Page 58 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

Hey Allie?” Jared called through the door, knocking softly against the grain. After dinner I’d helped to clean up, mostly just so I had something to do to keep my mind off everything, and then Hazel had left. Clay offered to walk her home through the woods when she refused to stay the night.

She bristled at being babied, but eventually relented, saying she would be glad of the company. I’d retreated to my room shortly after they left, needing to fill my head with other things to stop it from straying back to the dark thoughts trying to creep back in after years of my keeping them away.

I set down the math text against the bed and called to Jared. “You can come in.”

He pushed on the door and it stuck on the warped wood of the doorframe. He had to give it a good shove to get it all the way open, eyeing the grooves in the frame as he did. “I’ll fix that for you,” he said awkwardly as he entered, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans.

I let out a little laugh. “Some of those are from my fingers, too,” I muttered. “I’ll fix it.”

He didn’t argue with me, just moved into the room, filling it with his presence until the weight of him was a tangible aura brushing against my skin.

I peered up at Jared from the papers and texts on the bed. Geography and math, mostly. But also History. I may not have been failing Mr. Brown’s class yet, but I was close to it after all those missed days.

Jared paused by the bed and I hastily brushed some papers and a binder away so he could sit down. The mattress creaked under his weight and I suppressed a sigh at the riotous feeling flitting around in my belly like a swarm of bees.

Jared lifted the text closest to him—math, and peered at the page, scanning its contents. “Homework?” he asked with a raised brow.

I pursed my lips. Nodded and then sighed heavily.

“I’m failing two classes this semester,” I admitted, wiping a hand over my tired eyes.

They felt almost as if they were bleeding.

Whether just from exhaustion, from staring at the small text on the pages of the textbooks, or from the half hour of silent crying I did when I first came up here, I wasn’t sure.

Maybe it was because of all those things combined. “I can tutor you if you want,” Jared offered, setting the textbook back down against the quilted blanket. I must have looked surprised because he added.

“Why does everyone always seem so shocked that I do well in school? Even my uncle thinks I cheat to get my grades.”

He wasn’t complaining, or even truly upset—Jared’s tone was playful. Light.

“Because you’re too pretty to be smart,” I blurted before I could stop myself, my hand flying to cover my mouth as though it could stuff the words back in—but they’d already escaped.

He cocked his head at me, eyes narrowing curiously. A slight blush staining his cheeks.

“You think I’m…pretty?”

Now he was just being ridiculous. There was a reason Amanda, and every other girl at Forest Grove, wanted to get into his pants. I dropped my hand from my face to shove him. “That’s not what I meant,” I whined.

His gaze narrowed in silent challenge. “So, what you’re saying is I can’t be pretty and smart. That’s just not allowed?”

“It shouldn’t be,” I grumbled to myself, folding my arms over my chest.

Jared laughed and the sound was like a balm to my nerves. Unlike Clay’s coarse belly laugh, Jared’s reminded me of someone else’s laugh, but I couldn’t place who it was. Regardless, I loved it and couldn’t stop my face from breaking into a tentative smile, however strained that smile was.

That darkness in the back of my mind whispered that I shouldn’t be allowed to smile. Not when there were three other people who wouldn’t ever smile again—their blood on my hands and my hands alone.

A lump formed in my throat and I looked away from Jared, trying to get a hold on myself.

“Hey,” Jared said, his laughter dying as he placed a hand on my knee. “I don’t have to tutor you if you don’t want me to. I just thought—”

I shook my head, stopping him from continuing. “It’s not that,” I told him. “I could really use a tutor.”

He squeezed my knee until I glanced up at him again, my chest aching at the mirrored pain in his stare. I almost forgot that he could feel my emotions. The mating bond linking us together making him feel my unspoken pain.

“It’s about what you told Hazel, isn’t it?”

I bowed my head, not wanting to talk about it anymore, but not knowing how to tell him that.

It was about more than that, though. It was also about what Hazel told me about the mating bond.

How Clay would never mate to another wolf for as long as I lived.

I decided to pick at the lesser of the two wounds.

“Why didn’t you tell me how it all worked?

” I asked Jared, not meaning to sound accusing, but finding the words came out that way regardless of my attempt to soften them.

Peering up at him, I watched his adam’s apple bob before he replied. “I’m sorry. I should’ve explained it better. I just didn’t know if you were ready to hear it.”

I chewed my bottom lip. “Don’t…don’t hide things from me that are important. It doesn’t matter if you think I can’t handle it. Okay?”

Jared nodded. “Okay.”

“So, it’s true then, what Hazel said? If Clay refuses the mate bond between us, then…he’ll never mate to anyone else?”

Jared’s expression darkened and he removed his hand from my knee, leaving me with a chill in the absence of his warmth. “I mean, you aren’t supposed to be able to mate to two shifters, but you did. Maybe…” he trailed off and then blew out a gush of air.

We both knew he was grasping at straws.

The only reason I mated with both Clay and Jared was because I had a twin soul. I didn’t want to think that meant what I thought it did. That my dead twin sister’s soul lived within me. That she was the one who mated to either Jared or Clay. Her soul. Not mine.

And I’d never know which one of them was meant for me, and which one, meant for her. Because we were one now and there was no separating us.

“And the bond,” I pushed on, needing to hear it from him. “It’s important, isn’t it?”

At first, I’d only thought it was a nuisance. That the bond tying me to Jared and Clay was just this annoying tether that I had to withstand. That I had to learn to live with.

But how they treated it—how the other shifters spoke about it—how Hazel spoke about it—I was starting to see it was something much bigger than I originally thought.

“It is,” Jared admitted, flashing his amber eyes up to look into mine, setting my soul on fire.

A heavy breath pressed into my lungs and something flipped in my belly. I pressed my fingers together in my lap, trying to fight the sudden urge to kiss him. I didn’t like the pain in his eyes.

I didn’t like the tension in his shoulders or the way he nervously drummed his fingers against his thigh.

But I needed to know this. I needed to understand it if I was going to figure a way through this mess my life had become.

His adams apple bobbed again and he rubbed the back of his neck as though his head, or maybe the thoughts inside it, were suddenly too heavy to bear.

“It doesn’t always happen,” he explained.

“Some shifters go their entire lives searching for their mate and never find them. Some give up and form a bond to another shifter—their girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever—on their own. It isn’t the same, but it does link the souls together.

It’s a sort of ceremony that some couples do later in life if they never find their mate or if they’ve fallen in love with someone they never mated to. ”

I tried to wrap my head around that.

“But this,” Jared said, pulling my hands apart to hold one of them between his.

I shivered at the radiating warmth as it ran through my veins like liquid fire, racing up my wrists and forearms from where our hands connected, all the way through my chest to that place deep within that I couldn’t name.

“This is rare. The mate bond connects souls who were made for each other—or at least that’s how the legends go. ”

I swallowed hard, reveling in the feel of our connected souls now that I wasn’t fighting it anymore. It was so much easier not to fight it.

“It’s why we can make each other stronger. It’s why I can hear your thoughts when we’re in our wolf forms. Why you can hear Clay’s, too.”

“Is that why I can’t hear anyone else?” I asked. “I thought I did before—when…when it first happened, but now I can’t hear anyone except for you guys anymore.”

“That was just the magic of the transformation taking hold, I bet. But Ryland isn’t your pack,” Jared explained, still running his fingers over the back of my hand, eliciting little shivers every time he did.

“When you accept him as your alpha and become pack, you’ll be able to share your thoughts and hear the thoughts of the entire pack. ”

Still so much to learn…

I thought I heard the door opening downstairs. It was long past dark, and I wondered if Clay would spend the night in his room, or because Jared was here, out in the shop.

“And Clay?” I asked, unable to look him in the eye anymore, keeping my voice low so hopefully Clay wouldn’t hear me from downstairs. “He’s pack too. If he refuses the mate bond, he’ll be trapped here—with us.”

I hoped he understood what I was implying. It was getting more and more difficult to deny the bond between Jared and me. I wanted him more every day. Every time I saw him. Touched him.

Eventually, I knew it would be impossible to stop the force drawing us together, even if it wasn’t really me who wanted him. Even if it was just our wolves who’d mated, dragging us into the fray with them.

But Clay…

If he stepped back and allowed me and Jared to be together, then he would be relegating himself to the sidelines. Forever forced to watch his best friend and his mate together.

I couldn’t imagine it. How hard that would be.