Page 52 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

“Pretend it never happened.”

That’s what Jared told me after we’d all shifted back the other day. “Ryland definitely will, and if you don’t—"

“Ryland will accept your challenge,” Clay had finished for him. “A fight to the death. Winner takes the place of alpha.”

Jared and Clay had been reeling and barely able to utter more than a few words to me for hours after we shifted back.

Both of them had worn pinched faces as we sat together in the kitchen.

Them in those infuriatingly low-hanging shorts they liked to throw on after a shift and me wrapped in a towel because all of my clothes were in the laundry.

They said it was impossible.

Muttered how there had never been a female alpha before. Not since before their people left the immortal land of Emeris and came to the mortal lands. And even then, there was only one known female alpha in the history of their race.

It just didn’t happen.

Apparently, gender equality wasn’t exactly a thing for immortals—aside from the Fae race who were apparently ruled by queens instead of kings.

Females were rare in the vampire race and they didn’t generally have the power to compel, which from what I understood meant that they could implant thoughts into another mind.

Make you think and do whatever they wanted you to.

So, basically, they were weaker than the males as a rule of their genetic makeup.

Witches were ruled by a hierarchy of male leaders and councilmen.

And shifters—apparently—only had male alphas.

I was happy to break the mold on that one, but the idea of actually killing someone—Jared’s uncle—to do that, made me abort the premature thought without hesitation.

I was not a murderer.

“If you agree to accept Ryland as your alpha, he’ll still accept you as pack,” Clay had said, but I could see that it pained him to speak the words.

“You might even get a prime position,” Jared added, trying to make light of it. “With your strength, you’d be an invaluable addition to any pack.”

A prize to be won.

A tool to be used.

Ryland had given me until Monday night to decide.

So, I had the weekend. This last weekend as a free wolf before I either chose to submit or chose to leave.

I wouldn’t leave, which left one option.

I just prayed my wolf would allow me to do it.

If she had her way, she’d tear Ryland’s throat out without hesitation and take the position of alpha.

I couldn’t let her. Not only might I die, but I had no right to, and no idea how to run a pack as an alpha.

Besides, as I’d already established; I was not a murderer. I couldn’t kill a goddamned mouse, let alone a human wolf man person that was related to someone I cared about.

At least it was a long weekend, I reassured myself. With school closed on Monday for a PA day I would have that whole day to prepare myself before meeting with Ryland and bending the knee under the light of the moon.

Pretending it never happened meant going about life as usual, even though everything felt more than a little unusual now.

My wolf was mostly behaving, which was…odd.

And no one else came to harass me at the cabin or at the school about joining the pack.

No one chased me and Clay in the Jeep on the way to school on the day we drove, or on foot on the day we ran together.

Jared had needed to go back to watching the quarry for his uncle while Ryland was still busy expunging the other wolves off their lands.

And with me busy between school during the day and work in the evenings, it wasn’t until Friday just before I was getting ready to leave to meet Layla and Viv at her house when Clay came to talk to me.

“You sure you should be going?” he asked, fists curled at his sides and stained in the creases with black grease.

He’d been in the shop a lot over the past two days.

Only coming out to sleep inside at night and to share mostly silent meals with me in the living room before I went to bed.

We chatted, but not about anything important. Not about what I wanted to talk about, nor, I didn’t think, what he wanted to talk about, either.

They weren’t asking me to choose anymore. Jared and Clay didn’t even mention it. But since the incident with Ryland, they were both on high alert. Like they were expecting something bad to happen at any second. It was driving me up the goddamned wall.

I wished they would just tell me what they were so worried about. But, being the coward I was when I wasn’t propped up by the strength of my wolf, I was afraid to ask. Partially because I thought I may already know.

They weren’t pushing me to choose anymore because they just expected me to submit to Ryland. As if there wasn’t any other choice.

And they were acting like there wasn’t any other choice because there probably wasn’t anymore. I may be immortal bullshit illiterate, but even I could piece together that if I didn’t submit to Ryland, give him permission to control me, then I would be a potential threat.

An alpha on his lands.

And what had Clay said about alphas crossing pack territory?

Oh, right. “It’s not just a nuisance—it’s a direct challenge.”

Which meant a fight to the death.

All hope of Ryland allowing me to remain in Forest Grove without agreeing to be part of his pack had vanished. It was join or leave. And I wasn’t even sure if leaving was an option anymore, either.

I’d been sick with anxiety and barely sleeping for days.

“Allie?” Clay prodded, getting my attention again as he walked closer to where I was at the bottom step of the porch.

I shook my head, clearing it so I could think. “I have to,” I told him. “It’s Layla’s birthday. I promised I’d be there.”

He blew out a breath that clouded in the chilly air around his face and passed me on the steps, sending a jolt over my skin as his wide frame brushed against my arm. “Give me a couple minutes to wash up. I’ll take you.”

“I was going to run.”

He looked out over the yard and into the trees as though he could see around for miles. Frowned. “No. It isn’t safe right now. We’ll drive.”

I didn’t like the expression on his face. Like he was deflated. The anger was still there, evident in the crease between his brows and the stiffness in his neck, where a thick vein had been present against his tan skin for days.

“Hey, Clay?” I ventured, my throat drying. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t turn, but his back stiffened at the question. “Fine,” he grunted and then swung open the newly repaired door. “Don’t move. I’ll be out in two minutes.”

With nothing else to do and absolutely no energy to argue, I slumped down to sit on the bottom step of the porch, setting my bag beside me to wait.

Clay was right, of course. After what happened, it was only logical that the outside packs interested in me would be ten times more curious if they found out about my apparent strength of will, as Jared put it.

And also, Forrest is something of a loudmouth, or so Clay said. Unless Ryland thought to give him a direct order to keep his mouth shut, everyone would know about what happened in a matter of days.

The forest wasn’t my safe haven anymore.

I longed for the ease of walking across sodden earth, waving to the deer and hares picking through the brush, toward my little canvas dwelling in the trees.

I’d never take the simple things for granted again, I decided.

I’d give almost anything to go back to that hunting blind, remain oblivious to the world of immortal beasts hiding right beneath my nose.

But, and this was a major but; then I wouldn’t know Jared.

He would still be the handsome loner that everyone wanted, and no one could have.

I’d only know him from a distance. And Clay.

I wouldn’t even know Clayton Armstrong at all.

And the idea of forgetting either of them left a sour taste in my mouth and a hollow pit in my gut.

“Ready?” Clay barked, standing directly behind me on the stairs.

I yelped and jumped to my feet, knocking my pack onto the dirt. “Fuck, Clay!”

He laughed.

Like a real laugh. The kind that have deep roots, drawing sound up all the way from your belly. It was cut short, but for one blissful second, I smiled, because I had made Clay laugh. And it was probably the best sound I’d heard in days.

“Come on,” he said, getting control of himself while sliding back on his mask.

“Let’s get going before I change my mind and leave you hog-tied in your room.

” A little zip of surprise unwound down my back and I stared at him in morbid shock, my cheeks heating.

“I can joke, you know,” he said with a wink.

A wink!

“I know,” I rushed to say, but honestly, I thought it was the first time he’d ever joked with me.

“Allie,” Clay urged, almost to the trees now.

“Coming!” I called, following him as he grumbled something unintelligible under his breath.

“Look what the Alley Cat dragged in. Was starting to think you abandoned me to the pits of despair with this one,” Viv jabbed a thumb behind her.

“I heard that!” Layla called back from somewhere deeper in the house. “And it’s a good movie, that’s why it makes you cry!”

Viv rolled her eyes exaggeratedly and shut the door behind me as I stepped inside.

I slid off my shoes and waved to Mrs. Cole on the sofa in the small living room. “Hi, Mrs. Cole. Thanks for having us.”

Mrs. Cole waved a lazy hand through the air and then lifted her remote to the television, turning up the volume on a Dr. Phil rerun.

“You’re always welcome, Allie Grace. You know that, hon.

” Her words were disjointed and oddly soft and I knew without looking at her that she was mixing the wine in her large glass beside the sofa with the pills inside the prescription bottle next to it.

Some things really never change.

Viv blushed, but led me past her mom and down into the hallway, tugging my arm into her bedroom.