Page 120 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

Asecond scream rose to meet the first, this one familiar.

I whipped my head in her direction, feeling my insides recoil from her despair.

Charity, still in her long shirt, spattered with blood now from what I’d done in her cabin, she rushed forward.

Her face a haunting parody of its usual demure expression.

Behind her, down the narrow path from where she’d come, I sensed my mates. Their panic swelling as they woke to find the decapitated vampire lying on the floor. Layla’s shriek confirmed it. They were all waking now, coming this way.

“Watch out!” Someone—Seth—called, and I turned just in time to stare into the acid-filled, too-blue eyes of Sam. Her dark, muscled frame already coiled, sprung. The silvery white streak, like a lightning bolt on her forehead not nearly as shining as her bared teeth.

A shape passed in front of me and a long, ear shattering peal left Charity’s wolfen lips as Sam went to the ground with her, teeth gnashing, claws scrambling for purchase on shifting, fur-covered flesh.

Instinctively, I rushed Sam, knocking her off Charity.

Using the blunt battering ram of my forehead to stun her well enough that it took her several seconds to get back to her feet.

Long enough for a white wolf and a dark gray one to get to their places at my sides.

My best friends coming up swiftly behind my mates.

A cacophony of thoughts pushed against the confines of my mind and a cold nose pressed against my side, prodding a wound there, making me flinch. I ignored the voices. I ignored it all.

Charity.

I nudged her, a whine contracting in my lungs. She hardly moved, but I could still hear her breathing. Could still see the shallow rise of her sides.

Not caring whether or not Sam attacked me anymore, I let my need to be heard outweigh my need to fight, allowing my wolf to fall away and my human form to take shape in her place. I cried out as I shifted, the wounds in my upper back and chest protested the shift, tearing and bleeding anew.

I didn’t give a shit.

In the myriad of faces I found Seth, hovering undecidedly near the body of Ryland, his face a mask of shock. “Seth,” I called, and blinking, he turned. Once he took in the mess of Charity in my arms, he was there, skidding in the dirt to a backdrop of growls and snarls and shouts and whispers.

Trey and Todd followed, helping Seth lift her without injuring her more. “We need to get her to the healer,” I told them, ready to rush out of camp as quickly as I’d arrived.

A human hand curled around my wrist, pulling me to a stop.

Jared.

“Take her,” he told the others. “Make sure she’s going to be okay. Hurry.”

I gave them a swift nod. Permission to go without me even though that was the last thing I wanted. Anger flared in a gush of heat up my neck as they raced away, and I turned to face Sam.

I took one step. Two.

A second hand joined the first, gripping me from the other side. Each of my mates holding me back from tearing her apart.

“You fucking bitch!” I snapped. “If she dies…” I couldn’t even finish that sentence.

Sam snapped and snarled, hot saliva dripping from her chin. Egging me on.

Do it. I could almost hear her without the need to be in my wolf form. She wanted me to attack her. She wanted, I realized with a stab, to kill me or die trying.

Inside my chest, my heart gave a violent shudder. Regardless of what he’d done—that he deserved what he got and more—Ryland was Sam’s mate. And I couldn’t imagine that pain.

Didn’t want to even try.

“Sam,” Clay barked, his disdainful tone echoing through the camp like a sonic blast.

She shifted in the blink of an eye, pitched forward on the balls of her feet, her stare shining and cruel. Her long black hair wild and painted red on one side with Charity’s blood.

“You could have killed her,” Clay roared, and suddenly I was no longer the detainee, but the detainer, shifting my wrist out of Clay’s grasp to curl it around his wrist instead. Tugging my other one away from Jared in case I needed it to hold him back, too.

Clay shook beneath my hands, and within him I could feel all the things he was too angry to say.

He might have been worried about Charity. In fact, I knew he was. But I also knew he wasn’t talking about her. He was talking about me.

Sam hadn’t meant to hurt Char. Only had because she’d gotten in the way of her intended target.

“Clayton,” Sam hissed, still visibly trembling. “She killed hi—”

“Go,” Clay shouted. “Go before I fucking lose it, Sam.”

Stricken by his words as though by a punch to the chest, Sam stumbled back a step.

“Clay,” I started, unsure exactly what it was I meant to say. I certainly wasn’t going to defend her. Right?

Clay saved me from having to make that choice, turning his burning gaze on me, not with hate. Not with anger. Not with anything I would have expected to find written in the lines of his face.

He looked at me with the face of a man who’d seen the swing of the executioner’s blade and somehow, mercifully, managed to get out from under it before it could destroy him. Pure, raw relief. His eyes were glassy with it.

It was only a second before he turned back to his sister, but the look was enough to burrow beneath my skin. Tunnel straight through bone. It said more than he ever could with words.

“I won’t be back,” Sam spat in reply, literally spitting onto the dirt, the wad of her saliva missing my bare foot by an inch. “If you think I’m going to bow to your bitch, then you’re just as crazy as she is!”

A strange awareness settled over me at her declaration, and I turned my head, taking in my best friends standing right behind me, so quietly, so resolutely, that I didn’t even know they were there.

Tears stained their cheeks. A sad grin spread across both of their faces when our eyes met. Vivian reached out and took my hand, knotting her fingers through mine, lending me some of her incredible strength before she let me go.

Past them, I found the alarmed faces of the rest of the pack. My pack. Some I knew the names of and others I didn’t.

Some, I may never need to learn.

“I won’t make you stay,” I said, turning back to Sam. “Leave.”

Her brows drew together. She looked between Clay and me, still bouncing on her feet, panicking now.

“Go,” I reiterated. “You’re released from this pack.”

She left without another word, only one last glance in the direction of her brother before she shifted back into her wolf and fled from camp. Clay bowed his head, and I slid my hand from his wrist down into his hand, squeezing tight before I let go and turned to address the others.

I found Jared staring down at the corpse of his uncle and pulled him to me, crushing him against my body in a hard embrace.

He tentatively wrapped his arms around my middle, softly at first, and then so tightly it was a struggle to breathe.

I buried my face into his neck, whispering against his warm skin. “I’m so sorry,” before pulling away.

There would be time for him to grieve. And time for me to help him do that, but there was something else that needed to be taken care of right now.

“If there’s anyone else who wishes to leave,” I called out, my voice hoarse but loud enough for all to hear. “Go now. I won’t stop you.”

“Allie,” Clay said at my side, drawing my attention. “That’s not how it works. You challenged Ry and you won.”

“It’s how it’s always worked,” Jared agreed, helping Clay to explain. “It’s your right to rule them.”

“Fuck that,” I said, a dark laugh coming unbidden to my lips, and then louder, so everyone could hear me again. “I won’t make anyone stay. Honestly? If you don’t want to be here, then I don’t want you here.”

Whispers broke out among the pack, a few near the outer edges tucked tail and left, taking advantage of the moment. Acting fast before I could change my mind.

I wouldn’t.

“I will tell you that we do have evidence of the things I accused Ryland of doing…I may be unhinged,” I told them, repeating what Ryland said.

“But I am not insane. And I may be different, but I am not dangerous. Not unless you post a direct threat to the people I care about. Then, yes, it seems I can be very fucking dangerous.”

“It’s true,” Jared attested, jerking his chin toward a still-stunned Kyle. “Go back to the cabin and bring back the proof. You’ll know it when you see it,”

Kyle nodded and shifted quickly before taking off in the opposite direction Sam had.

Forrest and Harrison stood next to each other by Ryland’s flank. They were the first to speak, Forrest speaking for them both. “We’re leaving.”

“And we’re taking his body,” Harrison added.

Jared opened his mouth as though he were going to protest but then closed it again, his expression darkening. “He wanted to be cremated,” Jared muttered. “Just so you know.”

Harrison gave a curt nod in Jared’s direction before both he and Forrest lifted Ryland’s body, taking it with them as they left camp. Without collecting their things. Without so much as a backward glance. Leaving only a puddle of blood where Ryland had been in their wake.

“Anyone else?” I shouted over the gathering.

When no others moved, or even responded, I finally let my body relax. Dark spots scattered over the edges of my vision, and I swallowed hard, wobbling a little on my feet.

Jared caught me with an arm around my waist, bracing me against him.

“Go back to your cabins,” Jared shouted, his tone shocking me with its authority as he helped me move in the direction of the main house. Ryland’s house.

I gave a little whine of protest as Jared tried to weave through the throng of shifters, all of them still standing there, shocked and confused.

“He said move,” Vivian growled, sending the nearest pack members to us skittering in all directions as she wrapped her arm around me, shifting my weight so it was evenly distributed between her and Jared, as Clay, Layla, and Destiny fell into step behind us.