Page 62 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

I appreciated that she kept her voice low, but if all of their hearing was even half as good as mine was now, I knew they could probably hear us from across the fire if they tried hard enough.

I swallowed another gulp of beer, grimacing, and chewed the inside of my lip. “Okay, I guess.”

She gave me an impish grin and shrugged. “It’s hard in the beginning.”

“Were you changed, then?”

“Yeah. A few years ago now, but I remember those first few months more vividly than I’d care to.”

Feeling bold, I asked the question I’d been wanting to know the answer to since shortly after I’d transitioned.

The question Jared and Clay couldn’t answer for me because both of them had be born wolves.

Not changed. “How did you, you know, get control of it? Your wolf, I mean? I’m pretty sure mine is insane. ”

Charity almost spit out her beer in a short laugh but choked it back and coughed before answering. “I thought the same thing,” she told me. “But you’re thinking about it the wrong way.”

“What do you mean?”

She swiped the back of her hand over her glistening lips and seemed to be thinking about how best to explain.

“Your wolf,” she said, her eyes boring into mine.

“It’s not separate from you. I thought that too at the start, but it was that kind of thinking that made it take so long for me to be able to control that part of me. ”

She was losing me. My wolf was definitely a separate entity from myself.

“It’s like this,” she continued, setting her beer down atop the keg so she could use her hands to help illustrate her meaning.

“You think there’s you and there’s your wolf.

But that’s wrong. There’s the you that you’ve had—what, eighteen?

—years to grow into, to learn to control.

And there’s this other part of you that’s been newly born.

It was always there; it was just never awakened.

That part—the wolf part—is ruled by basic instinct.

Your instincts. They just seem foreign because you know how to rationalize and separate feelings from actions.

Your wolf is you. It’s a manifestation of your most primal urges and animal desires. It just needs nurturing and guidance.”

“I don’t think—”

“Look,” she said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but the longer you fight against that part of yourself, the longer it will take to control those urges.”

I bit my lip. She had to be wrong. “But there was this deer in the woods,” I explained, grasping for something to use as an example. “I almost killed it. I wanted to eat it. I would never—”

“Your instinct was to chase it,” she interrupted. “It ran away, right?”

I nodded.

“But you don’t know whether you’d have killed it for certain.”

“My wolf sure as hell wanted to.”

“And you might have,” she digressed. “When you’re in your wolf form, especially at the start, those kinds of responses are natural. Deer equals prey. Prey equals food.” She shrugged. “Simple.”

She knocked back her beer and belched loudly. The other shifters in the group cheered, raising their cups to her.

It was so ridiculous and unexpected that I laughed.

“You’ll like it here,” she said, changing tact, a fresh grin on her lips at my laughter.

“The others seem scary,” she said, nudging her head in the direction of the gathered crowd opposite us.

I glanced over to see Clay chewing out two of them, his face reddened and a thick vein popping out of his neck. I winced, hoping that wasn’t about me.

“But they just don’t like outsiders. Especially outsiders on pack land. At pack camp. This sort of thing isn’t usually done. You are only invited onto pack land after you’ve chosen your pack.”

I could hear what she wasn’t saying laced between her words. The only reason you’re allowed to be here is because Ryland expects you to bend the knee and join the pack. If he didn’t, you’d never be allowed here.

That heavy feeling of dread crept back in and I shivered, the warmth of the fire doing almost nothing to banish the chill creeping like frost up my arms. “I have to use the bathroom,” I said, needing an escape—a minute to myself to gather my thoughts and calm my wolf’s sudden urge to flee.

We felt backed into a corner and we didn’t like it.

Not one bit.

“Yeah. Use the one in the main house,” Charity said. “Ry lets us use it when we have bonfire nights. Go inside, down the hall to your right and it’s the door at the very end.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Charity gave me a sarcastic eye-roll and began pulling me in that direction. “I’ll go with you.”

I sighed, relieved that she wasn’t going to try to make me go into Ryland’s house alone.

That would have been a hard nope. I’d have held it the whole night if I had to.

But I felt I had to ask anyway because of how we’d left things that last time we saw each other— with me growling over his prone form in Clay and Jared’s yard.

He’d been forced to submit to me, and I seriously doubted he would soon forget that.

It was clear Charity didn’t know about that and I hoped Forrest had kept his mouth shut and no one else did, either. I was willing to bet that would only cause more problems. Would they even want me in their pack at all if they thought I was any sort of threat to their beloved alpha?

I let Charity guide me up the three steps onto the porch and through the front door. She hadn’t even bothered to knock. She pointed down the hallway toward a door I could see at the end. It was slightly ajar, and the light was on. “It’s just down there.”

She leaned against the wall in the entryway and shooed me down the hall. I left the entryway, noticing a small living area ahead and further back, a small kitchen. It didn’t look like a place someone like Ryland would live. It was too…homey.

Sighing, I made my way toward the bathroom, the feelings of unease I’d had outside now dialed up to a hundred.

Exactly the opposite effect I was going for when I said I needed to use the restroom.

I hadn’t even really needed to go, but as I drew nearer the bathroom, I found the beer had in fact worked its way down into my bladder already.

“…like an accident. Like you did before.” Ryland’s deep baritone echoed from within a closed door and I stopped dead in the hallway, stricken with panic.

My chest fluttered with an erratic pulse.

My wolf roared to the forefront of my mind and I was hit with an image of Ryland beneath our paws—his face pressed into the dirt.

I breathed through the urges, balling my hands to fists.

“I may not have to,” another voice answered him, this one rich and smooth as velvet, the cadence breathy. A zip of some unknown sensation raced up my spine and my upper lip curled back of its own accord, as though anticipating an attack.

Recognizing an enemy.

“I did what you asked. The other packs already want her out of the picture. All we have to do it sit back and wa—”

“What’s that?” Ryland barked and I held my breath. A pause.

“Someone’s outside.”

Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.

I ran on tip toe toward the bathroom, a hot blush searing the back of my neck, slicking my chest with sweat.

“Allie,” Ryland called, his voice a growl. I froze.

Fuck. My. Life.

Stiff as a corpse, I spun on my heel and faced him. “I—I was just going to use the bathroom,” I stammered, gesturing to Charity where she was still leaning against the wall in the living area, her phone screen illuminating her pretty face. “Charity said I could use—”

“Did she now?”

Charity, finally noticing what was going on in the hall, lowered her phone and gave a little wave. “Oh, hey Ry,” she said with a tight smile. “Sorry if we disturbed you.”

Ry smiled back at her; the expression packed with a saccharine sweetness. “Not at all.”

Another form moved from the room, a tall shadow filling the hall.

My hackles raised.

He slid past Ryland as though he were gliding on air. He looked between Ryland and I, and I could have imagined it, but I swear I saw Ryland give the guy a tiny nod. As if giving him permission for something. Maybe to introduce himself to me.

I backed away a step, not sure I wanted to meet the stranger that was making warning bells go off all over my body.

Ryland said something else to Charity, and she laughed as he left me and the creepy guy in the hall and went to talk to her. There was a buzzing in my ears, and it drowned out their voices.

“I should get back outside,” I said to the stranger, not lifting my head to meet his gaze.

He was dressed in all black. A silver ring glimmered on his left index finger, laden with a bright blue stone.

“A pleasure to meet you,” the man said, completely ignoring my plea to leave.

He held out his hand to me and I couldn’t help noticing how pale he was.

Steeling myself, I lifted my chin and met his stare. Black orbs stared down into me from a blank face. High cheekbones and deep-set eyes made him seem even paler than he was—the shadows offsetting his pallor. Thick lips crooked into a sly grin, turning up at the right corner.

Inside, my mind was screaming that he wasn’t human. But my wolf knew he wasn’t wolf, either.

When his lips pulled back, I saw that a set of fangs were hidden behind them.

Before I could back away, the vampire grabbed hold of my hand and shook it, never breaking eye contact. “Grey,” he said, and I struggled to understand what he meant, his cold grip throwing my thoughts out of sync.

His name. He was telling you his name.

“Allie,” I replied, trying unsuccessfully to pull my hand back.

The vampire smiled and cocked his head, narrowing his gaze. “You didn’t overhear anything just now,” he said.

What? Vaguely, I remembered overhearing them talking, but I thought it best not to admit that. Besides, it wasn’t like I heard anything private or whatever. “No,” I replied, shaking my head slowly. “I didn’t hear anything.”

The vampire clapped his hand over mine from the other side and shook it again, just once, lifting his gaze from mine. “Good,” he said. “Off you go now.”

When he let go, I couldn’t get away fast enough. I tore past him, away from the bathroom and toward where Ryland was chatting with Charity, saying something to make her blush.

“All done?” she asked me, pausing their conversation.

I gulped, still bristling from the whole ordeal in the hall. It left a sour taste in my mouth. “Yeah. Done. I’m going to head back out, okay?”

“I’m right behind you,” she called after me, turning back to Ryland.

My hand closed over the knob, but it was pulled away when the door was reefed open from the other side and I was left staring at a heavily breathing Clay. He froze when he saw me and let out a little growl. “Fuck, Allie,” he said between gritted teeth. “I told you to stay put.”

Before I could reply, Jared appeared beside Clay, equally breathless, but he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes darted through the cabin until they found Ryland. Two other guys piled in behind Jared.

Clay bristled and barked, “Watch it!” as they shouldered past him.

“Territory breech,” Jared all but shouted.

Ryland’s face twisted into a sneer. “What?” he bellowed, and Charity removed herself from his side, tip-toeing closer to me and out of the range of his anger.

“Come on, we should go outside,” Charity whispered.

“Two different packs,” the one I recognized to be Forrest growled. “One to the north and one to the east. Dylan saw at least six of them to the north. We don’t know how many are breeching to the east.”

Ryland cursed, casting me a withering glare.

A hand wrapped around my arm and tugged me toward the door just as Ryland shouted “Out!”

Clay pulled me out of the fray and into a half embrace, shielding me as Ryland and others burst out of the cabin and someone cut the music.

“Breech,” Ryland roared, and silence fell on the gathering, all attention turned to their alpha. The only sound was the ominous roar of flame. “Dylan,” he called and a blonde guy in his early thirties, buck ass naked, stepped forward from the fire.

I blushed and averted my stare. “Gather a group and head east.”

The shifter called Dylan turned and shifted in the blink of an eye, becoming a mottled light gray wolf. Four others burst from their human flesh, scattering clothes over the dirt, and followed him.

“Forrest,” Ryland ordered, “Go find Harrison and Seth. You’re with me. We go north.”

Forrest glared at me before he ran at full speed from the porch and past the fire, down one of the footpaths.

Jared came to stand beside Clay and me, wrapping my shaking hand into his. You okay, he mouthed.

I nodded, not trusting myself to talk. “Party’s over,” Ryland bellowed. “Stay alert.”

“Ry—” Jared started, and his uncle whirled on him, eyes aglow and shoulders rigid, his wide frame blocking out the light of the fire.

“Get her out of here,” he hissed. “Tomorrow night we end this.”

He turned his burning stare on me. “I hope you’ve made up your mind, girl,” he snarled. “Or I’ll have to make it for you.”

The only thing keeping me in my human form and stopping my wolf from trying to rip his head off was Jared and Clay. My anchors. Lending me their strength. I didn’t breathe until Ryland took off at a jog after Forrest, barking orders at the others still around the fire as he passed them.

“Well that escalated quickly,” Charity said with a bit of a slur, stepping away from the cabin’s door.

Jared shook his head. “Not funny, Char.”

She shrugged. “It’s not usually so exciting here,” she assured me with a wink. “See you again soon I hope?”

How was she so freaking calm? I just gaped at her, open mouthed, trying to wrap my brain around how the night had gone from awkward drinks and conversation around a campfire to this.