Page 34 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

Jared cooked a breakfast of steak and scrambled eggs. As much as I wished I’d be just as content with my usual huckleberry oatmeal or a slice of toast, that just wasn’t the case anymore.

Only red meat truly sated me. If I had oatmeal, I’d be hungry again in five minutes and my inner wolf would be testy and impatient. Since I was finally going back to school today, I had to take every precaution.

Jared slid a plate to me as I folded myself into the seat opposite him at the table.

I didn’t miss how he gave me the larger of the two steaks.

When the scent of the meat coiled up into my nostrils, it was almost impossible not to dig in with my bare hands.

I could feel the phantom press of sharp canines trying to dislodge themselves from my gums. I shook my head, swallowing back the urge to tear into the meal like a beast.

My skin bristled at Jared’s nearness. Every time he looked at me, white hot currents ran through my veins. Sizzling. The brush of his eyes tantalizing, like the ghost of fingers playing on soft skin.

I hated it.

Or…more accurately; I hated that I couldn’t control it.

That I had no say in what my body felt around him.

But I think he knew that. It was why he mostly kept his distance.

He’d only touched me once since they brought me back here and I hadn’t reacted well.

Now he kept a consistent minimum amount of space between us, never getting within less than a foot away from me.

He had no idea how much I appreciated that. Or how much my inner wolf loathed it.

“Thank you,” I said and lifted my knife and fork with shaking fingers. Fingers that wanted to tear into the meal like a starved dog. Tail wagging. Ears pressed flat. Growling when any other dogs came near.

I stabbed the meat with my fork and poised the knife to cut, swallowing hard.

A clatter on the other side of the table made me glance up to find Jared had set his own cutlery back down against the oak table in favor of using his hands.

His amber eyes flicked to me and back to the steak now gripped between the thumb and forefinger of each of his hands. The green fleck in his left eye glinted in the light of the morning as it turned from the pale hue of dawn to the shining orange glow of a new day poking through the trees.

Brownish red juices dripped loudly back onto his plate as he tore a bite from one edge, seemingly as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Before I fully realized what I was doing, I found I’d discarded my cutlery too.

A bolt of icy shame lifted the hairs on the back of my neck as I ripped off my first bite.

But the shame melted away as that first bite found its way down my throat, sitting heavy in my stomach.

Soothing the wolf within. I sighed audibly, completely unable to help it.

“So,” Jared said between bites. “Are you excited to see your friends?”

I almost choked. Finishing off the last bite of my steak, I took the paper towel Jared offered and cleaned off, ready to switch to my fork to eat the eggs like a normal human being. “More like terrified,” I blurted.

He cocked his head at me, sunlight staining his dirty blonde hair with threads of copper and gold. “If you aren’t ready—”

“No,” I interrupted, pushing the eggs around on my plate. “I mean, yes, I am ready. I have to be.”

I didn’t have to explain in any more depth than that. He knew just as well as I did that if I stayed MIA much longer, it was only a matter of time before someone found out I was living here.

And before they found out I wasn’t even me anymore.

“I’ll be right there the whole time,” Jared said after a second, his tone soft and encouraging.

I winced. “Did Layla and Viv say anything to you last week?”

Jared’s lips tightened, pressing into a thin line that told me everything I needed to know.

Still cringing, I asked, “What did they say?”

I’d done my best to erase the damage Devin had done while he had me captive in that cave out in the mountains to the north. He’d been keeping up appearances while I was chained up. And part of that was texting Viv and Layla to tell them I was ill…and also that Jared was a total asshole.

Devin texted them from my phone. Told them that when Jared had ‘driven me home’ after Thompson’s party that he’d been rude and tried to make a move on me. And that when I told him no, he’d turned into a total dickwad.

I’d done all the damage control I could via texts and calls from my room upstairs. But Jared had had to deal with them face to face at school last week. We couldn’t both be missing from classes for days on end at the same time. That would be way too suspicious.

“Jared?” I prodded when he still wasn’t answering.

He huffed, pushing the last of his scrambled eggs away as he leaned back into his chair. “They didn’t say much. Don’t worry about it.”

I really hoped he was telling the truth, but I got the feeling he wasn’t.

I’d done my best to fix it by telling them that I was overreacting.

That Jared hadn’t even made a move on me.

I was just on edge because of running into Devin at Thompson’s party and had taken it out on him.

I told them I was the one who should be sorry. Not Jared.

But I doubted they believed me. Which was why it was going to be…difficult…today when Jared was stuck to me like glue between classes and at lunch hour.

I could already see their disapproving faces. And I could already hear the curious whispers I knew would follow Jared and I wherever we went.

Jared rose from his seat and collected my plate with his, scraping both of our uneaten eggs into the compost bin. He cleared his throat before speaking again. “You sure you don’t want to try shifting first? We could go in after lunch. It might help.”

My shoulders pulled inward at the suggestion, my chest suddenly tight and throat parched. “No,” I said weakly, shivering at the memory of the first and only time I’d shifted since Devin bit me.

I remembered the agony of every bone in my body fracturing and breaking. The dizzying displaced feeling of everything inside me being disjointed and rearranged. The burning in my blood. The aching.

My lips parted in a little gasp at how vivid the memory still was inside of my head and I pressed my hand back to my stomach, quelling the urge to vomit.

Jared crouched down beside me in the chair, keeping the foot of distance between us, but putting our eyes level.

“It’s not like that when you shift on your own.

The moon forces a shift and it sucks. It’s always the worst the first time.

But choosing to shift,” he said, his eyes pleading with me to understand.

“It’s different. It’s accepting your wolf and letting it out of your own volition.

It hurts a little until you get used to it, but it’s nothing like the first forced shift. ”

He must have seen how my jaw was tightening. Maybe even felt my unspoken denial of his offer because he added. “But if you don’t shift on your own, it will be just as bad as the first time. If you wait until your wolf is so suppressed that it explodes out of you, it’ll never get easier.”

Hot tears dampened my eyes, stinging at the edges.

“Not yet, okay?” I managed, wanting to cry and scream and growl all at the same time.

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t ever want to shift again.

Despite the brief moment of feeling like I was a spirit flying over earth, it had been utterly terrifying.

Not having full control over my own body was one of the worst things I’d ever felt.

Jared’s hand lifted from his knee and I thought for a second he was going to reach out and touch me.

I ached to feel him. Whatever piece of my soul now residing within him called out to its counterparts within me.

My heart twisted painfully in my chest as he pulled away, remembering to keep his distance with a sudden hard blink of his eyes.

He stood again and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Okay,” he said. “When you’re ready.”

Jared turned to glance at the clock on the stove and hauled in a shaky breath, his muscled chest expanding beneath his shirt until I could see the outline of his pecs and sharp collarbone beneath. “We should get going or we’ll be late.”

We pulled up to the school with almost ten minutes still to spare.

Jared told me that running—even in my human form— would also help to expend some of my wolf’s energy, therefore making it more docile.

So, we'd run to where he kept his lifted white jeep parked at the end of an unmarked trail through several miles of trees.

A walk that usually took me and Jared twenty minutes had barely taken us more than two this morning. The trees whizzed past in a blur of green needles and leaves in varying shades of greens and golds. Autumn had swept over the mountain in earnest while I’d been hiding out in the cabin, it seemed.

There was more color than I remembered. And the air was thick with the distinct aroma of fall.

The scent so much stronger than it’d been before.

But everything was now. Sounds were louder.

Certain smells were almost unbearable in their intensity.

My vision was sharper, too. Even running at a speed I had to guess was something north of thirty-five miles per hour, I could see everything around me with a crystalline sharpness.

It helped that since shifting into my wolf and back, my ankle had been completely healed.

The sprain I’d gotten in the storm a couple weeks ago was entirely healed.

So were all the cuts and scrapes. Even the thumb I’d forcefully broken to get out of the manacle in the cave was good as new when I’d reverted back to my human form.

If it wasn’t for the silky pinkish-white skin of the puncture wound scars on my shoulder, I could almost pretend none of it ever happened. Almost.