Page 33 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

The scent of fresh red meat searing in a pan downstairs roused me from a troubled sleep.

I awoke salivating. My eyes burned in protest at being forced open, and my body ached with stiffness from having fallen asleep curled in front of the hearth in the cabin’s guestroom.

I palmed the damp spot at the corner of my mouth and shook my head, trying to haul my thoughts out from the haze of sleep and into reality. Like every morning, it took a few seconds before the grip of anxiety latched back on. A dark cloud of thoughts stampeding down into the forefront of my mind.

My jaw clenched as I limbered my legs with a stretch to rid them of their numbness, snatching my phone from the nightstand.

Monday.

I’d been dreading this day all weekend. It became clear on Friday after I received not one, but two calls from Uncle Tim about missing school I had to return to my life, ready or not.

I couldn’t be ‘sick’ forever.

Layla and Viv threatened to come into the city to see me this weekend where they thought I lived with my aunt and uncle.

It took several phone calls and an entire afternoon of texting to convince them not to.

That would have been a whole other headache I wasn’t ready to deal with yet.

I couldn’t lose them, too. They were all I had left.

The thought reminded me I may not have a choice what I kept or lost anymore.

A sharp jab behind my ribcage made me double over and I bit back the burning in my throat, refusing to allow a single tear to fall.

I’d done enough fucking crying since Jared and Clay herded me back to their cabin last Tuesday night. It was practically all I did now, other than eat my own body weight in red meat. That was the only thing that seemed to keep the trespassing entity now residing within me at bay.

I checked my phone again, already having forgotten the time I’d just checked two seconds before.

An hour. I had an hour before Jared and I would have to leave for school.

And if I survived the day there, I’d have exactly thirty minutes to collect myself before I needed to show up at the book shop for my afternoon shift.

Missing an entire week of work was going to make saving up enough for first and last month’s rent by December a lot harder.

I couldn’t miss another shift. Not if I wanted to be first in line for the apartment above the shop when the guy who lived up there now moved out as planned in December.

I only had to stay with Clay and Jared for another two months. I could do that, right?

I chuffed out a dark laugh. It wasn’t as if I had a damned choice.

They were the only people—er, shifter—I knew that could help me get control of the beast now slumbering beneath the surface of my skin.

Which I was now determined to do. It was the only way I’d be able to go back to my life. Or at least something close to it.

Jared promised me in time, and with a lot of practice, I’d live a mostly normal life.

Eventually, I wouldn’t be a danger to my friends.

I would have full control over my new urges and impulses.

It was going to take time. And like it or not, Jared would be stuck to me as irrevocably as my own shadow until I figured it all out.

Couldn’t have me shifting into a beast in the hallways or growling at people when they pissed me off.

Grabbing an armful of clean clothes from the basket Jared brought up, I spied the arm of the denim jacket I was wearing that night in the woods. There was a tear in the shoulder, gaping and fringed in blue and white threads. Faded red stains ringed the mangled hole.

A cold fear gripped me at the memory of slick stone and the smell of stale urine; of the sting of frigid mud on my skin to mask my scent, and the delirious trek through a blur of greens and mottle browns that was all for nothing.

He’d found me anyway. Devin had followed through on his promise. Except he was wrong. We weren’t meant to be together. I wasn’t his mate.

I was Jared’s. And Clay’s.

My chest vibrated with a growl and I shrank back as my wolf tried to claw to the surface.

I held my breath and pushed her back down with deep breathing and a cleared mind.

A lick of heat lapped up my spine, making my hands tremble and the tiny hairs on my arms and back stand on end.

For a second, it almost looked like my nails were growing.

In a knee jerk reaction, I dropped the clothes I was holding and ripped the jacket from the basket, stomping over to the hearth to toss it onto the still red embers in its maw.

Hard breaths sawed out through my clenched teeth and my vision came in flashes of red. Then, as the embers sparked the denim to flame, my body relaxed, clenched fists unfurling. My inner wolf receding.

My rage simmered back down to a manageable warmth in my belly and I sighed, the weak sound coming out brittle and uneven.

I turned, gaping as an identical Allie appeared across the room.

This one frazzled, with crazy sleep-mussed turquoise hair and brightly glowing gray eyes.

I stared unblinking, willing the reflection in the mirror to change.

With each long breath, the glow dimmed until my eyes were back to their normal dull shade.

My shoulders sagged in relief.

How the hell was I going to get through today?

Checking one more time to make sure the jacket was good and thoroughly burned, I lifted the discarded outfit from the floor and stepped out into the hall. Pulling the door closed behind me, I turned the knob silently, not wanting to draw attention upstairs.

The catch clicked into place and I spun to pad to the bathroom, coming face to face with Clay as he crested the top of the stairs.

A red-hot blush flared in my cheeks as our eyes locked for the briefest instant.

Why did he never make any sound when he walked?

For a guy as large as Clay was, you should’ve been able to hear his approach from a mile away.

He was clearly just as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

Except where I thought I probably looked like a deer in the headlights, he looked downright furious.

But that was common for Clay. I’d only seen him smile once in all the time I’d been staying with them in the cabin, and it was more a smirk than anything.

And that was before…

Now, he couldn’t even look at me. Wanted nothing to do with me, either.

Or at least, that’s what I assumed since he now spent 99% of his time not here.

Preferring to sleep in his wolf form out in the woods, eat around back in his shop, and bathe in the stream several miles away instead of using the perfectly good shower in the cabin.

His shirtless body almost seemed to steam in the tight hall.

The wide expanse of his shoulders was tense, and the muscle there and in his ripped stomach flexed and shimmered beneath a fine sheen of sweat. I tried to avert my stare, the hot flush in my cheeks turning a shade of scarlet but found it impossible to look away.

I hadn’t seen him since Tuesday night, and it was like I was seeing him for the first time all over again. He was at once a stranger and so familiar it sparked something deep in my core.

A muscle in Clay’s jaw twitched and something inside me tugged at the sight of his discomfort. No, not the sight of it. The feel of it.

I felt the same thing with Jared. But I’d half hoped the mate bond thing that’d happened in the woods would have faded between us. Or maybe that it wasn’t real at all. But as Clay approached, his gaze locked not on me, but on his bedroom door a few paces away, I knew it was foolish to hope.

With each step, that stubborn pull in my chest grew.

With each step, my skin came alive with electricity, bristling and shivering no matter how hard I tried to make it stop.

I’d been about to dash into the bathroom, praying that a closed door would help block whatever the sensation was, when Clay froze in the hall.

His head snapped up, cutting blue eyes searching as he drew in a hard breath through his nostrils, sniffing something on the air.

He cursed and changed course, rushing past me to barge into my room.

“It’s just,” I tried to explain, realizing belatedly that I’d just been burning denim. Probably not a scent he was used to catching in his house. “My jacket,” I finished, but he was already inside.

I peered around the door frame; my lower lip caught between my teeth. “I’m sorry, I just—”

Clay’s expression as he took in the mostly charred jacket in the hearth was hard and cold, shocking me back into silence. His stony gaze registered recognition. A vein in his neck stood out against his tan flesh, thick and pulsing.

He whirled to face me, and I saw something like guilt cross his expression before it was gone, replaced with his usual tepid fury. “I didn’t mean to…” he grunted, trailing off as discomfort twisted his face.

The glow in his eyes died before it could truly be born. But the momentary presence of it was enough.

At the rise of his wolf, my own wolf jumped to the surface, shocking a startled whimper from my lips that I fought to conceal. My fingernails dug into the wood of the door frame, steadying the erratic beating of my heart.

Mate, the word reverberated through my skull, dragging a shudder from my bones. The voice was my own, but also…not. I didn’t think I would ever get used to it.

“Thought something was burning,” Clay finished, seemingly oblivious to the havoc he was wreaking on my body and mind as he shouldered past me into the hall.

The brush of his skin against mine was no more than a whisper, but the contact made my insides squeeze and flip, drawing yet another strangled sound from my throat.

I stayed there, unmoving and squeezing my eyes shut until I heard the click of his door closing behind me. Only then did I straighten, tugging my fingers out of the wall.

Oh god.

Where my hand had been on the door frame, there were finger holes. The wood dented a good half an inch where they’d burrowed into the treated grain.

My mouth fell open and I stared incredulously from my slender fingers, unmarred, back to the wood. Snapping my lips shut, I blinked, reaching back up with unsteady fingers to place them back into the small hollows I’d created. How had I done that?

I withdrew as though burned and all but ran into the bathroom, sequestering myself inside. I leaned against the sink for support, being mindful of where my fingers gripped the porcelain, afraid that I might shatter it if I wasn’t careful.

“Allie?” Jared’s voice floated up the stairs from the kitchen below. “You up? Breakfast is ready.”

As though on cue, my stomach burbled loudly, and I put a hand to it in an attempt to suffocate the animal sound. “Yeah,” I called back; my voice weaker than I’d have liked.

I cleared my throat and straightened, relaxing the contorted expression straining my face in my reflection in the mirror above the sink.

It took a minute, but…there.

There was the Allie from a week before any of this happened. Battle hardened and with more pain in her eyes than there had been before, but there she was.

She was still there. She could do this. “I’ll be right down.”