Page 20 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

Jared was smirking when I tucked myself back into his Jeep.

He kept glancing at me as we started the drive to the edge of town and the invisible trail he seemed to have memorized that lead to the cabin in the woods.

“So,” he began, and I knew where he was going, what he would ask.

Suddenly, the idea of asking him the questions that’d been burning in my mind for the past few days didn’t seem so daunting. Having that conversation was a hell of a lot better than having the one he was about to try to have.

I didn’t need him asking me why Layla would ask him what his intentions were. Or why Viv told me to go for it. Even though the window was rolled up at that point, I had no doubt that his canine ears had heard her.

“So, I’ve been thinking about it,” I eeked out in a pitchy voice, cutting him off before he could continue with no remorse. “And I do have some questions for you.” I reached for the half-empty bottle of water in the cup holder between us. “Do you mind?” I asked him.

He pouted his bottom lip and shrugged. “No. Go ahead.”

I took a swig of his water to clear my throat.

“So, shoot,” he said after a moment. “What is it you want to know.”

Thankful that he’d dropped the former topic, I racked my brain for all the questions I’d been gathering there since I’d first realized he was a wolf. I came up empty handed.

“Uh…”

I watched Jared’s brow raise from my periphery and scrambled for something. Anything. The moon outside caught my gaze. It was big and round in the sky, lighting the way along the back-country road we were driving. It had to be almost full. Maybe only days away.

I gulped. “Do you have to turn during a full moon?”

Jared shifted in his seat and I watched his jaw clench. Shit. Was that the wrong thing to ask?

“Y—you don’t have to answer—”

He shook his head almost imperceptibly, never taking his eyes from the road. “No, it’s alright. The simple answer to that is yes.”

“And the complicated answer?”

He seemed to consider something before responding, deciding how to best explain something.

I waited with my fingers clasped tightly in my lap, chewing my bottom lip.

“Your myths and legends and fairytales. They are all steeped in truths. But it’s like…

it’s been diluted. The bag has been used too many times.

And then people add their own flavor to it. Cream and sugar. Vanilla syrup…”

“You’re losing me,” I said. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the analogy. I did, but I wished he would just tell me without beating around the bush.

He ran a hand over his tousled hair. “We aren’t werewolves like the ones you see on TV. Silver does jack shit to us. We aren’t mindless beasts. We weren’t even always shapeshifters.”

My curious self, the one who loved a good story and spent the bulk of her days reading at work and in the hours after dusk came out of her hidey hole.

I was sitting up straighter, my mind sharper, readying itself to take in what Jared would tell me without anxiety.

If I thought of it like a story, like fiction, maybe I could understand it better. Accept it.

“Go on,” I urged him, worrying a frayed string at the edge of my hand-me-down top.

Jared sighed. “We were once known as Endurans. We were our own race before our people were cursed, and before our homeland was destroyed.”

“Your homeland?”

“Emeris,” he said. “The immortal lands.”

Okay…

“And where is that?”

I may have nearly flunked geography, but I knew Emeris wasn’t on any map I’d ever seen.

He licked his lips. “No one really knows anymore except for the elders. We’ve been here over a thousand years. All I know is that the Immortal lands are and always have been concealed from mortals. They wouldn’t be on any map or known to any human.”

My mouth was dry again and I guzzled the rest of Jared’s water, positioning myself in my seat so I could see him better. “So, you’re telling me that there is a whole other continent out there somewhere? One that people, normal people like me, can’t see?”

I saw him flinch a little and I realized my mistake. “I didn’t mean—”

“No, that’s okay. I’m not normal. It shouldn’t bother me for it to be pointed out.”

Except clearly it did.

“But yes,” he continued. “There are two actually.

Emeris and Fae lands of Meloran.” I gaped at him.

“F-Faeries?” I managed after a heartbeat. “Fucking faeries?”

He snorted. “Yeah. They just call themselves Fae mostly.”

I was still gaping. I didn’t think I would ever be able to pick my jaw up from my lap again. I fucking loved faeries! I mean…the myths about them. Stories about them. The legends and all that. Somewhere deep down inside myself, I’d always thought those kinds of things were real, I realized.

I mean, how could there be so many stories from all sorts of different places all about the same thing if there wasn’t at least some truth to the myths? But I didn’t expect to ever be proven right. It was fantasy. A fairy- tale…no pun intended. It wasn’t supposed to be real.

“You okay?”

I nodded rapidly, making a strangled, “mhmmm” noise that ended up sounding like I was in pain. With my brain on fire, I managed to remember another of the questions I’d wanted an answer to. He’d just answered it in part, but…

“Are there…other things?” He paused.

“Jared?”

He turned his gaze to me as he pulled the Jeep off the main road and onto the bumpy drive that led to the parking lot where he would leave his Jeep and we would continue on foot to the cabin.

“Jared!” I was dying to know now. Why wasn’t he answering me?

His adams apple bobbed. “I could get in a shit ton of trouble telling you this, Allie, but yes, there are other things.”

“Like?”

He put the Jeep in park and shut it off. He stepped outside and I rushed to unlatch my seatbelt, fumbling in my rush to get out of the car. “Isn’t that enough for one night?” he asked, his expression pained as he hopped out and shut the door.

Oh hell no.

“Hey!” I all but shouted, finally getting myself untangled from the seatbelt and out of the cab. I stomped around the vehicle and grabbed him by the shirt. “You don’t get off that easy. You just told me other beings exist. I can’t just let that shit go, Jared.”

Every book about every being I’d ever read about flashed behind my eyes. Oh my god, angels? Were angels real? What about demons?

I shuddered.

“Okay, okay,” Jared said, prying my hand from his shirt, except once he had my claws retracted, he didn’t let go right away, and I shuddered for a completely different reason as he brushed his thumb over my knuckles. “There are also Vocari—what human know as Vampires.”

Shit. I held onto his hand and he brought his other hand up to cup on the other side of mine, leaning down to breathe warm air into my palm to thaw my icy fingers. “Okay. Vampires. Cool.”

He tilted his head. “Not really.”

“Okay. Not cool. Noted.”

“And there are witches.”

My eyes lit up. “Also, not very cool.”

I extinguished the excitement from my expression. “Oh?”

“They’re the ones who did this to us. To the Enduran people and the Vocari a thousand years ago.”

Jared drew my other hand up to join the one he still held and rubbed warmth back into that one, too.

Cautiously, I studied his silhouette in the shadows of the night.

His warm amber eyes set into that unnaturally symmetrical face.

The high cheekbones and pouty lips. The line of his jaw and the subtle bits of gold in his hair.

He didn’t even look human, not when you looked this closely.

He seemed almost…ethereal. Too good looking to really fit in with us mere mortals.

And he was holding my hands. Looking into my eyes with a quizzical interest, as though trying to read how I was handling all of what he’d told me. As though I was as equally enthralling to him as he was to me.

“We should get going before you freeze. It’s really cold tonight.”

I nodded, unable to tear my gaze away from him. “Jared,” I stopped him as he lowered my hands.

His eyes searched mine. “Yeah, Allie?” He stepped back in closer and I tipped my head up to see his expression. Something flipped low and hard in my belly. He was looking at me like he had in the woods outside of Thompson’s party. Hungrily. Like a wolf.

Except, it didn’t scare me. Not anymore.

I blinked and a weight pressed into my chest, bringing me back to earth. I stepped back and gave a half-hearted chuckle. Fuck…what had I even been about to say?

“Never mind,” I said with a forced smile. “You’re right. It’s freezing out here. We should go.”

He held out his elbow to me and I looped my arm through his. Even with the moon, it was hard to see under the canopy of the forest in the dark. I usually ended up tripping at least a dozen times before we made it to the cabin.

“Thanks,” I muttered, matching his pace as we walked arm in arm into the trees.

The ominous hooting of an owl in the distance made a shiver run down my spine.

A twig snapping several yards away had my mind shooting to images of Dracula and the Wicked Witch of the West. I imagined fanged faces emerging from the dark.

Aw fuck…I just had to know. Now I couldn’t exactly unknow…

Good going, Allie.

Jared patted my arm, pulling me closer to him. “Don’t worry,” he said with a devilish grin as he dipped his head low to whisper in my ear, his breath caressing my cheek. “You’re safe with me.”