never, like a dinosaur.”
Laughing, he kisses me, but his amusement quickly fades.
“Gregor called and said you were going to see the feral. I know what you think about the cage.” His voice is very quiet, his gaze intense. “I thought I was going to be too late.”
Again.
The word he doesn’t say hovers between us, so tangible I can almost touch it. And his fear. He thought he was going to lose me the same way he lost his parents: to a feral.
I kiss him. “I’m okay.”
He nods once. “Good.”
“I wasn’t going to open his cage,” I say.
“Thenwhatwere you doing?” There’s a growl in his voice.
I nudge him back. He doesn’t move. I glare at him, but it has no effect. “Finding answers. You guys live in the middle of nowhere, which means he didn’t come here on his own. He said someone bit him. Maybe the same someone unleashed him on us or you because I can only think of one person who would want you dead.”
He stares down at me for a beat, a tiny line forming between his dark blond brows. “You think Cristofer?”
I nod. “I think Cristofer.”
He shakes his head slightly. “Not all humans become ferals. Cristofer couldn’t have known this one would.”
“Unless this wasn’t the first human he bit.”
He freezes at my whispered theory.
It seemed crazy when I first thought of it in the schoolroom, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. Cristofer has shown that he will cross whatever lines there are to get me.
Maybe he realized he couldn’t kill Aren and decided a feral could do the job for him.
“We can’t leave him in there, Aren,” I say.
“It’s too dangerous to let him out.”
“We won’t agree on this, Aren. You can’t convince me that sticking someone in a cage that slowly kills their wolf is a good thing. I would have rather you killed me than left me in one.”
He stares down at me for several seconds. “Don’t go back in there, Kat.”
I don’t respond.
He frames my face with both hands, shaking me slightly. “Promise me.”
