Page 43 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

A shiver raced up my spine and a forceful swelling in my chest rocked me back like a punch. “I-I’m not feeling well,” I eeked out, turning away toward the door. There was a garbled quality to my voice and pain burned through my jaw as my teeth slid low, cutting into my lower lip. “I have to go.”

“Wait! You need permiss—” Susan called after me, but the door shutting on my heels cut off her voice and I sprinted to the front exit, tripping as I went through the door when my ankle snapped.

I screamed, earning myself a horror-stricken stare from two students rushing inside late from lunch.

With tears in my eyes, I hobbled around the building, crashing onto my knees when my other ankle gave out.

My spine stretched and flexed. I prayed my thick sweater and baggy jeans were enough to cover what was happening beneath them in case anyone could see me from the windows.

“Fuck,” I ground out, trying to stop the shift from claiming me. But my wolf was tired of playing nice. With images of Devin in her mind and the whisper of his voice trapped in her ears, she would not be controlled.

“Allie,” the growl was so close, I flipped back and landed hard on my tailbone, staring up into the stunned ice-blue eyes of Clay. He was shirtless and his body steamed in the chilly fall air.

“Fucking hell,” he cursed, scanning the area before he reached down and grabbed me around the arms.

A sizzle of warmth exploded through my belly at his touch and I whimpered.

“We need to go,” he hissed in my ear as he wrapped his wide arm around my waist and hefted me into his arms as if I was a babe.

I wanted to protest. To kick and scream and demand he put me the fuck down. But it was all happening so fast. I was being washed out with the tide, tumbling and spinning. My head throbbed as I tried and failed to breathe.

Clay ran.

I didn’t know where he was taking me, but after three more bones snapped, we were in a shaded place and when I opened my eyes, I saw dark green pine and withering autumn leaves.

“Is…safe?” I managed; my voice unrecognizable.

He kneeled and set me down on the carpet of the forest. The cold damp soaked through my jeans, shocking me back from the edge. The clarity brought with it the crushing realization of what was happening. I was shifting.

I didn’t want to shift.

I pushed back against the wolf, a sound like a groan pressing out through my lips as I fought it.

No.

No, no, no.

Please, I begged. I can’t…

Think about the things you can control, Allie. Think about the positives. Breathe.

I’m safe. Devin is gone. He can’t get me. Everything is okay. I am in control.

I am in control.

Another pop of bone somewhere in my leg and my lungs were on the verge of giving out.

“You need to shift,” Clay barked. “Stop fighting it.”

“Fuck. You.”

“You’re only going to make it worse.”

I roared, rearing up onto all fours and then onto my aching feet. My ankles protested, but I forced them to hold my weight. “No.”

Clay shook his big head at me, and I saw how his eyes were shining with his own wolf’s urge to shift. It made something inside of me quake.

“I have to go back,” I said, my voice sounding like something spoken through a garbled radio. I needed to get to class. If the school called my aunt and uncle again, I would be in deep shit. I couldn’t keep lying to them. They were going to figure it out. They would catch me. Then what?

I blinked and shook my head. I couldn’t let that happen.

Clay moved to block the way, stopping me. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Inside, I was screaming, but on the outside, all I could do was keep breathing as the anger filled me. As the unfairness of what was happening to me—the helplessness sunk in.

Three weak steps and I was shoving him. Hands screaming from the broken bones beneath my skin.

I shoved him again, becoming numb to the pain.

He let me shove him a third time before he caught my hands and held them tightly between his, stopping me. “It isn’t fair,” he said in a low voice, without the anger that usually tainted his tone. “I know.”

How could he?

“But this is your life now. Like it or not.”

His hard gaze found mine and he held me there, captive in the fathomless depths of his eyes. “Don’t fight it, Allie. Just…fucking let go.”

The soft command was like a rip cord, sending me falling headfirst into the dark. The instant I gave in and stopped fighting, too weak to keep pushing and pushing against the growing being within me, she leaped out. It could have taken a second, or a minute, I wasn’t sure.

But it was fast.

When I opened my eyes again, my lithe body rippled. Hot air clouded out from an elongated snout. My canine legs twitched with the urge to run. A muted whine strangled my lungs. I turned at a sound behind me and scrambled back on all fours.

My clothes lay in tatters against the ground and standing amid them was a large wolf. Deepest gray with eyes like backlit sapphires. My twin tails whipped around, catching my flank and startling me.

It was done then.

It hadn’t been even half as bad as the first time, but…I could already feel my wolf getting restless. She wanted to run. She wanted to chase. She wanted…

Mate, the word echoed in my skull and the whining stopped.

The dark wolf bowed his head.

Come, his voice spoke in my mind and I startled, my ears pricking at the intrusion.

Clay, I tried, speaking his name in my head as though trying to speak to him without the ability to form words.

He nodded.

I reeled back, my claws dragging over leaves and dirt.

Oh god…

Could he hear my thoughts?

Oh god, could he hear all of my thoughts?

Clay stepped forward and snapped in my general direction, getting the attention of my wolf. Her body going rigid. Then he turned tail and pressed off with his strong back legs, launching himself into a run through the trees.

My body quivered in anticipation and my wolf let out a loud yip before she tore off after him. The primal instinct to chase was too strong to deny.

The exertion pumped my muscles and sang in my blood. The cool wind whistled through my fur and reminded me distantly of being a little girl again.

Sticking my arm out the window of Dad’s truck, feeling the press of air as it rushed over my skin. Belting Don’t Stop Believing along with the radio as I pretended to fly.

Unable to stop it, a howl pushed out from my center, loud and haunting as it echoed all around me.

Clay’s howl rose to meet mine, melding with it until the harmony of our matched voices converged in my ears, sounding like one instead of two.

It didn’t take me long to catch up to Clay. I didn’t think I cared one way or the other whether I could beat him, but the same couldn’t be said for my wolf. She wanted to best him. She pushed herself until our lungs burned and our legs began to ache.

And when Clay saw us coming up alongside him, the startled look in his wolf’s eyes and the short sound of indignance chuffing out through his lips was worth it. My wolf’s pride and glee at her accomplishment made me smile inside. For a fleeting second, her happiness became my own.

Clay changed paths and I recognized the change in scent before I visually realized where we were headed. We were almost back to the cabin now. I could already see the break in the trees.

But another scent stopped me dead in my tracks. My wolf skidded over the molting leaves, almost tripping in her haste to stop. She lifted her head, sniffing the air, and then the forest floor, finding traces of…something.

What was that?

Crunching in the distance and my ears pricked. I stilled.

There it was again.

Movement to my left. So far, I couldn’t truly make out what it was, but my wolf seemed to know.

She launched herself into the brush, taking off at a break-neck sprint past the trees. Soaring over fallen logs as though she had wings.

Black eyes lifted from the ground. Black-tipped ears pricked up to listen.

I could see the deer’s spotted brown coat now. I could also see the dawning realization as it came into the deer’s eyes when it saw me.

No.

It bolted.

But that only made my wolf hurry harder. Faster. My mouth watered at the feast, bouncing through the underbrush with a white bobbing tail. Like a little beacon popping up and down screaming here I am, here I am, here I am…

No!

My wolf slowed for an instant at my command but sped back up again a second later.

Allie, I heard Clay’s bellow in my mind.

How do I make it stop? I shouted back, frantic. Silence was my answer—I knew what that meant. I couldn’t.

We were gaining on it. Another fifteen yards and my jaws would be around its neck.

Fucking run, you stupid dear!

I imagined it: watching helplessly as my wolf—as I—consumed an innocent creature. Hot blood and meat in my mouth. I gagged.

A black blur passed me, thudding over the earth.

My wolf snapped at Clay, but he didn’t stop.

He attacked the deer, pressing down hard on its back as his jaw clamped around its neck, biting down and twisting until the wrenching sound of snapping bone silenced the sharp grunting sound coming from the deer’s tiny mouth.

My wolf growled and snarled. Distantly, I could feel hot saliva dripping from my jowls.

I felt my wolf’s anger at her mate.

She’d wanted that kill and he’d stolen it from her.

Clay growled back, removing his teeth from the deer. His fur was matted with blood around his snout. It dripped onto the deer, leaving ruby red spots between the white ones on its back and side.

Go home, Clay spoke in my mind. I’ll meet you there.

My wolf was still snarling, but I got the feeling she wouldn’t challenge Clay for the meal at his feet. He’d made the kill. It was his feast, not hers. And he clearly didn’t want to share.

Aghast at my warring thoughts, I managed to prod my wolf into leaving.

My thoughts clashed and spun out of control. How could I want to eat it and want to barf at the thought of eating it at the same time? How could I feel both sad the deer had died and angry that Clay had been the one to kill it first?

At her loss to Clay, my wolf began to recede. She was tired, I realized.

I wondered if it was just as hard for her to fight me as it was for me to fight her when I was in my human form.

It was easy for me to point her toward the cabin now.

She bounded along without protest. It was almost as if I was in complete control.

Almost, but not quite. When my paws went from sticks and leaves to hard packed dirt and the cabin loomed in front of me, my wolf was ready to give in to my demands to shift back.

She laid with her belly against the dirt and set her chin down against her paws.

A flash of my last shift bombarded me. It had been gruesome.

I gritted my teeth, ready for all my bones to snap back into their rightful place. Ready to throw up until there was absolutely nothing left in my body to expel and then to pass out from the pain and the emptiness.

Jared had wrapped me in a blanket and put me in bed. Or, at least I assumed that’s what he did, because that’s how I awoke the next morning. Naked with traces of leftover vomit in my hair—even though it was clear someone had tried to wash it out—with a blanket tucked around my nude body.

I never asked him about it because I was too embarrassed. But I was starting to get the feeling that being part wolf meant getting used to being naked at inopportune moments.

I held my breath and did what came naturally, pressing myself against the boundaries of my wolf just as she did when she was trapped within me. I imagined myself expanding out from where I felt like a prisoner in my mind, my consciousness expanding until I was whole again. Human again.

Me again.

There was a loud popping sound and a blazing heat ripped down my back, arching it sharply.

Then my fingers were brushing against dry dirt. Hair tickled my shoulders and chest where it fell, brushing against naked skin. Squinting my eyes open, I sighed, tears welling when I recognized my arms, my wrists, my hands.

My human hands.

There was no pain, but my stomach was uneasy, and my vision swam at the edges.

I swallowed back bile, trying to maintain control, and flexed my fingers in the dirt to ground myself until I felt ready to stand.

Breathing heavily, I got to my feet and stumbled before gaining stability.

There were streaks of dirt over my abdomen and chest. Muck crusted the inside of my fingernails.

I turned, as though I would be able to see the wolf version of myself, I’d left behind, still not fully believing her and I were one and the same. She was going to kill that deer. Eat it.

My skin bristled and the bile came back, threatening to expel itself from my lips.

I would never kill an animal.

Dad took me hunting when I was younger, but even then, when I was there, I only allowed him to shoot partridge and wild turkey.

And I only ever shot my arrow if the animal hadn’t been killed by Dad’s shotgun and was lingering in pain.

Only then did I deliver the killing strike.

Because that way I could at least pretend I was merciful instead of murderous.

My gaze rested on a shape in the trees. A dark wolf watching from a distance, his paw frozen six inches from the ground. As though the sight of me had turned him to stone mid step.

Shit.

“Clay,” I snapped at the massive beast. “Jesus Christ, turn the fuck around or something.”

His eyes widened and he spun, falling onto his side in his rush to look away. He scrambled up and sat with his back straight and ears sticking straight up, staring straight ahead, away into the trees. His near-black tail thumped twice before he schooled that into stillness too.

I rushed to cover myself as best as I could and bounded up the porch steps and into the cabin on wobbly legs, cursing under my breath the whole way to the shower.