Page 61 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

Ihadn’t wanted to shift and run, so we drove. Clay tried to insist that I drive for the practice, but it was dark, and I could tell Jared was eager to get behind the wheel of his Jeep again after a week away.

When we couldn’t drive any further, we parked on the side of a bumpy back road and started on foot. I wasn’t convinced we were even in Forest Grove any more with how far we’d walked through the trees.

I tried twice to start up conversations. Once with Jared and once with Clay. Neither took. There was this awkward tension between us all now and I hated it. When I was with just Jared, before, it was easy.

And Clay—we’d gotten somewhere hadn’t we?

When I first came to stay at the cabin after the storm that destroyed my home, Clay hadn’t wanted me to stay.

He’d even gone so far to say that they weren’t running a fucking shelter.

He’d hated me without even properly knowing me.

But just two days ago, he’d shown me another side of him, and it made me wonder whether he ever truly hated me at all or if it was just his way of defending himself from the world.

Make everyone think you hate them, that you don’t care, and eventually they won’t care, either. Not allowing anyone to get close meant not getting hurt.

I understood that more than most people.

It was why I had the two friends I made in elementary school and no others. After Dad passed, it was like I forgot how to even go about making a new friend. How could I? They would want to know things about me. And no one wanted to hear my sob story.

Noises pricked my ears in the dark forest and my spine went ramrod straight, pulse kicking into overdrive. Clay and Jared to either side of me didn’t seem perturbed so I had to assume this was it. We were nearing the pack camp.

As if in answer to my unasked question, the smell of campfire smoke drifted to us on the cool night’s breeze and I began to see the flicker of orange light tossing shadows over the thick pines in the distance.

“Don’t worry,” Jared whispered. “They’re just curious about you, that’s all. We’ll just say our hellos, you can meet some of the pack, have a drink, and then we can head back.”

I nodded.

Clay made a strange sound in his throat and added, “Stay close,” in a low growl.

Jared rolled his eyes but didn’t argue as we cleared the rest of the short distance between us and a massive break in the foliage. It came into view in snippets and pieces between thick, heavy branches. Lit with only the light of the fire and torches spaced every so often around the huge camp.

Directly in front of us was a small cabin.

Nothing more than a squat square of wood and a shingled roof.

Beside it was another and beside that, another.

The cabins clung to the earth in varying sizes spaced fairly evenly all around as far as I could see.

Small footpaths snaked between them, all leading toward a central area where the orange glow of fire and the bulk of the noise was coming from.

How could all this be out here? I wondered. Did they have power?

Internet?

Or were they completely off grid?

Dad and I had been hunting out this way a few times when I was younger. How had we not stumbled on this place?

“Come on,” Jared said, and I shut my gaping mouth, letting him tug me over the gravel covered footpaths toward the inner ring. We passed a few people on our way. Jared waved as we went, and Clay nodded toward them. I didn’t miss how their gazes cut to me like missiles zeroing in on a target.

I tried not to look at them too closely, afraid my wolf would try to assert her dominance again.

“There you are,” a feminine voice called out from the shadows, appearing like a ghost from their depths. I jumped and Charity laughed. Her blond-tipped brown dreads swung behind her back and her pretty heart- shaped face beamed with a wide grin. “Was starting to think maybe you’d chickened out.”

My wolf calmed, seeing there was no immediate threat and I swallowed hard, remembering that of the three who came to see why I hadn’t agreed to join the pack yet all those days ago, Charity was one of the nicer ones. So was the other younger guy. What was his name again?

Seth, I thought.

“Hi,” I said sheepishly. “It’s Charity, right?” She nodded. “That’s me.”

“Come meet everyone,” she trilled, looping her arm through mine and dragging me out from between Clay and Jared. Out of my comfort zone.

“I—uh,” I sputtered, unsure.

“She stays with us,” Clay said, his tone laced with venom.

Charity just waved a hand at him as though swatting a fly. “Oh hush. She’ll be fine. Mates,” she said with a slight eye roll. “Am I right?”

I let out a nervous chuckle and Jared and Clay followed behind Charity and me from a distance.

She led me through the winding pathways through the small houses and cabins until the center ring opened before us. A bonfire bigger than any I’d ever seen before stretched at least six feet in diameter in the very middle. The flames reached heights taller than my head.

Around the fire, bodies milled about, chatting and drinking.

Red solo cups and beer bottles in hands.

Picnic tables around the perimeter. And on the far side, another cabin, this one bigger than all the others.

More like a bungalow style, with a long front porch and two levels.

In my gut I knew that it was Ryland’s cabin.

Music played from two speakers, one on either side of the space. A song my dad used to play in the truck drifted out over the crowd, shouting about being born to be wild.

Charity pulled me toward a smaller group further away from the fire and the larger group gathered on the other side. But they’d all sensed my presence now, and the song seemed louder in the lack of conversation as heads swiveled one by one to take me in. Measuring me head to foot.

Easy girl, I crooned to my wolf as Charity and I approached the smaller group and she released me to fill two cups from the keg set atop a makeshift table made from two tires and a flat piece of wood.

She pushed one into my hand and winked at me.

“Here, you look like you could use one,” she said in a lower voice before turning to the others and adding.

“Everyone, this is Allie. Allie—everyone.”

I felt Jared and Clay behind me, near enough that some of the panic rising in my throat dissipated. “Um… hi,” I said, dying inside at how awkward I sounded. “It’s nice to meet you.”

A face I recognized moved in front of the others. A mop of black hair was tossed from his bright hazel eyes and he gave me a warm smile. “Welcome to paradise,” Seth said with a wide sweep of his arm and a dramatic half bow, “Grab a seat. Stay a while.”

I laughed.

“Um, thank you…I think,” I said, sipping my beer as the other shifters from the group greeted me with slightly less enthusiasm, but it was nothing compared to the vibes I got from the other larger group across the fire.

Like Jared said, they were watching me curiously—everyone was—but the vibe from them was different.

Closed off. The exact opposite of welcoming.

I suddenly hoped I didn’t have to meet them at all. Charity and Seth helped introduce me to the others.

There were two other girls and besides Seth, three guys. “And that’s Jenna, and those two are Trey and Todd,

they’re mated. And that’s Kyle.”

I knew I’d never remember all their names, but I nodded and smiled, repeating variants of ‘nice to meet you’ for each of them.

As the group resumed their conversations, Charity turned her attention back to me.

She must have noticed my puzzled look as something she’d just said sunk in.

I glanced back at the two guys talking to each other and noticed how their fingers were interlaced.

How the guy who I thought was called Trey brushed his thumb over the other’s knuckles.

Had Charity said they were mated?

Charity leaned into my shoulder and I jerked as she whispered in my ear. “The mate bond is not hindered by gender.”

I tried to wrap my brain around that. I’d assumed the mate bond was to do with…well, mating. As in, procreation and all that.

“Does that happen often?” I asked instead, my curiosity piqued.

Charity shrugged. “They’re the only same sex mated pair we have, but some packs have a few.

It was tough for them in the beginning, though,” she breathed, still keeping her voice low even though it seemed like Trey and Todd were so engrossed in their own conversation that they wouldn’t have noticed if the person next to them caught fire.

“Why?”

“Todd was so deeply closeted that he denied Trey for over a year. He said he wasn’t gay. That the mate bond had chosen wrong.”

“But now?”

“Well, look at them. You’ll never meet a happier couple.”

Clay cleared his throat from behind us and I whirled, having almost completely forgotten they were still standing there.

“Would you two quit hovering? Go water a tree or something,” Charity said, making a disgusted sound in the back of her throat.

I’d drained my beer and Charity refilled it for me, letting the foam tumble over the side of the rim.

Jared glanced between Charity and me and finally said he’d be right back.

Clay stayed sentinel for another few minutes before jabbing his thumb toward the other side of the fire and the group gathered there. “I’ll be right over there. Stay put.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling a new wave of nerves set in as they both moved away.

This is going to be your pack soon, Allie, I told myself. I’d have to get used to them—get to know them—if I was ever going to find my place here.

“So,” Charity began as Seth turned away to talk to a girl close to my age whose name I’d already forgotten.

“Hmm?”

The mischievous glint in Charity’s eyes vanished and she looked at me with a gentle sort of calm. “How are you? I mean, how are you handling things?”