She couldn’t explain the loneliness that she felt inside, and she was scared to tell anyone what she felt. She didn’t want them to worry, especially because there was still so much else going on. The pack was still getting over the deaths of the loved ones that they’d lost, and Annie was still adapting to the fact that she almost died, and that she almost lost her father. Thea didn’t want to demand any attention when she felt like she didn’t even deserve it.
So, Thea just kept all her misery and depression inside, trying to deal with it herself. She knew that her friends would be worried if they knew how she really felt, and she loved them for it, that’s why she didn’t understand the lonely feelings she consistently had. Even now, as she was smiling and around her closest friends, that little tiny stab of loneliness crept into her heart. She hated when she felt like this. But she also knew the main reason that she felt this loneliness.
At the end of the day, no matter how many times everyone assured her that she would be safe, she knew that it was just an empty promise.
Because if the Elders came back and wanted to take her away, this time they would. And no one–not Annie, Lukas, Kato, or even Hann–would be able to stop them.
Chapter 4
“We have to go meet up with my father at the pack bar,” Annie told Kato and Thea, who had just finished eating their dinner. She and Lukas were grabbing their things to leave after Annie got a call from her dad a few minutes ago. “Michael, that Elder that healed me, is here visiting my father unexpectedly, and I want to go thank him for everything. You know, for saving my life, granting Lukas the choice to join our pack, and making the Elders back off of Thea. The guy saved all of us, so I’m going to go thank him.”
“Do I need to come with?” Kato asked, wondering if Hann asked for him but not really wanting to leave Thea alone. After hearing that she broke up with her boyfriend, Thea’s magnetism seemed to grow in Kato’s eyes. He didn’t think he’d ever been more enchanted by her than he was tonight, and he hadn’t really drunk that much, even though Thea kept on pushing more and more tequila on him.
“No, he didn’t say anything, but you can come if you want,” Annie told him.
“Nah, that’s okay,” Kato said, shrugging it off. He really just wanted to stay near Thea, though he knew he shouldn’t be thinking like that. “I’ll stay here and make sure this one doesn’t get into any trouble.”
Thea just rolled her eyes at him, her light-blonde hair now tied up in a high ponytail that made her cheekbones look sharper. Kato thought she looked absolutely beautiful.
Annie and Lukas left, leaving Kato and Thea alone. Kato tried to calm down as they both decided to go to the living room and watch whatever was on TV. Kato had been alone with Thea plenty of times, hell, they grew up together. This shouldn’t be as big of a deal as Kato was making it out to be.
But as Thea sat right next to him on the couch, Kato tried his hardest not to pull her close to him and kiss her. He desperately wanted to, especially because he was now feeling the alcohol kick in.
This could turn out to be a very eventful night if Kato didn’t keep himself under control.
“Let’s talk about something,” Thea told him, resting her head on the couch and staring at him with those light-blue eyes. The way she looked at him made him think that she knew exactly what he was currently thinking about. What he currently wanted to do.
“Okay, what do you want to talk about?” Kato asked, almost wanting to put some distance between himself and her. However, Kato didn’t listen to the voice that was telling him to walk away and breathe in some air. Instead, Kato just stared right back into Thea’s stunning blue eyes.
“I don’t care,” Thea admitted, sighing, very drunk at this point. “My mind just keeps on going back to how Jake looked when I broke up with him, making me all sad. I don’t want to be sad.”
Kato, before he could stop himself, pulled Thea into his arms and hugged her, wishing away all the sadness and pain she was feeling that the alcohol was now fueling even more. Her wish of forgetting about her breakup seemed to backfire once everyone left.
“I wish you wouldn’t feel so sad about it,” Kato told her, his face in her hair. He smiled to himself when he felt her arms clutch around his torso, pulling him even closer. She rested her head on his chest, and he could hear her sniffling away some tears. “You did what you needed to do, and Jake wasn’t right for you.”
“I know that, I know,” Thea told him, her voice slightly breaking. “I just . . . oh, I don’t know. Maybe I should’ve listened to Annie and went out to have sex with someone else. Maybe then I’ll get over the whole thing.”
Kato tried his hardest not to stiffen from her comments. That was the last thing he expected her to say. As long as Kato had known Thea, she had never been one to have one night stands or casual hook-ups. She’d only ever slept with two men in her life, and both of them had been her boyfriends. Of course, when Thea told him this, they were just friends, and Kato never even felt anything towards her. Now, though, he felt jealousy, thinking of those past boyfriends. They had seen and been with Thea in every way that he wanted to.
But now, they were nowhere to be found. And Kato was the one holding her in his arms.
Kato could feel his wolf inside of him begin to act up. He held Thea a little tighter to him as he attempted to rein the beast inside of him in. His wolf began to long for the woman that he couldn’t have, which surprised Kato a bit. He’d never longed for a human woman before. Had he found human women attractive before? Yes, but he’d never longed for them. Shifters simply didn’t do that. In fact, only a few shifters ever really actively pursued humans, for various reasons. Annie had always only been attracted to humans, because she was a halfie herself, until she fell in love with Lukas.
But Kato? Kato had never been with a human woman. He’d never longed for a human woman. Not the way he was currently longing for Thea.
He felt his heartbeat quicken as Thea lifted her head from his chest to look him in the eyes. Kato was drunk–and so was she. Thea looked into his eyes, both of them growing silent as they stared at each other, falling on the same page.
And when Thea slightly leaned forward towards Kato, it was all he needed.
He closed the small gap between them, his lips tentatively meeting hers.
Kato’s wolf howled with pleasure within his soul.
Chapter 5
Thea kissed Kato back, pulling him closer to her by wrapping her arms around his neck. She was basically sitting on his lap at this point, and he was still holding her lower waist, one of his hands on the small of her back.
Her head was swimming with what was happening–and the alcohol she had drunk in a small amount of time. Maybe, if she wasn’t so upset with her breakup, or if she wasn’t so drunk, she would realize that she was currently making out with one of her best friends. With Kato, who she had known since she was a kid.
If she wasn’t as drunk, she would fully realize the impact of this whole situation. And, she would realize that she wasn’t hating what was happening. In fact, she was loving it, and new feelings were slowly emerging in her chest as Kato slowly laid Thea down on the couch, hovering over her.
He deepened the kiss, making butterflies fly to Thea’s heart, where they began beating there restlessly. She grew breathless as they kissed, and Thea found herself wanting to touch every part of Kato’s body. Something she had never wanted before in her life.
Kato slowly began to lift her t-shirt up, his warm hands sliding across her flat stomach and making her tingle from her head to her toes. He was warm all over, and Thea wanted to wrap herself up in his warm body. She wanted him to make her feel as warm as he was; she wanted this coldness in her bones to be gone.
Suddenly, as if someone had walked in and seen what they were doing, Kato jumped off of Thea and walked all the way to the kitchen, leaving her on the couch, her shirt pushed up to her breasts. She instantly felt the cold air all around her, dissipating the warmth that Kato prev
iously had enveloped her in.
She lay there, alone, her drunken mind trying to wrap itself around what had just happened. Now that Kato wasn’t kissing her back, she suddenly realized everything that had just happened, everything she had just done with Kato. It was like she was shoved into a cold pool of water and drank a pitcher of black coffee all in one second. She didn’t feel as drunk as she knew she was a second ago.
Thea quickly got up, stumbling slightly, and walked into the kitchen. Kato was standing against the counter, his head in his hands, not moving an inch.
“Kato?” Thea quietly asked, feeling beyond embarrassed at what just happened. She knew it was her fault, she was the one who’d leaned forward first. She ignored her pounding heart and the creeping feelings that were making her confused and decided to just be the bigger man. “This was my fault, I’m sorry. Please, don’t be mad at me. We’re just drunk, and we did something stupid.”
Thea didn’t know what else to say. This was her best friend, a man she had even seen naked before. But that was before she was feeling things that she had never had before. Hell, Kato had seen her naked before, too. They were close. But they had never–never–crossed the line before tonight. And if Thea was being honest, she had never thought of Kato in any other way. Until he took her in his arms and kissed her, of course. Now, in the matter of a few minutes, she was feeling things towards him she had never felt before.
She decided to just blame it on the alcohol.
“No, it’s not your fault, Thea,” he told her, walking towards her. He kept the kitchen island in between their bodies, and Thea could tell how tense he was from even where she stood a few feet away from him. “I should’ve never done that. I should’ve never put you in that position.”
“Kato–” Thea began, but Kato began to start pacing.
“I mean, what was I thinking?” He questioned, pacing, looking like he was almost talking to himself. “This is you we’re talking about. You’re my best friend, and I can’t believe . . . . I don’t know what’s happening. Plus, you’re human.”
Thea scoffed, slightly offended of how he thought so low of her because she was human. “Well, I’m so sorry that my human self is so horrendous to think of in any way other than friendship.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Kato said, swinging around to face her. When Thea met his brown eyes, she felt her heart melt, surprising the hell out of her. Kato’s face showed no emotion, though he stared at her, trailing off on whatever he was saying. Thea just stared back, her arms still crossed, but she was no longer mad. No, she wanted to run into his arms instead, which scared the hell out of her. This was Kato. She shouldn’t be feeling things like this for Kato. And where the hell did these feelings even come from in the first place?
“Listen, Kato,” she said, rubbing her eyes as she thought of how to fix this awkward situation they were in. “We can just forget this happened, okay? We were bound to have a weird moment like this, weren’t we? We’ve been friends for so long, and we’ve never–not once–had a moment like this. So, we can just forget it ever happened and move on. “Right?”
Kato smiled a little, nodding his head fast but not moving an inch towards her. His eyes wouldn’t meet hers, though she desperately wished they would. She wanted to see what they reflected. She wanted to understand his emotions, since she sure as hell couldn’t understand hers right now.
Right,” was all he told her, making them descend into an awkwardness that had never been in their friendship. Kato left a few minutes later to go home, leaving a lonely Thea lost in a huge house, drunk.
Thea, feeling dramatic and embarrassed from everything that happened, cried herself to sleep. But right before she fell into that deep sleep, she thought of the way Kato’s lips had felt against hers.
Chapter 6
From the moment Thea told him that the whole thing was a mistake and they should just feign forgetfulness, Kato had been heartbroken. He knew that she was right, she was always right. But Kato knew he was falling down this deep well, and he knew that what he felt for Thea was growing into something that wasn’t just sexual attraction.
He knew Thea better than he knew anyone else, and she knew him better than anyone else knew him. Their friendship made him even more confused about his feelings for her, simply because he’d never felt them before. He knew that the Elders trying to take away Thea made him scared out of his mind, scared that he would lose her. And that moment, alone, enacted feelings that he might’ve always had, but he just didn’t know it.
But now, after they both crossed a line they never did before, he felt like he didn’t even have his best friend anymore. And that sucked beyond belief.
They hadn’t talked in a few days since the make-out session, and he hated that. One part of him wanted to just go to her and talk to her like old times, but another part wanted to throw rocks at her window and sing love songs to her from her yard, which was absolutely ridiculous. Kato had never been a cheesy romantic guy like that, but he knew he would be for Thea.
So, because he knew that trying to be with Thea was wrong on so many levels, he decided to do what a potential alpha like him should be doing instead of lusting after his human best friend: find a potential mate.
Kato was at the pack bar, tucked away in the hills and forests of Maine, with two beers already in him. He didn’t feel it, though. He would have to drink another twenty before he felt anything. He was surprised Thea had gotten him that drunk the other night until he remembered that he drank a whole bottle of tequila himself.
Kato shook his head, trying to get rid of the memories of that night. It seemed everything he did brought his mind to Thea and that night. The way she felt so close underneath him, the way her lips felt against his . . .
“I’m surprised to see you here right now, Kato. It’s the middle of the afternoon, don’t you have work?” he heard a female voice say to him. He looked over to see Britta sitting in the chair next to him, a beer in her hand. Britta, a strong shifter in his pack, was gorgeous, but not his type. She was tall, almost his height, which was impressive, with long black hair that was currently tied up into a high ponytail. Even up, her hair reached her ass, which many shifter men in his pack adored. He knew; he’d heard all the stories about guys who had been with her.
Regardless of her history with men in the pack, she was a good shifter and an even better confidant of Kato’s. They’d gotten along well in the past, and even though Kato had known that she was into him because she had shown clear interest, he never did anything with her.
But now that Kato thought about it, Britta could be a great mate for him. She was strong, commanding, and beautiful–everything a future alpha’s mate should be.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Kato finally responded, sipping his beer and turning in Britta’s direction to talk to her. “I’m normally at work, but I have the day off today.”
“Is that right?” She smiled, her pearly whites shining in the dim bar light.
“Kato, what the hell are you doing here?”
Kato groaned slightly when he heard the voice. It was Annie, the only person closer to him than Thea. And she was now sliding into the extra chair at the table where he was, smiling at him and giving a pointed look to Britta.
“The real question is, what are you doing here, Annie?” Kato glared at her, hating the way she was butting in the minute he gave any attention to Britta.
“I’m just gonna leave now,” Britta muttered, rolling her eyes at Annie but smiling at Kato as she stood up. “I’ll talk to you later, Kato.”
Kato nodded in agreement, smiling at her back before he turned his attention on Annie, whose arms were now crossed. She glared at him, any hint of friendliness on her face gone. Kato didn’t know why she looked so mad at him, but he knew that it was going to be a brutal talk if it had anything to do with Thea.
“What’s going on with you and Thea?” Annie asked him, making Kato groan and lose eye contact with her. He really didn’t want to talk abo
ut this with anyone, especially Annie.
“Nothing, Annie,” Kato muttered, standing up from the table and deciding to walk away from her to get another drink. As he walked towards the bar, he felt Annie’s presence walking with him the whole way. He groaned inwardly again. He really didn’t want to have this conversation, but Annie wasn’t seeming to get the hint.
“Oh, really? Nothing’s going on with you two?” Annie asked him as he ordered another beer. “So why is she an anxiety-ridden mess? Why haven’t you been over in a few days? And why, when I told her I was inviting you over for dinner tonight because I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever, did she freak out and tell me not to before she shut up completely? Any thoughts?”
“Annie, nothing happened,” Kato told her again, grabbing his beer and going back to the table he was sitting at before, Annie following his every move. “We just had a little disagreement, but it’s no big deal. We’ll get over it soon, I’m sure.”
Kato hated lying to Annie, but there was no way he was going to admit what really happened between him and Thea. If Thea didn’t tell Annie, and Thea told Annie everything, then he wasn’t going to be the one to spill the beans.
“I’m not gonna get anything out of you, am I?” she asked him, sighing and admitting defeat.
“Nope. Sorry, Anastasia.”
“Okay, well, will you at least tell me what’s going on with you and Britta?”
Kato laughed. Annie was always so nosey, but he also loved her for it. “Nothing’s going on between me and Britta.”
“Really? Because right before I interrupted, it looked like you two were having a very interesting conversation.”
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