Page 46 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

The bite of cold metal around my wrist awoke me. It stung—the tender skin beneath the manacle red and raw. The clanking of a metal chain over stone as I tugged at it rang like warning bells in my ears.

I tried to open my eyes, but my vision was out of focus and wavering in and out. A pale cheek and shock of black hair came into focus before it was gone again.

I tried to pull at the bind again, but my mind and body were groggy and heavy. It felt like someone had pumped my body full of heavy iron—the weight of it on my chest was crushing. My breaths whispered in and out through limp lips.

Where am I?

A familiar scent permeated the air. A musky vanilla. I knew that smell. I sighed in relief, searching for its source. I tried to speak, to call out to him, but the words came out disconnected and too soft for even my own ears to capture.

“I’m here, baby,” he said, his voice husky and deep.

I rolled my head around and blinked past the substance in my eyes, trying to find him in the flickering light. It was so cold.

“You’re shivering,” he said, and I felt the distant pressure of a body pressing into mine. I felt the tingle of warmth where a hand rested on my waist beneath my shirt. I shuddered again.

I found him in the haze a second later. His sharp angular features watching me with heavily lidded eyes and full parted lips. His hand moved up my waist, following the contour of my body until his fingertips pushed beneath the underwire of my bra and found my breast.

The ring of metal as I twitched under his touch brought me a moment of clarity. I knew where I was.

I was in…in a cave.

Devin had carried me here, hadn’t he?

“That’s it, Allie,” he whispered, and I felt his hot breath against the base of my ear. “Move for me baby.”

There was a tug at my waist and the top button of my jeans came free.

This wasn’t right.

Devin squeezed my breast hard, bringing a soft cry from my lips.

Why couldn’t I move?

Why couldn’t I tell him to stop?

His fingers grazed the top of my panties, pushing lower beneath the lip of my jeans. I tried to squeeze my legs together, to say no, but I couldn’t.

His mouth pressed against mine and I gagged. When he pulled back, I saw his eyes were ringed in halos of glowing green.

I remembered.

A broken cry echoed back to me from the stone.

No.

My heartbeat was a thunderous roar in my ears, blocking out Devin’s next words as he struggled with removing my jeans. My limp body not cooperating.

The water bottle I’d been drinking from earlier was laying against the stone ground, and I saw something inside of it shimmer in the light. A trace of some other substance lacing the contents of the bottle.

My jeans came off and my feet slapped back down against the rock.

Devin’s calloused hands wrapped around my knees, nudging them apart.

I screamed, but the sound that came out was a forced expulsion of air with no sound. My lungs didn’t have the strength to produce sound.

I screamed again and again.

I kept screaming silently until my body began to wake from its drug addled slumber. Hard hands gripped my shoulders, shaking me.

A loud voice bellowed angry words in my ears. Shouted my name.

I inhaled sharply and the scent of birch and fire assaulted my senses. My body moved, jerking upright until my head connected with something hard and unyielding. I flopped back down, dazed for a second, but elated to find my wrist was free.

Kicking out, I scrambled to the right, and fell, landing in a heap against…against wood.

My fingers stroked the floor, and my hard breaths began to slow. Ahead of me there was a hearth. The fire I’d lit in it before bed was nothing but a pile of ash and near-dead ember now. I wasn’t in the cave.

I wasn’t with him.

Someone groaned behind me and I flipped onto my side, my fists clenching.

His hunched shape loomed over me like a shadow and a new scream lodged in my throat, but his dirty blond hair caught the moonlight streaming in through the window and I sagged.

“Jared?”

A loud crack and banging downstairs made me jump, my heart in my throat. Jared froze, glancing between me and my open bedroom door.

Running steps tore through the house and up the stairs.

Jared removed his hand from his face and straightened revealing a smear of blood over his lips and a painful looking crook in his nose. He moved in front of me just as the intruder appeared in the doorway.

Clay’s massive body was heaving with animal breaths. His blue eyes were so bright they made the rest of his face indiscernible, casting it in shadow. When his eyes found me on the floor, he growled.

“What the fuck happened?” he demanded, gripping either side of the doorframe as if to keep himself from losing his shit. His fingers burrowed into the wood, adding more dents to the frame to join the ones I’d put there.

“Bad dream,” Jared said, deflating when he recognized his friend in the hall. “Just a bad dream. I was trying to wake her up.”

Clay was still trying to get control of himself. His mostly naked body rippled with flexed muscle. But his shoulders were slowly lowering. His breaths were evening out.

“You good?” he asked, this time directing the question to me.

I swallowed, nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you—”

“We’re good here, man,” Jared interrupted, bending to offer me his hand.

I took it and he helped me up. I went for the blanket on the bed and covered myself, wrapping it around my shoulders for warmth and to conceal my Naruto panties from their view.

Clay ripped his fingers away from the doorframe and walked away. A door down the hall opened and shut so hard I could feel the rattle beneath my toes in the floor.

Jared turned to the mirror in the corner of the room and bent to see into it. With a gag-worthy snap and a wince, he had his nose straightened, but as he turned, I saw a new drop of blood snaking a path down his chin.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, still shivering from the cold and the nightmare Jared woke me from.

He was saying something—something about how it happened all the time and that he’d lost count how many times he’d broken his nose, but I wasn’t hearing him. Not really.

I could still feel the press of Devin’s fingers on my skin. I could still smell him.

It was just a dream. Just a dream.

But then why did it feel so real? Devin had drugged me. Who was to say he hadn’t touched me?

Just because I didn’t feel any different or…or… Oh god.

I ran for the bathroom, sliding onto my knees against the tile in front of the toilet to wretch bile into the porcelain bowl. I jerked at Jared’s touch, but was grateful when the hair vanished from my face and he held it in a knot against my neck.

He said nothing as I brought up every last ounce of liquid in my stomach. It wasn’t until I finally sat back against the wall that he released my hair and handed me a wet cloth, leaving only to return with a cup of cool water that he pressed into my other hand.

I cleaned out my mouth, so spent from all the vomiting that I didn’t have the energy to feel embarrassed. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be.”

He took the cup from me after I drained it and refilled it in the bathroom sink before placing it on the floor next to me. I pressed the cloth to the back of my neck and sighed as my pulse began to slow.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

His amber eyes watched me patiently from where he crouched next to the tub. I handed him the cloth and looked away. “You should get that blood off before it starts to crust.”

He took the cloth and cleaned himself off, leaning to rest his back against the vanity. “It was him, wasn’t it?”

My teeth clenched.

My non-denial was all the answer he needed.

“He’s gone, Allie,” Jared reminded me, brushing his hair away from his forehead. “He can’t hurt you anymore.”

“It’s not that,” I managed after a second. “It’s…he drugged me, Jared. What if he—”

I cut myself off, not wanting to say it aloud. I didn’t want to give any more credence to the thought. It was bad enough that he’d kidnapped me and chained me up. That he turned me into a beast and was going to try to force me to be his mate. I couldn’t handle it if he also…

Jared’s eyes widened and he was suddenly there, angry and pained. His eyes searching mine. When I met his gaze, he shook his head.

He pulled my hands into his and I shivered at the contact, wanting to pull away and melt into him all at the same time. “Hey,” Jared said when I tried to look away, too sickened and ashamed to meet his stare. “That didn’t happen.”

“How do you know?” I whispered, angry tears burning at the corners of my eyes.

He gripped my hands, rubbing a thumb over the back of my right hand. “If you really need to know,” Jared paused, gulping. “I would have scented him on you. His…”

I looked up, confused.

Jared's face twisted as he continued. “I would have scented his seed if he had…”

“Are you sure?”

I couldn’t seem to get enough air into my lungs. My breaths were cut-off and my body still trembled.

“I’m sure. I’m one hundred percent sure.”

A tear fell and then another. I squeezed Jared’s hands back.

I didn’t realize how badly I’d been worried that Devin violated me until now. Until Jared could tell me with certainty that he didn’t. It didn’t ease the disgust that he might have touched me. And if the dream was any proof, then I didn’t doubt he had.

But he didn’t do that.

And that was a small comfort.

Jared released me and turned on his knees to the tub. He twisted the knobs and water gushed into the drain. Once he had the shower started, he stood and held out both hands to me.

I stood, aware that when I’d rushed to the bathroom, the blanket had been discarded somewhere in the hallway and my Naruto panties were clearly visible. But he wasn’t looking there. His eyes remained fixed on mine as he jerked his chin in the direction of the shower.