Page 39 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

What was he doing anyway? Trying to buy my affection since the stupid mate bond bullshit didn’t have the desired effect? What did he want from me?

“Listen,” Jared said, setting the bow down slowly on the ground as though he feared a sudden movement might spook me. He may not have been wrong. “I know you don’t need me to take care of you. I know that. But sometimes—”

“But what?” I demanded, my breaths sawing in and out through clenched teeth now. A heat was rising within me and it was out of my control. I didn’t want to be angry. Knew somewhere inside that I shouldn’t be, but I couldn’t stop it.

“Christ, Allie,” Jared said, his temper rising to meet mine. “Why can’t you ever just let someone in? Why don’t you let anyone help you?”

“Because I don’t deserve it!” I shouted, the words almost a growl. Once they were spoken, I couldn’t take them back, and the weight of them pressed heavily on my shoulders. It extinguished the fire in my blood, and I sagged, feeling numbness where there was pain only a second before.

I remembered what Jared told me, about how my emotions were going to be out of whack for a while. If it was like this every day, things were going to get very interesting. A broken laugh came out before I could stop it.

Once I had my breath back and I was sure all the rage had escaped, I peered up at Jared, dashing away a tear before it could run down my cheek and he saw it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

“I know, it’s your wolf. It’s a completely normal reaction.”

I laughed again, sure now that I was going insane. “How about this,” Jared said, picking the bow back up from the ground to hand to me. I took it reluctantly and glared at him—though this time there was no true anger behind it.

“I’m going to let you borrow my bow and all this… stuff,” he said, pointing to the arrows and the targets set at fifty and about eighty paces away. I rolled my eyes.

“And in exchange, you can teach me how to use it.”

I thought about it and even though I knew what he was doing, it did make me feel better. If only a little bit.

“Do we have a deal?”

“Okay,” I told him, a trace of mischief seeping into my tone. “Deal. But you’re going to need a wrist guard and some gloves.”

“A what?”

I rolled my eyes again. “To keep the bowstring from—”

“You’re forgetting,” he said, the same glint of mischief now shining in his eyes. He jabbed a finger toward himself and then at me. “We’re not human,” he said with a coy smile. “The sales guy tried to upsell me on all that stuff, too. Didn’t think we’d need it.”

I looked down at my hands. My wrists. Considered their strength.

They looked the same as they always had, but Jared was right.

I didn’t need precautions like that anymore.

Yet another thing to add to the slowly growing list of positives.

“No,” I said, tugging a bow from the quiver in Jared’s hand to notch it for a shot at the first target. “I don’t suppose we do.”

Jared was hopeless.

No matter how many times I demonstrated the proper stance and how to hold the bow and how to look down the length of the arrow to make aim, he just couldn’t do it.

“It’s no use, I’m hopeless,” he said after the sun had risen in earnest, flopping onto his back on the dew- coated dead leaves and grass. “How do you make it look so easy?”

I’d actually sucked, at least for the first ten shots.

It took me a minute to get used to the bow—but more than that—used to my own strength.

I also broke the string twice before I found the proper amount of effort needed to pull back the eighty-pound-draw.

It was much less than I thought I would need. Almost too easy.

In fact, I might need a heavier draw.

But after I sorted all that out, it had been a relative breeze.

Like muscle memory snapping back into place, even after over a year of not using those muscles.

It would take time before I was bullseye-good again, but I was hitting the fifth and sixth rings, so I knew I’d get there with a bit more practice.

“Ha ha,” I teased. “I’m super rusty and we both know it, but you are right about one thing.”

Jared looked at me questioningly. “You are hopeless.”

His mouth fell open in mock dismay and before I could see what he was doing, he’d curled a hand around my ankle and pulled my legs out from under me.

I caught myself on my palms. They pressed into the wet, mucky earth next to Jared and I gasped at how cold the wetness was seeping into my jeans at the knees. I pushed him roughly in the arm.

“Jared,” I cried indignantly, flipping over onto my ass to inspect the new dirt and grass stains on my knees. Bastard. “You’re going to pay for that,” I warned, ready to grab myself a good handful of mud and grass to rub into his crisp light gray long sleeve.

But I paused. Jared lay still in the grass and something pricked at the edges of my hearing in the distance. A scent not common to find in the woods tickled my nostrils. I knew that smell.

“Is that…chocolate chip cookies?”

“And oatmeal raisin,” called a willowy voice, like a phantom song carried on the wind. I whirled around but couldn’t find the source. “But I suppose the chocolate chip ones do smell better.”

Then she was there, emerging from the brush not more than ten feet away.

She looked almost identical to the last time I’d seen her.

In a dress that looked more like a nightgown, though the material looked thicker.

Warmer. With a deep purple shawl this time instead of jade green.

It made the silver strands in her long brown braid stand out even more than they already did.

“Hazel,” Jared said, her name sounding almost like a question. He rushed to get off his back and onto his feet, brushing the decay of the forest from his back and sides as though the blind woman could see him.

“And where is my grandson?”

“Uh,” Jared said, clearing his throat. “I’m—uh…not sure. Maybe back at the cabin.”

The old woman tsked Jared, but made no comment, moving out from the brush cover and into the clearing. A branch tugged at her arm, drawing a small drop of blood from the papery skin just above her wrist. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was long.

“You cut—” I started, but before I could finish the sentence her small wound healed, and she brushed the droplet away, smearing red over her faded tan skin.

“What’s that dear?” she asked, walking with a little limp until she was right in front of Jared and me.

I rushed to move the bow out of her way and stood awkwardly next to Jared. It was hard to imagine that somewhere lurking beneath the flesh of this old, frail woman, there was a wolf slumbering. Just like mine.

Was she blind in wolf form, too, I wondered?

Why hadn’t the transformation healed her blindness how it’d healed my ankle and broken thumb?

“Never mind,” I muttered.

The woman called Hazel set the basket down on the ground and opened her arms. Jared coughed and then embraced the woman. “It’s getting cold, Hazel,” he said against her shoulder. He looked like a giant with her withered arms around his middle. “You don’t need to be bringing us things.”

She tutted again and pulled back from him. “Nonsense,” she said with a sour pout. “You’re as much my grandson as Clayton is, you know, and I’ll bring my family cookies when I damn well feel like it.”

Jared laughed, some of the tension leaving his posture. Hazel took his hands when he pulled back and I saw something in his jaw twitch, but he didn’t pull away.

She flipped his hands palm up and the strange faraway look in her eyes sharpened and for a second her pupils constricted, staring not just straight at Jared, but into him.

It unnerved the shit out of me.

“Ah,” she said, dropping his hands after a second, her milky gaze going back to looking somewhere over his shoulder. “So, it’s true then.”

“What is?” Jared asked, though I think both of us know.

“Your friend has completed the transformation.”

Jared glanced at me with an apology in his eyes and a tiny shrug as though to say she’s just a crazy old lady, don’t take it personally.

“And she has bonded to two mates,” Hazed added with a thin brow arching over her right eye. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”

Jared’s mouth pressed into a firm line at that. “What do you mean?”

I remembered what she said the first time I’d met her. You were two once.

I don’t know how she could’ve possibly known, but there it was. One of the things I worked so hard to forget about. One of the deaths I’d caused before I’d even drawn my first breath.

“How did you know?” I asked Hazel, my hands worrying the hem of my shirt, unable to look her or Jared in the eye.

Hazel smiled, showing off two rows of age- yellowed teeth. One missing in the upper right side. “It’s my blessing,” she told me. “And my curse. To see the inner workings of people. Their gears and cogs. The way they tick.”

“By touching them?”

Hazel tipped her head this way and that. Her silver- threaded hair gleaming in the light of the rising sun. “Such a curious one, you are,” she said. “That will be your downfall, I fear.”

“Hazel,” Jared said, clearly trying to end this conversation, but Hazel ambled forward, reaching out her hands in my general direction. I looked between her and Jared.

“It’s easier that way, but not necessary,” Hazel said in a gravelly voice, answering my previous question.

“I was born blind, you see,” she told me, still holding her wrinkled hands outward.

“And when the transformation claimed me, this,” she said, shaking her hands for emphasis.

“Was how it compensated for that. By giving me a different sense.”

Jared looked up at the sky and cleared his throat again. “We’ve got to get going, Hazel. School.”

Hazel kept her hands outstretched for another second before letting them fall.

“Take the basket,” she ordered Jared. “I’ll come and retrieve it later. I haven’t had Clayton’s lasagna in a while. Tell him I’ll be by for dinner soon. It’s been too long since we all shared a meal, wouldn’t you say?”

Jared lifted the basket and leaned in to give Hazel another small squeeze and little peck near her temple. “I’ll tell him.”

“Thanks for the cookies,” I managed, already backing away.

“Be sure and eat some, will you,” she replied. “Can’t have you wasting away from stress. My Clayton will need a strong mate. As will Jared in the times to come.”

My spine went rigid at the suggestion and I struggled not to spout back at her with a scathing retort. This is just how it is for them, I told myself. She didn’t mean anything by it. I collected the rest of the arrows as Hazel retreated back into the woods.

“She means well,” Jared said as he caught up with me, the basket clutched in his hands.

I gave him a tight-lipped smile.

“Plus,” he huffed, turning on me with a wide grin. The light of the now risen sun caught those gold and copper strands in his hair, making it look like he had a halo atop his head. “The woman makes a mean chocolate chip cookie.”