13. Kato
KATO
In bed is where Declan finds us that afternoon when he, Harry, and Graham practically rip the front door off its hinges and storm the cabin like it’s Fort Sumter.
It’s almost comical; I’d laugh if I didn’t think it would make things worse.
I mean, I look like I’ve lost a fight or ten, Nate looks like he’s won about the same amount, and Cas is…
Cas. No threat to anyone. Discounting last night, I guess.
"If either of you raise a hand to any of us, I’ll consider it a direct challenge and deal with it as such,” Declan says. “This is your first and last warning.”
Which of course has even Nate—hackles already rising, mouth full of snarling teeth—backing off. Point made clear: if he does shit, he’s dead. Which means we’re all dead. Thank you, mate bond.
Uncle Dec’s madder than I’ve ever seen him, face so red I nearly expect him to keel over from a coronary right before our eyes. There’s a vein pulsing in his forehead as he stares at us with a loathing not at all contained, hawkish face contorted into something ugly and mean.
“Do you know,” he says, “that I’ve spent the last day cleaning up your mess?” When none of us answer, he continues. “Two wolves dead. Two absolutely senseless deaths.” And he actually sounds a little choked up about that, which is kind of a surprise.
“Uncle—”
He silences me with a glare. “You hit Donnie with a car, you absolute shit.”
Jesus. It was Donnie. I didn’t know him well, but he seemed okay from the few interactions we’d had. My gut twists. “I didn’t—”
“Enough.” He nods to the two wolves at his heel and they close in on Cas, dragging him to his feet as he yips in surprise.
“Let him go,” I snarl, staggering upright.
“Sit down,” Declan commands us, and of course I’ve got no choice but to obey. I collapse to the floor in a heap of sore, bleeding limbs. Nate, interestingly, remains standing. My uncle jerks his chin, and Harry releases Cas to step behind Nate instead.
A muscle ticks in Nate’s jaw. “Not necessary,” he says stiffly.
“With you?” My uncle’s flippant, even in the face of his deliberate disobedience. “After what you pulled last night?”
To that, Nathan has nothing to say.
We watch helplessly as Cas is dragged away struggling, his panic melting into my own and making it all the worse. My heart beats a frantic tattoo against my battered ribs. No. No. No. It’s not right. That’s my mate they’re taking.
Helpless, even now. Fucking useless, actually. God, I wish I had a cigarette. Or a drink.
“Where are you taking him?” Nathan grits out.
“To my house.” My uncle turns back to us, folding his arms over his broad chest. He casts an eye over us both—me sitting, Nathan standing—and his lip curls. “For god’s sake. Put some clothes on.”
The shame thing still works on Nathan, I guess, because he actually starts looking for them. His clothes. Wherever they wound up last night. I just sit there and watch him as he pulls on his filthy, torn jeans and battered shirt. His limp seems more pronounced than usual. He’s sore.
Balling up my things, Nate tosses them at me. I let them hit my chest and fall into my lap. “You know,” I say to my uncle, “your whole hangup with nudity is really fucking weird for a shifter. Have I ever told you that?”
Declan sneers. “My brother’s pack is rife with degeneracy. Your existence is proof of that.”
It’s pretty good as far as verbal slaps go; hurts about as bad as a real one. I turn away from him as I get to my feet, pulling on my jeans and T-shirt, then my jacket. The chain around my neck jingles softly as I pull my hair out of my collar. It’s stiff with blood and sweat.
I’d do anything for a shower right about now. Maybe instead of bickering we could’ve spent the small hours doing that instead.
Dec thrusts his chin at Nathan and Harry. “Go,” he says. “Take him to the car.”
My ever-reluctant companion shrugs the other alpha off. “I don’t need a babysitter,” he rasps. “I’m going.”
He throws one last look my way—which I can’t even begin to read, it’s so loaded—before he limps out of the cabin with Harry at his heels, the door slamming shut behind them.
And then it’s just me and my uncle.
The disgust on his face is bald. He looks at me for a painfully long moment, and then backhands me so hard I nearly black out.
My vision is all colors and pixels before I wobble upright again, mouth full of blood that I choose to swallow instead of spit because I know spitting will just make him madder (can hear his voice, if I did: “the disrespect”) and now I feel even more nauseous than I did before.
Between the repeated head trauma and my mate’s stark fear and panic, I’m in bad shape. To say less of the rest of my injuries.
“Don’t whimper, nephew,” Declan says tonelessly. “It’s unbecoming of an alpha.”
I lick my split lip, rubbing my cheek on my shoulder. “None of this was on purpose.”
“Did you forget that I told you to keep an eye on Casper?”
I swallow and say nothing.
“Or how you were supposed to report back to me what you found out about him?”
“It’s only been—”
He grabs the front of my shirt and yanks me closer. “And where was mating him anywhere in that plan?”
My temper flares. Can’t help it. “The entire pack was out of control! What the fuck do you expect? If it wasn’t me, it would’ve been someone else. No one was in their right mind.”
“That’s my entire goddamn point, Kato.” He shoves me away from him so hard I nearly fall over. “It should’ve been someone else.”
I open my mouth to protest and then snap it shut again. He doesn’t know Cas’s dirty little secret, only Nate and I do. Which of course we only learned last night, quite literally hours before we sealed the fucking deal ourselves, anyway.
And that’s the kind of information my uncle is fishing for, I suppose. The sort of sketchy shit he wants to know.
“What?” he says, closing the distance between us once more. “What were you going to say?”
Should I tell him? Could he help Cas? The cat’s out of the bag, isn’t it? If he’s going to die—if he does die—if I die—then it won’t be much of a secret anymore.
Fuck it. “He said if we breed him, he’ll die,” I say. “We were trying to keep him safe from the rest of the pack.”
His brows climb his forehead. “He told you that?”
“Last night.”
He takes a minute to mull this over. “Did he say how or why?”
“No,” I lie. And I hope he doesn’t sniff out the lie just as I hope he doesn’t fucking hit me again. My head is starting to throb.
“Interesting.” He pulls at his bottom lip.
His gaze flicks to my face. No trace of his wolf there.
He has remarkable control, even though I can practically hear the anger sizzling under his skin like an egg on hot pavement.
Meanwhile my own wolf paces the length of my body, imprisoned and frantic, desperate to return to his mate. “And you bred him anyway.”
“Not—on purpose.” This is humiliating. “Half the damn pack was pulled into rut.”
“Not only did you breed him and apparently sentence him to death, but you mated him too,” he muses, rubbing his chin. “You must be even stupider than I thought. Do you have a death wish?”
I open my mouth to tell him to fuck himself, but the words die before they even form on my tongue. I have no defense.
And I guess Uncle Declan has no more words for me, either. He hauls me upright and takes me out to the car with Nathan, but doesn’t get in with us. He leaves us in the care of Harry, choosing instead to shift and disappear into the trees. I watch him until his furry silhouette is out of sight.
“Where are you taking us?” Nathan asks.
“Where you’ll be staying until the pack convenes,” Harry tells him.
We’re driven back to town and then ushered into the dank little machinery barn, the doors unceremoniously shut and locked behind us.
It’s dark, the smell of mildew and motor oil acrid on the air, and there’s a dilapidated tractor rusting in the corner along with other miscellaneous farm equipment.
Cobwebs and dust layer every surface. The concrete slab beneath our feet is cracked and stained.
There’s a promise that a beta will be along to tend to our injuries, but I have my doubts.
Neither of us is hurt enough to bother, and my arms have stopped bleeding.
Yeah, I look and feel like shit—Nate does too, I’m sure—but I’ll live.
Shifters aren’t prone to infection or disease, after all. We heal quick enough on our own.
There’s also the promise that we won’t be in here long, but I don’t know if I believe that either. It depends entirely on two things: how long it takes Declan to organize a council, and how long he wants to punish us.
I look out one of the small, dirty windows. I’m not getting all that much from Cas through the bond so they can’t be hurting him, at least. The panic has faded to a low hum of anxiety. My wolf’s restless, stretching to fill my skin, but not entirely unbearable.
Of course, I could break the window and try to worm my way out. Rip one of the barn doors off its hinges and escape, or try to. Except there’s several wolves posted just outside—can smell ’em—so I wouldn’t get very far, especially not in my current state.
Probably would just get Nathan in trouble too. Which I don’t want. Even though he’s a tool.
I suck on my lip and then tear myself away from the window, pacing the length of our makeshift jail.
My brain’s going a million miles an hour but unable to settle on any particular train of thought.
Escape. Cas. Mate. Breed. Death. Shit like that, not necessarily in that order every time.
If we could though—escape. Get away from here…
And then what? Die anyway.
Who knows, though? Maybe my uncle can fix this, somehow. He’s a big dick alpha, one of the most powerful I’ve ever met. Maybe there’s something that can be done. If Cas would just tell us why any of this was happening. That part is sort of infuriating.
Nate glowers at me where he’s made himself comfortable against the wall, hugging one knee to his chest. “Kato,” he says. “Sit down.”