Page 5 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

Itook my time in the shower. There really wasn’t any point in trying to make it to school for the end of the day.

I was hopeful that I’d still be able to make my shift at the bookstore later in the afternoon, but I knew it was doubtful.

I already gave Jacqueline a heads up that I might be late.

I couldn’t afford to miss the shift entirely. Especially not now.

“Perfect timing,” Jared said as I hit the bottom step. I bit back a snide comment and followed the sound of his voice to the kitchen. “The coffee’s just finished.”

I pressed my lips together in discomfort. This was weird. Why was he acting like everything was alright? Like I didn’t just find out that he and his buddy could turn into wolves?

He pulled out a chair for me at a small breakfast nook near a tall, wide window at the far end of the kitchen. His stupidly perfect smile made my jaw clench.

Hey Allie. Come sit and have some coffee. We should catch up, Allie. Everything is alright, Allie.

Except I didn’t know him any more than he knew me. We weren’t friends.

“Thanks,” I said, unable to keep the lilt of apprehension from tainting my voice as I sat down.

“Glad they fit alright,” Jared said, stuffing his hands deep into his pockets again.

I looked down at the outfit I’d found in the spare bedroom when I’d come out.

My muddy clothes had vanished and in their place were a pair of sweats with an elastic waistband that I would’ve been drowning in if it weren’t for the fact that I’d rolled them up several times at the hem and the waist. That along with a pair of red plaid slippers and a nondescript gray t-shirt was all I had on.

I kept my arms crossed over my chest, trying to hide the fact that I wasn’t wearing a bra, though I supposed since he took my sodden one while I was in the shower, he already knew.

He didn’t need proof, though.

When I didn’t respond, mostly because I was uncomfortable as hell wearing his clothes in his house, his eyes flitted to the oak countertop in the kitchen where a coffee machine looked to have just finished brewing a full pot of glorious java.

My stomach rumbled.

“Are you hungry, too?” he asked. “I can make—”

“No,” I interrupted. “Just coffee for now. I’m not feeling so hot.”

It was the truth. At first, I thought I was getting sick from being out in the cold, but I knew the feeling well enough to recognize what it was.

Anxiety. I’d suffered from it as a young child.

And when Dad died last year, it’d come back.

The hazy thoughts. The shaking fingers. The hollow pit in the bottom of my stomach that made me feel like I would throw up if I even tried to eat.

The tense shoulders that I couldn’t relax no matter how hard I tried.

I hadn’t had a panic attack in six months, though, and considering what I’d just gone through and seen… well, let’s just say I was shocked it hadn’t happened already.

The power breathing in the shower had helped some.

“What do you take in your coffee?”

“Nothing,” I answered him. “Just black is good.” His brow furrowed. “Ok.”

He poured me a coffee and one for himself, adding half a sugar and a splash of cream to his mug before he sat down across from me.

My hands clasped tightly together in my lap. “You’re not going to turn into a wolf again, are you?”

Jared’s lips tugged up into an understanding smirk. “No—no we try not to shift in the house. Too many things end up getting broken.”

Good to know…

Note to self: stay far away from shifting wolves. “This is fucked,” I muttered as I sipped the piping hot coffee, wincing as it seared a path down my throat. I wrapped my other hand around the tall mug and let the warmth of the heated porcelain seep into me, shivering.

“It’s a lot to take in, I know.”

“How long? I mean, how long have you…”

“Been a wolf?”

I clicked my jaw shut, unable to meet his stare. I nodded.

“Forever. I was a born wolf.”

“A what?”

Jared took a drink of his own coffee and leaned against the table between us. I moved to lean back against my own chair in response. He didn’t miss my aversion, pursing his full lips. “A born wolf,” he repeated. “A shifter is made one of two ways. They are either born, or they are made.”

I raised my brows, waiting for him to elaborate.

“A bite,” he told me. “A bite from a shifter can trigger the change.”

“Can?”

“It doesn’t always.”

“So, if Clay had bitten—”

“He wouldn’t.”

I found that doubtful. He looked pretty damned close to doing just that last night, and again this morning.

I snorted, setting my coffee down, my mind racing.

I had about a million questions, but I wasn’t sure I could handle all the answers right now.

Already, my insides felt like they were ready to turn themselves inside out.

I needed to take this slow or Jared would either be holding my hair over the toilet or helping me to breathe into a paper bag.

I didn’t relish the idea of either of those.

“Can I ask you something?”

I glanced up from the table. “Hmmm? Oh. I guess so.”

“Why green?”

The question took me by surprise. “What?”

“Your hair. Why green?”

My hand unconsciously went up to finger a still- damp lock of it. “It’s not green,” I told him. “It’s turquoise. But I guess it’s a little faded.”

“Your hair was blonde before, right? Almost white if I remember right.”

I nodded.

“You’ve had it at least four colors since junior year.

Why dye it at all? It was beautiful.”

I looked away, trying to hide a blush.

“I mean, it’s beautiful now, too. It’s beautiful no matter what you do with it,” he rushed to cover his mistake.

I smirked, realizing what he was doing. I was visibly freaking out, and he was trying to calm me down by distracting me. Dad used to do that, too. Ask me a bunch of random, meaningless questions when I started to freak out. My heart gave a sorrowful squeeze.

“My mom had light blond hair, too,” I blurted before I could stop myself. “My dad said that I looked like her and I…”

“Didn’t want to look like her?” He offered, the crease back between his brows.

I drew in a long breath. “I didn’t think he could stand it,” I whispered, my throat growing tight. Why did I just tell him that? I snapped my mouth shut and licked my dry lips, suddenly eager to change the subject back to more comfortable territory.

“So, it’s my turn,” I said before he could comment on what I told him about my mother. “How long were you watching me?”

This time, I didn’t avert my gaze. I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to lie to me. There was no way he could have known that I’d been out there for months unless he’d been keeping an eye on me. My skin bristled again at the thought that I was being watched.

Jared began picking at a chip in the top of his mug. “A while.”

“A while?” I prodded, unable to keep the ire from my voice. My blood was beginning to heat, chasing what remained of the anxiety from my veins. “How long is a while?”

The door crashed open at the other end of the kitchen. I whirled in my seat, gasping as I sloshed coffee all over the table.

Clay stormed into the cabin. His bulky arms were wrapped in thick corded veins. The tendons in his hands stood taut beneath the skin as he tightened his fists.

“Can I talk to you for a minute,” he growled at Jared, cutting me a scathing look, his face pinched as though he was holding back. “Alone?”

“Dude, come on—”

“Now.”

My heart was hammering beneath my breastbone again, and I reached for the napkin holder on the table and quickly began to wipe up the mess of coffee.

I swallowed, wincing from the pain in my ankle as I stood to toss the sodden tissues into the trash.

“I have to get to work,” I said absently, trying to settle my frayed nerves.

The guy made my body rigid with unease. He had this disquieting air about him, and when he entered a room, the atmosphere changed. Like he was a storm cloud threatening rain. Or the swell of the ocean when the winds change.

“Maybe you should take the night off ?” Jared said, rising from the table.

I shook my head. Nope. Not a freaking chance I was staying there with Clay.

He looked like he wanted to take a bite out of me, literally.

And as beautiful as I’d always thought wolves were, I definitely didn’t relish the thought of becoming one.

The thought brought with it about a million questions, and I wondered if I’d ever get the answers.

Did they have to shift during a full moon? Did it hurt?

Could they control themselves?

Oh my god…

Are there other things in this world that I don’t know about?

My stomach roiled. “Uh…Jared, do you think my clothes are dry yet?”

I really needed to get out of here. I wanted the peace and solitude I could only find surrounded by shelves of books. Surrounded by thousands of stories with happily ever afters. With words that could whisk you away to another world, to make the one you’re living in bearable.

“Are those my sweats?”

My blood froze to ice in my veins. I glanced down at the sweats I had rolled at both ends hanging low on my hips. And then I glanced up into the murderous stare of Clayton Armstrong.

I shot a look at Jared that I hoped conveyed the depth of my furious accusation.

Jared shrugged. “All my sweats were dirty,” he said as though it were the simplest thing in the world. “I’ll go get your clothes, Allie.”

A tiny sound of protest rose up my throat as he left the room. As he left me alone with Clay.

The bastard.

“I—I’m sorry, I didn’t know they were y—”

“Save it,” he barked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Much as I tried not to look, I couldn’t help but notice that he was still barely dressed. In low-hanging shorts and bare feet. His torso was huge, the muscle more defined than an airbrushed actor in a gladiator movie.

Intimidating as hell.

“I’m not staying,” I added when he continued to stand there stoic, purposefully not looking at me, but staring at a spot on the wall in the living area as though it were the most interesting spot in all the world. “You don’t have to fight with Jared. I—I won’t be anyone’s burden.”

His gaze dropped and some of the fury dimmed in his eyes. His jaw twitched as he ground his teeth together before he responded. “Do you have somewhere else to go?”

The question caught me by surprise and what he said earlier replayed in my head, making my own hands curl into fists.

“That’s not your problem,” I said, astonished at how level my voice came out. “This isn’t a shelter, after all…”

His head snapped up and I saw a flash of something beneath his haughty stare.

“Here it is,” Jared said, coming around the corner with an armful of clothing fresh from the dryer. He looked between Clay and I, pausing with a quirked brow. “What’d I miss?”

Clay’s upper lip curled back in disgust before he stalked up the stairs, each of his heavy footfalls reverberating in my chest.

Jared passed me the bundle of still-warm clothes and gestured to the foot of the stairs. “They should be your size, but if they don’t fit, I can get another pair.”

A pair of simple black converse sneakers rested on the bottom stair. They looked like they were brand new. “I found one of your boots in the wreckage,” he continued. “But I couldn’t find the other one, so…”

“Did you buy those?”

Could he have left this morning while I was asleep to buy me shoes?

My shoulders tensed. That was…weird. Why would he do that? He doesn’t owe me anything.

We aren’t even friends.

“You can’t go anywhere without shoes,” he said with an awkward laugh, rubbing the back of his neck.

He was right. I’d been so pre-occupied with needing to change out of Clay’s sweats and get to work that I’d forgotten I didn’t have any shoes. How was I supposed to get to work? Walk through who knows how many miles of forest barefoot?

I swept the hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear, praying there was at least one hair elastic in my bag by the front door. “Um…thanks. I’ll pay you back for them.”

“You don’t—”

“I do. I’ll take some money out after work and bring it to school for you tomorrow.”

His brows lowered. “Tomorrow?”

My gaze unconsciously flicked to the stairs, where Clay had disappeared down the corridor, my throat going dry.

“He’ll come around, Allie,” Jared said in a silky soft voice that almost made me forget he was half beast. I shoved the image away, my mind still trying to rebel against it even though I’d seen with my own eyes.

Dad always told me that if the truth was looking me dead in the eye that I should believe it.

But he was talking about people and their true colors…

not men who could transform into wolves.

“Please tell me you’ll come back after your shift?”

I dropped my stare, digging my fingers into the denim of my torn jeans.

“I have to go,” was my response before I brushed past Jared and up the stairs against my better judgment.

I didn’t want to go anywhere near Clay, but the bathroom next to the room I slept in was the only safe place to change.

The bedroom didn’t even have a lock on the door.

“Wait—” Jared said, stopping me with a hand on my arm. I shivered at the contact. The warmth of his skin and his hard calluses reminding me of wolfish paws.

He let go of me as though burned on contact. “At least let me drive you to work.”

I tightened my jaw but nodded. It would be hell walking on this ankle if I didn’t accept his offer, and I had no idea how far town was.

“And Allie,” he added when I took another step up the stairs.

I turned, finding him watching me closely with those amber eyes, his face slightly pale. “I need your word.” His adams apple bobbed in his throat. “I need your word that you won’t tell a soul what you saw.”

It was suddenly hard to breathe. Jared had phrased the words as a request, but by the loss of color in his face, and the hardness in his eyes, I knew it wasn’t a request at all. It was a demand. I shuddered to think what would happen to me if I didn’t meet it.

There was a reason I didn’t know these sort of things existed—that no one knew. Maybe they didn’t leave people like me alive to go blabbing? What was it Clay said? About someone named Ryland finding out…

Was he a wolf too?

I shook my head and held my breath, trying to stave off the rise of anxious thoughts.

“If you keep my secret, I’ll keep yours,” he added when I didn’t respond right away.

I tilted my head at him, unsure what he meant.

“I don’t think anyone else knows you live out in the woods…do they?”

Was that a threat?

I straightened my spine and lifted my chin. “I won’t tell.”

I turned on my heel and used the banister to help me limp the rest of the way to the top of my stairs, my blood chilling. As if I would tell anyone, anyway.

Who the hell would believe me?