Page 121 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

One Week Later

I yanked the pin back out of my hair, pulling a few strands out with it. Groaning, I tried twisting the sides up like Layla sometimes did with her hair, trying to go for the same effortless look. Failed miserably.

Tossing the pin back down onto the vanity, I sighed. There was no way I was going to be able to make my halfway grown out hair look good no matter what I did to it. At least it would be back to its natural shade soon, with my shifter blood helping it to grow nearly twice as fast as it did before.

For the first time ever, I welcomed the return of the silvery blonde.

Didn’t feel the immediate need to dye it when the roots became too visible.

A flash of the smiling woman in the photo with Dad that I still had slipped into the sun visor of my Chevelle came to mind and a weak smile came to my lips.

I did look a lot like her. More than I ever looked like dad.

For the first time, I didn’t think that was such a bad thing.

Giving up, I stepped backward and spread my arms, letting my body fall onto the double bed, the thick duvet puffing around me.

It really didn’t matter how I looked. And since when had I cared anyway?

The pack knew who they were accepting as their alpha tonight. I didn’t need to pretend to be someone I wasn’t.

Movement by the door caught my eye, and I squinted at the tall, lithe form leaning arms crossed against the doorframe.

“Hey,” I said, sitting up with a grin and patting the spot next to me.

Jared pushed off from the wall and came over, his lips pulled up into that lopsided smile that drove me mad the very first time he ever flashed it my way.

“You look beautiful,” he said in a whisper soft voice, leaning down to brush a kiss softly against my lips.

I bit my lower lip, letting the compliment go without trying to oppose it.

One day I’d learn how not to squirm whenever someone told me I’d done a good job or looked especially nice. But today was not that day.

“Layla and Viv just got here,” he said as he sat down next to me. “They’re helping get things ready outside.”

Of course, they were. They were here more often than they were at home these days.

Helping where and when they could even though I tried to insist otherwise.

Layla’s second eldest sibling, Katelyn, was turning fourteen this year, and with Layla spending so much time away from home, it had fallen to Katelyn to watch the younger of the bunch.

Layla hated that she wasn’t there to help anymore but admitted that she would hate it more if she weren’t here—with her other family when they needed her.

Jared glanced around the room, showing off the dark circles beneath his eyes and the sallow hue of his skin in the light of the bedside lamp. He was still healing—I knew that—but it didn’t make watching the process of his grief any easier.

“I like what you did with it,” he mused, gesturing vaguely at the room.

“I still say I would have rather just stayed in one of the cabins.”

“It would’ve been a waste,” Jared replied. “Besides, it wasn’t always his. And it doesn’t even look like the same place anymore.”

In that he was right at least. A fresh coat of paint and all new furniture, courtesy of the massive wads of cash Jared found tucked away in Ryland’s office at the quarry, really made Ryland’s—no—our cabin a whole new place.

Until they moved out all of Ryland’s things, I refused to sleep inside, preferring to crash next to Charity in her cabin. At least for the first few nights after she got home, to make sure she was all right.

She was. Though, since it was a shifter’s fangs that had done the damage to her throat and chest, the scars would remain. A gruesome reminder of everything that happened that day.

Every time I saw them, coupled with the smile that never quite reached her eyes anymore, I was reminded of how much I owed her. And I wouldn’t ever forget it.

“Everyone’s almost ready,” Clay said, appearing like a ghost in the doorway, but like anything, I was getting used to his random appearances and they barely fazed me anymore.

“Everything all set?” I asked, feeling a wide, dark pit yawn open in the bottom of my stomach. They might have been ready down there, but I wasn’t, not yet.

Clay nodded, coming to sit on my other side at the edge of the bed, letting out a long breath. “The patrols will shift halfway through the ceremony so we can get through them all tonight.”

I pursed my lips, giving a nod. Not that he needed my approval.

Clay had thrown himself into being the unofficial and yet undisputed head of security for the pack.

And thank fuck because I had no idea what I was doing in that regard.

I’d told him he didn’t have to, but he’d insisted.

I think he needed something to keep himself busy.

For a while he was distant, much like Jared, after everything that happened.

But unlike Jared, it wasn’t because of grief.

Not really. I couldn’t be certain, because much as I tried, he didn’t want to talk about it, but I thought it was more that he just didn’t know what to do with himself anymore.

He was still his same raging, foul-tempered self ninety-nine percent of the time, but he was also… different.

He’d been trying for years to figure out what happened to his father.

Who killed him. Harboring the sole responsibility for the task since the local police had given up after a measly three months of investigation.

Now that he knew the person responsible was gone, there was nothing left to search for.

But he still had something to keep him up at night. Whether he admitted it or not, I knew why he spent the bulk of his evenings out on patrol or sitting on the front porch, staring out at the trees bending in the autumn wind.

Sam had kept her promise.

She hadn’t returned. We’d sent word to her old pack up in Alaska, but they told us they hadn’t seen her either. It left me to wonder whether he watched and waited because he wanted her to come back, or because he didn’t.

I would wait until he was ready to talk about it. “You guys sure I can’t convince either of you to—”

“No,” they said at the same time, dashing my last- ditch effort to attempt to pass the torch.

I’d offered them the right to rule the Forest Grove pack about fifty times apiece since last week.

And all fifty times, they’d both refused.

They never wanted it. Still didn’t. But for whatever idiotic reason, they thought I was somehow going to make a good alpha.

I hoped I would be able to prove them right.

I groaned, falling back to lie against the duvet once more, staring at the wood beamed ceiling, and the string lights I’d spent hours twisting around them.

They suffused the room in a soft golden glow, deepening the tan skin of my two shirtless mates as they both leaned into my line of sight, making the new soft mattress dip beneath their weight.

“You’re going to do great,” Jared promised.

“You’re going to help me, right?” I asked, not for the first time, shifting my gaze between them. “Both of you?”

“Always,” Jared replied. Clay grunted his assent.

I let my body relax a little, unburdened enough to inhale deeply, filling my lungs with engine grease, spice, and warm birch.

My inner wolf purred at their nearness, something tightening deep in our shared belly, making our thighs squeeze.

Above me, propped up on elbows, Clay and Jared shared a look.

“What?” I asked coyly, wondering if they could feel the magnetic draw of our mate bond as strongly as I could right now. Wondering if it affected them in the same way.

“I know I said we’d have the conversation together,” Jared said, looking mildly uncomfortable as he shifted position, leaning forward on both elbows instead of just one.

My brow furrowed. “What conversation?”

He stared at me pointedly until my face flushed with heat and I had to avert my stare. “Oh,” I said, unable to hide the note of panic from my voice. “That conversation.”

Clay surprised me by reaching out, stroking his long fingers through my hair, along the side of my cheek, and down my neck, making my body shiver with anticipation. “We almost lost you,” he said in a breath, face pinched, his hand stilling when it reached my collarbone.

“Kind of put things into perspective,” Jared added, brushing a thumb over my jaw.

The dual sensation of them both touching at the same time threatened to undo me, and I had to clamp my teeth down to keep from setting free the moan trying to claw its way up my throat.

“So,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “What did you decide?”

Jared glanced up briefly at Clay, checking for something I couldn’t see because I was too focused on his lips as he lowered them to mine. The moan I’d been trying to hold back broke free against his mouth, more a whimper.

Clay’s fingers curled upward, snaking around the back of my neck. Jared’s lips left mine, leaving me bereft only for a second before Clay’s grip on me tightened, lifting and turning me until I was on my side. My lips against his.

My head spun as he slid in with his tongue, taking me to new, dangerous heights as Jared’s hands found my waist from behind, and I felt the heat of his breath only a second before his lips pressed warm and soft against the back of my neck.

I thought I knew what their answer was, and if I wasn’t sure, Jared whispered from behind me, “We decided to leave it up to you.”

Barely able to breathe, I gasped between them, my hands trembling as I reached out for them both.

One hand knotted in Clay’s hair. The other catching the mouth of Jared’s pocket, using it as leverage to pull him closer.

Close enough that I could feel his pulse racing against my spine. An echo of my own.

Dizzy with desire and drunk on their touch, I wondered if there could ever be anything else that could feel more right than this did.

Dismissed the impossibility of the idea.

No matter how…how unconventional it was...for us, it couldn’t be considered wrong.

I broke away from Clay, breathing heavily. My chest rising and falling against his. His bright blue eyes met mine with awe and something else that was more than that. I could feel it from them both so intensely that it threatened to shatter what was left of my damaged heart.

Love.

This was what love felt like.

“I’m sorry this isn’t exactly…normal,” I told them, worrying that maybe this was still much harder for them than it was for me. I didn’t have to share. I could have them both.

Jared laughed, his breath tickling my neck as he whispered sweetly against my ear, “We’re not normal,” he said. “We’re better than normal.”

I chuckled as his hands around my waist turned to tickling fingers, making me shriek and roll into Clay, who wrapped his arms protectively around me, nuzzling his face into the crook below my throat and inhaling deeply.

Downstairs, the screen door creaked open and banged shut. A familiar scent wafted up from below.

Chocolate chip cookies.

“I brought cookies!” Hazel’s willowy voice called. “Hope it’s not a bad time.”

I was wondering when she was going to show up.

Clay snorted, disentangling himself from me to roll off the bed.

I groaned, suddenly eager to get this whole ordeal over with. How many shifters could I swear in per minute? How quickly could we come back up here?

I bit the inside of my cheek, damning myself for where my head was.

Jared caught me around the waist when I tried to get off the bed, pulling me back down to land on his lap, wrapping his arms around me in a long bear hug.

“We’ll be right down, Grams,” I called, laughter threading through the words.

“Well, hurry up, will you! I’m not getting any younger down here, and I heard there’s a pack that could use a stubborn old mutt like me.”

I grinned, dragging Jared with me when I moved to stand this time, locking my fingers through his.

Clay offered me a warm smile, jerking his chin in the direction of the door, and what waited on the other side. “You ready?”

“Yeah. I think I am.”