Page 107 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

“You shouldn’t have even joined the team.”

“What team?” I asked.

“Yeah. That’s what I’m saying,” Clay replied to Jared, his tone dripping acid, completely ignoring me. “I learned my fucking lesson. Vivian should’ve quit when she was turned.”

“That’s not fair,” Layla butt in, twisting to face Clay with a withering look.

Clay fixed her with an uncommonly gentle and understanding stare. “It isn’t,” he agreed. “But it’s what needs to be done.”

Layla crossed her arms and turned back to the game, removing herself from the conversation.

“Did you play lacrosse?” I asked Clay, super confused.

He lifted a brow at me. “Football. Coach hounded me for two years about joining the team. I finally gave in. It was a bad call. Someone got hurt. I nearly got found out.”

I tried to wrack my brain to remember. I would’ve been in ninth grade then. A total loner save for my two best friends. But it came to me, nonetheless.

“That kid who almost died?” I asked, incredulous and trying to search my mind for the name. “Billy…Billy...”

“Billy Chapman,” Clay finished for me. “Yeah. That was my fault. I checked him too hard. He was in a coma for three days.”

Clay said this matter-of-factly, but I could feel the stress of the memory radiating off him. I was willing to bet those were some of the hardest three days he’d ever had.

“He was fine, though,” Jared interjected. “He woke up and was back at school within two weeks.”

Clay turned on Jared in a fury. “That was luck,” he snapped. “I could have killed him. Just like Viv,” Clay said pointedly, jabbing two fingers at her as she stealthily maneuvered herself downfield, “could accidently hurt anyone on that field.”

Damnit.

“We’ll talk to her,” I said, interrupting Jared before he continued the argument with Clay over me in the middle of them. All their testosterone was going to make me rage if they didn’t shut up. “When the game is over, we’ll talk to her, okay?”

Clay snatched my soda and took a long drink, polishing it off and crushing the can in his hand. Jared brooded in silence.

They made me want to rip my hair out.

Couldn’t we just have one freaking night of peace?

Just one?

That’s all I wanted: a normal night out with my friends. Watch my friend kick ass at her lacrosse game. Get some fries and shakes. Maybe cap the night off with a movie.

But those kinds of nights weren’t mine to wish for anymore, I realized. They were a pipe dream in a world of nightmares.

With the mood dampened, we settled in to focus on the game. I noticed Layla taking little snippets of video and pictures throughout and sending them to Destiny. I wondered why she wasn’t here watching Viv’s game, too, since they were now mated, but couldn’t bring myself to ask.

With how things were going, I had a feeling it would be some reason that would only stress me out more. Maybe Ry had her running an errand. Or maybe she was out searching for the so-called ‘missing’ shifters with Charity again.

I didn’t care right now. I didn’t want to know. “Sorry,” Clay grumbled so quietly beside me that I had to question whether I heard him speak at all.

I peered up at him and found his face hard, his gaze unwavering as he followed Vivian’s path down the field. I waited a minute to see if he was going to elaborate on what exactly he was apologizing for, but he didn’t say anything else.

I gave his thigh a pat and smirked. “I’ll forgive you for ruining the mood if you get me another soda?”

His lips twitched.

“Suppose I could do that,” he grunted standing.

A familiar shout rose up from the field, and I jumped, trying to see past a very large and imposing Clay blocking my view. Layla stiffened, rising robotically to her feet at the same time Jared did.

I shoved Clay to the side just as another cry rang out, this one pitched high and broken. Fuck.

My eyes locked on Vivian, her hands clawed at her sides as she stared down at a screeching girl clutching the top part of her shoulder.

Even from this far away, my canine eyes could see that something wasn’t right.

Her collarbone jutted out near the top, not through the skin, but it definitely shouldn’t look like that.

Vivian shook, staring down at the girl. I could see her fingernails sharpen. Lengthen.

Oh no.

Oh shit.

A whistle blew and players and refs rushed them.

I whirled to Clay, my heart pounding with terror. What do we do? I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t speak. Could barely move.

Layla dropped her phone and began shoving past the other students in her aisle, trying to get to the stairs.

“Sorry, bro,” Clay muttered just before he tossed a fist over my head. I ducked in time to hear the bone- crunching thud of his knuckles knocking into flesh and bone.

I shrieked just as someone shouted, “Fight!” and was knocked out of the way, sent tumbling into the spot where Layla had been just a second before.

Clay hit Jared again, this time in the stomach, making him bend forward, a great gust of air leaving his lips and his eyes going wide.

“Clay,” I screeched, torn between wanting to stop him and needing to get to my best friend. “Fucking stop it!”

I moved to reach for Clay’s arm, to make him stop when Jared winked at me and dodged Clay’s next swing, shoving Clay hard enough to knock him to the side and get in a good right hook of his own.

…a distraction, I realized. They were making a distraction.

As much as I hated it, with a quick glance around, I could see that all the attention from the stands had been re-directed at them, not at Viv.

The same couldn’t be said of many of the other players and the refs and coaches. They were all crowding the girl writhing in the grass. Layla was nearly there, hopping from the bottom step.

Vivian’s coach whirled on her after checking the other girl, a cell phone raised to her ear. I had to assume an operator was on the other end of the call. The girl was going to need a doctor. A much better one than the nurse practitioner we had on staff at Forest Grove High.

Vivian cast her gaze away from the coach, dropping her head. In the movement, I saw the inhuman glow of her eyes. In her clenched fists, I could see the strain of her wolf like a spirit in her veins. Pulsating. Aching to be free.

With my heart breaking, I shouted down to her,

“Run!”

Her gaze snapped up to meet mine, crazed and ringed in halos of deep ochre.

I watched as a single tear fell before she tore away from her shouting coach and fled in a sprint that was definitely too fast, away from the field, toward the woods, with Layla hot on her trail.

A crash behind me sent me skittering into action.

I raced for the stairs, calling back over my shoulder to Clay and Jared as they fought to the jeers and cries of surprise of the others in attendance. “Cabin!”

I couldn’t bear to look at them, even knowing their bloody lips and bruises would heal wasn’t enough for me to be able to watch them pummel each other. I was going to kill Clay when they got back. Couldn’t he have done something else?

Literally anything else?

Past the point of being able to think about it, I jumped from the bleachers when I was close enough to the bottom not to draw notice and sprinted after Layla and Viv just as the sounds of sirens flared to life in the distance.

It wasn’t hard to track them. Layla’s jasmine scent made an easy trail to follow all the way through the school lot and onto the hiking trail, then a half a mile in to the east.

“Vivian!” I called, trying to decide if I should shift. My wolf could cover more ground faster. She could sniff them out better.

I groaned, whirling in a circle, trying to tune in to my heightened senses. Listening for the sound of them. Peering into the brush. But twilight made it hard to see. “Layla!”

“Here!” I heard faintly, Layla’s voice carrying on the cool breeze.

It took me only a few more minutes to find them. Vivian sitting with her back against a tall, moss- covered stone, her head locked between her knees as she trembled. Layla crouched at her side, rubbing her back while she whispered reassuring words.

A twig snapped under my foot, and Vivian looked up at me, a snarl twisting her face. Even though her eyes still glowed vividly, and her claws and canines were still elongated, she hadn’t shifted. She had managed to keep her contained.

Shock wasn’t a strong enough word for what I was.

“You were right,” Vivian sneered at me. “Go ahead. Say it! You were right, and I was wrong and now Bev has a broken fucking collarbone, and it’s all my fault.”

She broke into a sob on the last word, her body tightening, her shoulders rolling inward. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d seen Viv cry. Hell, I could count on two fingers. And those two times were both before she turned twelve.

“I wasn’t going to say that,” I told her, edging closer. I didn’t want to spook her, that would only make it harder for her to control her wolf.

“Well you should. She’ll be out for the rest of the season. Maybe even next year, too.”

I wanted to ask her what had happened, but it didn’t matter.

She’d probably just checked Bev too hard.

That’s all it would take. “I’m the one who’s sorry,” I muttered, dropping to my knees beside her and Layla, not caring as a cold wetness seeped into my jeans.

“This wouldn’t even be happening if…if…”

“Oh, fuck off,” Viv said. “You don’t get to have the blame for this.

This was me. My stubbornness. I knew this would happen, you know that?

I fucking knew it, but I convinced myself it wouldn’t just so I could keep one normal thing—just one and…

” she trailed off, her sobs getting too heavy to continue.