The Pack's Unease Part 3

She's outside the castle walls.

The realization hit me like ice water, sending adrenaline coursing through my veins in a rush that made rational thought difficult. Because Catherine should have been safely contained within the parameters I'd established, should have been exploring the library or the music room or any of the dozen other diversions I'd provided to keep her occupied and secure.

She shouldn't be in the gardens. And she definitely shouldn't be beyond the castle's protective boundaries.

I closed my eyes and drew a deeper breath, using senses honed by decades of tracking to pinpoint her exact location. The scent trail was clear enough—she'd left through the main courtyard, moved through the formal gardens, and continued toward the outer walls that separated the castle grounds from the wild forest beyond.

Why? I thought desperately. What could possibly have driven her to leave the safety of the castle?

But even as the question formed, I knew the answer. Curiosity. The same intellectual courage that had made her ask pointed questions during her tour, that had drawn her attention to corridors she wasn't supposed to notice.

She's exploring. Testing boundaries. Trying to understand the nature of her cage.

The wolf in my chest was pacing now, driven by instincts that recognized danger to our mate even when the man couldn't articulate exactly what that danger might be. Because the castle's protective wards extended only so far, and beyond them lay territories where ancient things stirred, where the rules that governed civilized interaction held no sway.

She doesn't understand what's out there.

I was already moving toward the castle before conscious decision caught up with instinct, my stride carrying the kind of barely controlled urgency that made other pack members scatter from my path. Whatever Catherine had gone looking for, whatever questions she was trying to answer, she needed to be brought back to safety before—

Before what? Before she encounters something that reveals the truth about this place? Before she discovers that the forest isn't just wild but actively hostile to human intrusion? Before she learns that the lord who's been playing gracious host is something that should exist only in nightmares?

All of the above, probably. But mostly before she got herself killed satisfying curiosity that I should have anticipated and planned for.

Stupid, I berated myself as I took the stairs to the main level three at a time. You knew she was intelligent, observant, independent. You should have known she wouldn't be content to stay within whatever boundaries you set.

The main doors stood open, autumn sunlight streaming across marble floors that reflected my hurried footsteps like accusations. Through the entrance, I could see the formal gardens where Catherine should have been content to wander—safe, beautiful, carefully maintained spaces where the most dangerous thing she might encounter was a particularly aggressive rose thorn.

But safe wasn't enough for her, was it? She needed to understand, to explore, to push against every limit until she found the truth hidden underneath.

I followed her scent trail through the gardens with tracking skills that had been honed by necessity and sharpened by decades of practice. Past the fountain where koi swam in crystalline water, beyond the maze where topiary creatures stood frozen in eternal hunt, through the gate that separated cultivated beauty from the raw power of ancient forest.

She's actually left the grounds.

The thought was accompanied by a surge of protective fury so intense it made my vision narrow to a tunnel focused solely on finding her, bringing her back, ensuring that nothing in this world or any other could harm what was mine.

But she's not yours, rational thought tried to interject. She's here under duress, held against her will, kept in comfortable captivity because you're too selfish to let her go.

She's mine, the wolf snarled back. Mate-bond doesn't care about human concepts of consent or choice. She belongs with us, and anyone or anything that threatens her will learn what happens when they challenge a mated alpha.

The internal argument raged as I followed her trail deeper into the forest, past trees that had been standing when Christianity was young, through shadows that held older magics than the ones that bound my curse. Here, the careful wards that protected the castle began to thin, replaced by wilder protections that recognized pack and prey but little in between.

Dangerous territory for a human. Especially a human who doesn't understand what she's walking into.

Catherine's scent was stronger now, more recent, suggesting she hadn't been gone long. But it was overlaid with other scents that made my wolf bristle with alarm—earth and moss and the green growing smell of things that photosynthesized but didn't necessarily follow the usual rules of plant behavior.

The grove, I realized with mounting dread. She's heading toward the grove.

Of all the places she could have chosen to explore, the grove was perhaps the most dangerous for someone like her. Not because of physical threats—those I could have dealt with easily enough—but because of what she might see there, what questions it might raise, what truths it might reveal about the nature of the domain she'd stumbled into.

Truth she's not ready for. Truth that might send her running in terror, assuming she survives the revelation.

I pushed deeper into the forest, following her trail with single-minded determination. Whatever Catherine Montgomery thought she was going to find in the wild spaces beyond my protection, whatever answers she hoped to discover about the man who'd claimed her as payment for her father's debts, I would make sure she lived long enough to regret her curiosity.

Even if it means revealing exactly what kind of monster I really am.

The wind carried her scent again, closer now, tinged with something that might have been fear or excitement or the kind of adrenaline that came from discovering that the world was far stranger than she'd ever imagined.

Too late to turn back now, I thought grimly as I broke into a run that no purely human form could have sustained. For either of us.