Page 64 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

There was a tarp behind it and to the right, hung using its silver eyelets to cover part of the wall above a sofa strewn with a ratty knit blanket and flat pillow.

At the edge, a curling piece of paper jutted out, and when I squinted, I thought I could just make out a little slice of black string tied to a pin.

The paper was bluish in hue with streaks of red and white. Tiny text dotting the surface. A map.

I glanced at Clay, who was still intently focused on the bike and back to the wall.

Jumping down from the counter, I strode over to it, my curiosity winning out. I kneeled on the sofa cushions, feeling the hard coil of metal springs beneath as they dug into my knees. I peeled back the tarp.

“Allie, what are you—”

Clay abruptly stopped speaking and I heard a tool drop from his hands to clatter against the ground.

It was a map alright. Of the continental US.

A silver pin was stuck in the spot that I knew to be Forest Grove near the west coast. Attached to it was a black string leading to another pin, this one in a neighboring state. From there was another string leading to another place, and another, where it finally stopped. The trail ending.

Above that series of strings and pins was a photo of Devin.

His face shrouded in a hoodie—eyes hollow and shadowed with purplish half moons beneath.

The picture was taken in secret. Devin didn’t know he was being watched, his gaze was fixed on something in the distance and his cell phone was clenched tightly in his hand.

Bile rose in my throat and a little flutter of panic took wing in my chest.

Something red in the upper corner caught my eye and I peered up to the top left corner of the map, to where a red pin was stuck in a spot just below Fairbanks, Alaska.

I wondered what it was, but it was clear to me what Clay was doing. Why he had pins in a map on his wall and a picture of my ex taped above. “You’re tracking him,” I breathed, unsure how to feel.

Clay appeared as if from thin air, a dip in the cushion the only evidence that he was there at all until he cautiously took the tarp from my fingers and drew it back closed over the map.

Was this why he’d been so busy in the shop lately? Was it not because of me, but…because he needed the money to hire whoever took that photo?

I was afraid to ask.

My heartbeat thrummed in my ears and when I finally looked away from the covered map and shakily got back to my feet, I fumbled to figure out what to say.

Why are you tracking him? That would be a good place to start.

Are you still planning to kill him? Tracking him so you can tear his throat out if he ever gets close enough again? That would be another valid question.

Or are you making sure he’s far away from me? That he can’t hurt me.

Something in his hard, solemn gaze told me it was a combination of the two and my breathing hitched. Something that’d been tightly wound in my chest began to unravel.

“I may have told Jared I would step back,” he said through tight lips, his left brow twitching as though he was working very hard to keep himself restrained. “And I have. But that doesn’t mean I won’t protect you. I’ll never allow anyone to hurt you again. Never.”

“Clay—” I breathed, my legs moving all on their own, hands outstretched to touch him. I felt an uncontrollable urge to comfort him. I wanted him to stop looking so hurt. This whole time I thought he hated me. Wanted me gone. I thought he was sickened by the bond tying us together. Disgusted.

I thought he didn’t care. I was so, so wrong.

He took a sharp step back, putting himself out of my reach. “Don’t,” he barked, nostrils flaring. “I can’t,” he said, but I could see his resolve weakening. His fists shaking. “You shouldn’t—” he stammered, cutting himself off, shaking his head. “I’m not—I’m not good for you, Allie.”

I could’ve laughed.

If anyone wasn’t good, it wasn’t Clay. Couldn’t he see that? Death and destruction followed me wherever I went. I was a plague on the people I cared about. If anyone wasn’t good for someone, it was me.

“No,” I argued in a whisper. “You’re wrong.”

For a second, I stop denying the connection between us. I let myself feel it in full force and gasped as the sensation washed over me like the brush of fingers over my flesh.

He didn’t step away when I closed the gap a second time and tentatively placed my palm against his cheek, coaxing him to look at me.

His eyes, like a frozen lake under a winter sun, pierced me straight through.

I saw in them something I hadn’t ever before.

For a fleeting second, he wasn’t the beast, he was just a man.

A man in pain. Tortured by the intensity of the emotions he tried to pretend he didn’t possess.

He bristled under my touch and my lips parted as I tried to find the words to thank him. I realized there was so much I needed to thank him for.

The words had only just begun to form on my tongue when they were stolen along with all the breath in my body.

Clay snatched me up with strong hands around my waist, fingers pressing into the exposed skin at my lower back.

I fought for breath as he lifted me onto my toes and in one swift motion, pulled me against him, his lips finding mine.

An explosion of impossible sensations sent stars bursting behind my eyelids, and a surprised moan coiled up from within, trapped between our lips.

A long-suppressed desire flooded my veins and I found myself kissing him back, hands hungry and grasping. Hearts pounding and crashing.

He was breathing too fast.

I wasn’t sure I was breathing at all.

My head spun with dizzying desire and my whole body ached and hummed. I felt…alive. There was so much energy—so much life—gushing through my veins, I thought I might burst at the seams from it.

I’d been terrified I might recoil the next time a man tried to kiss me. That maybe I’d be repulsed by his touch. I was thrilled to find I’d been wrong. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t want him to stop.

Clay tipped my head back with fingers pressed on the base of my skull, his fingers wrapping around the back of my neck, holding me there against him. Fastening us together.

Time ground to a halt as he lifted me again, this time taking my feet from the ground. My back knocked hard into a solid surface behind me and the crinkle of the tarp shimmied in my ears. He had me pinned against the wall.

My composure and sanity were fighting each other to be heard, to be heeded, but one chased the other out the window until both were long gone and only heat remained.

Hot—where he touched me.

Hot—where he kissed me.

A blazing inferno that ran so deep it was a wonder I didn’t catch fire, burn to ashes from the inside out.

His tongue slid between my lips and his thigh pressed between my legs, brushing against me in the most beautifully agonizing way. He filled all the gaps between our bodies just as he was filling some of the hollow places in my heart—vaporizing the darkness living there.

There was only Clay. There was only—

He broke the kiss, drawing back to look at me with heavily lidded eyes that glowed with blue flame and too many emotions to decipher even a single one.

A sliver of ice lodged itself in my chest as the stark reality of what I’d just allowed to happen slapped me. Clay released me, and I saw a similar shock mirrored in his gaze.

The hands that had been holding me tightly a second ago, were stiff now. The lips that’d kissed mine were a hard line.

“We shouldn’t have—” I choked, sick with guilt. It didn’t matter that nothing had happened between Jared and I—that we weren’t together no matter how much this magical bond tried to argue that we were.

It didn’t matter because I’d just finished telling Jared that I would have neither of them. And now…

And now…

Frustrated tears burned at the corners of my eyes, blurring the edges.

I shouldered past Clay, unable to speak, too afraid that if I opened my mouth all the confusion and frustration and anger would come out and I wasn’t sure what I’d say. What I’d do.

Because I wanted Clay to kiss me five minutes ago.

And if I was being honest with myself, I wanted him to do it again.

To not ever stop.

I tripped in my haste to get out of the shop and inside the cabin. I didn’t stop until I was up the stairs, down the hall, in my bedroom. The door slammed behind me and my boots came off, kicked into a corner as I numbly climbed onto my bed.

I drew the covers up to my chin, as if I could hide from the truth I’d been trying to fight since before I became a shifter. Since before any of this had happened.

Because even then, I had feelings for them both.