13. Kato #2
“What for?”
“Because you’re driving me insane.”
I bite back a retort and flop to the ground where I stand. It hurts more than I care to admit. “Happy?”
“Happier, I guess.”
I bite the inside of my mouth. “This blows. Why the fuck are we in trouble? It’s not like Cas meant to seduce the entire pack. And we just happened to be the two that got it in after all that.”
“Welcome to the pack,” he says sardonically.
“Wow, Nate. Is that dissent I’m hearing? I thought you fucking loved all the stupid rules.”
“It’s not that I love them; they’re just all I’ve ever known.”
“Yeah, to the point where you actually cave when an alpha tells you to put on pants.” I tip my head, let it bang against the unpainted wood behind me. “It’s so fucking sad.”
He makes a noncommittal noise, and after a few moments I raise my head again to look at him.
He’s absently picking at a threadbare spot in his jeans, his tousled red hair tumbling across his furrowed brow.
Even all dirty and mussed up he looks so terribly sexy and I hate myself for still thinking that after everything. For being drawn to him at all.
In fact—why am I thinking that? I’ve got a mate now. Shouldn’t I have exactly zero designs on anyone else? I thought that was how this all worked. I thought you didn’t want anyone else after that. Maybe the fact we share Cas is what’s got me all fucked up like this.
Which would be a more compelling argument if I hadn’t always felt this way about Nate.
Since I met him when I first arrived here.
Wanting something impossible with him—and not because I think being with another alpha is wrong.
There were a few alpha pairings in my dad’s pack, and no one looked askance at them.
But there’s nothing like that here.
Minutes drag, and neither of us says anything. I don’t know what he’s thinking about. Esoteric Nathan thoughts, poignant and ponderous, I bet. Me, I’m thinking about him. Because he’s here in front of me.
Thinking about how hot it was when he was watching me and Cas, telling me I should breed him.
Urging me, actually. Like he wanted that.
Like it was the sexiest thing in the world to him.
And then when we both had Cas at the same time: me from one end and him from the other.
The intimacy in that. Having our fingers in him at the same time.
I swallow audibly. It’s enough to make him look up and catch my eye. “Kato?” he says.
“Huh?”
“Why did you do it?”
“Do…?”
“Mate Cas.” This time there’s little judgment in his voice. It’s sort of void of any emotion at all.
“Lost control,” I mutter. “Just like you said.”
“I know that’s not true.”
“Christ, Nate, what do you care?” I suck on my swollen lower lip, acutely aware now of all the damage I’ve received in the last twenty-four hours without anything else to distract from it. Can’t even be fucked to tally it all up. “I don’t want to earn another beating from you.”
“You won’t.”
“Right.”
He rubs his neck as he takes a slow, measured breath. Suppose he’s not much better off, having fought off however many alphas to protect Cas and me. He bears it a lot better, though. “Look. I’m just trying…I mean, I was hoping you’d let me in a little.”
I bark out a startled laugh. “Let you in? What the fuck are you talking about? My heart’s fucking pinned to my sleeve. You’re the one who’s basically a stranger.” One I want to know desperately.
“Kato—” And he only sounds like he’s clenching his teeth a little. He sighs again before he speaks, his words halting. “Fine. You’re right. I haven’t been…I’m not an open book. And I haven’t been overly kind to you.”
My god. This is the closest to an apology I’ve ever heard from him.
At least, one directed my way. I get a warm feeling in my chest, a rush of affection, and I have to hug my knees to keep myself from going to him the way I want to and always do.
I’m not quite dumb enough to think it means all that. “Yeah,” I say awkwardly. “Well.”
“But I want to know you,” he goes on. “I think we should know each other. And…” His brown eyes, uncharacteristically soft, alight on me once more. “I want to know why you really mated Cas. You weren’t totally gone. I could tell.”
“How do you know? I felt pretty gone by the end of it. ’Sides, you saw the rest of the pack. They were all delirious.”
“Because I’m not blind,” he says patiently. “And you weren’t behaving like them.”
“Why did you?” I challenge. “Because I could say the same. You weren’t gone, either. Cool as a fucking cucumber. As always.”
He just looks at me. I know he’s not going to tell me; at least not unless I spill first. That’s the thing, though—I don’t want to.
It’s shitty and vulnerable and it’s just one more thing to hold against me.
I’m sort of tired, you know. Counting up all my endless sins, the reasons why I’m not such a great person or wolf or anything.
Makes the living part of this all the more difficult.
I want a cigarette.
I want a drink.
And I want to go home. I want to go back to Alaska.
No—I want to go back in time to when everything got messed up.
Right before that. Somehow make it so all those awful things don’t happen and I don’t wind up here and I don’t wind up in a fucking death pact with an omega—beta?
—I know nothing about and an alpha who hates my guts.
And it just figures that that’s exactly what I’ve done.
Couldn’t have happened to anyone else. Of course fucking not.
Now the very same jackass who has made it his life’s mission to make my life hell since I set foot on this rock wants to know me. Now. When it doesn’t matter, not really. It’s like throwing a life preserver to someone who already drowned. They’re already dead. It’s too late. Who cares?
I guess that’s some solace, anyway. If whatever is gonna kill Cas actually manifests the way he thinks it will, then it’s game over for me, anyway.
I lick my lips. “You want to know the truth?” I say to Nathan. “The truth is I don’t actually give a shit if I live or die.”
“Oh.” He sucks in a breath. “Kato—”
“No.” I kick at a rusty, broken nail on the floor and it rolls in a useless half circle.
“Don’t do the whole pity thing. First, it’s fake, because you don’t like me, and second, I don’t need it.
My life’s been over since Everett died, anyway.
I’m just here because that’s where everyone fucking wants me to be.
But the reality is that if I could’ve swapped places with them, I would’ve.
In a heartbeat. Or if that jackass I accidentally killed—” I have to stop for a second, wait for my traitorous throat to stop closing up.
“If he’d killed me instead, that would’ve been for the best. Everyone would’ve been better off. And no one would’ve cared.”
“That’s not true.”
“Oh, god. Save the dumb platitudes.” I lean forward and pick up the nail.
It’s still jagged and sharp at the broken end; good thing shifters can’t get shit like tetanus.
I roll it between my fingertips, let it bite into my skin.
“I’ve heard that shit a million times. It doesn’t make things any better. ”
“It’s not, though. True.” His gruff voice cuts through my angst. “Your father would’ve executed you himself if he thought that.”
I scoff. “He doesn’t count. No one wants to eat their own pups.”
“You’d rather he killed you?”
“Than be shipped out to my sociopath of an uncle? Yeah. Absolutely. You think this is a walk in the park?” I fling my arms out.
The nail goes flying off into some dark, cobwebbed recess, pinging quietly off a wall.
“You think this has been fun for me, Nate? You think I enjoy this shit? ’Cause I fucking don’t.
I hate being at your mercy and I hate your disdain and I hate feeling like an outsider and I hate—I hate not being able to so much as take a piss by myself without you breathing on me, and it’s not like you’re even up my ass because you like me, you’re doing it because you have to! ”