Page 67 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

I could feel Clay and Jared at my back, but they were too far for me to draw from their strength. I doubted they had much more to give in any case. I’d probably drained them dry.

“When Endurans are pups, they take the blood of the alpha to be taken into the arms of their pack. It is done as soon as they are able to speak the binding words.”

Ryland tugged the v-cut neckline of his black long sleeve shirt, revealing a patchwork of scars. Tiny bite marks. The fangs of adolescent wolves forever scarred into his flesh.

If I had to shift right now to do this, one of us wouldn’t be leaving this clearing.

I opened my mouth to tell him as much, but he held up his hand to stop me and I closed my mouth again, swallowing to wet my dry throat.

“The process is a bit different for changed wolves. Sometimes, adult wolves can’t control their urge to go for the kill. To fight.”

Ryland twisted the cap off the silver flask and his eyes flashed orange.

I saw the glint of fangs in the moonlight before I had to look away—the presence of his wolf, riling mine to a point of no return.

When finally I was able to look again, I found his wrist poised over the flask, a dribble of blood running into its opening and down the silver front, slicking it with glimmering crimson.

“With whiskey and blood, the link is formed. Pack magic will bind you to my will for as long as I live. You will drink and speak the binding words. Do you submit?”

“Yes,” I growled, my voice taking on the animal quality I knew meant my wolf was close to the surface. It echoed, garbled and inhuman.

The wind changed and a light jasmine smell permeated the air. I stiffened, my heart stopping dead in my chest.

There was only one person I knew who wore that scent.

Jared and Clay caught the scent at the same time, and I whirled at the same time they did, peering into the tree line.

A hushed curse rose from the shadows. I knew that voice, too.

Oh god. Why?

For fuck’s sake why?

Across the clearing, another scent emerged. No, not one. Many.

Too many.

Ryland shoved the flask back at Destiny and growled long and low. The others were on edge now too.

From each of the opposite three corners came wolves. A group of three from the north. Two from the east. And…six from the west.

A little squeal came from behind us and Ryland spun, scanning the forest where somewhere, my best friends were hiding in the brush.

The headlights in my eyes. The car that didn’t deviate from our winding path even once until we stopped.

The message I’d sent Viv earlier that day flashed in my memory.

Allie: Sorry, can’t. There’s something I have to do.

See you guys tomorrow, k?

Viv had already been suspicious there was something I wasn’t telling her. That I was in some sort of trouble. And by not being honest with my best friends, I may have just inadvertently signed both of their death certificates.

But the car hadn’t been Viv’s bug. And it hadn’t been Layla’s parents’ station wagon. There was a third person with them. I realized with a shudder that it must be Quinn. It was his car, that must’ve been why I didn’t recognize it.

“What is that?” Ryland hissed at Jared and Clay, who both shrugged as though they had no idea, but the tension in their shoulders was a dead giveaway.

But Ryland cut his glare back in the other direction, which was where mine now strayed, too as I sent up a silent prayer that Layla and Viv and Quinn would stay still and not make a sound.

They were far enough away that I only just caught Layla’s scent. Only just heard her tiny gasp.

If they didn’t move. Didn’t speak. They might get out of here alive.

If they did survive, though, I was going to throttle all three of the fuckers…after I was finished apologizing for almost turning them into kibble.

The three sets of wolves approached with measured steps. They snarled at one another. At Ryland. Without knowing for certain, I assumed all the other groups were from different packs.

The reason they called it the four corners became clear a moment later.

It was neutral territory. The four corners represented the edge of each pack’s land.

Ryland and his gang had come from the trees nearby where we emerged from the footpath.

To the south. The others from each of the other four corners.

This was the borderlands.

Forrest was the first to burst from his human flesh into wolf form, scattering his clothes to the wind.

The girl with the purple hair was next, morphing into a lithe white wolf with a streak of gray on the side of her head, in the exact place where she had part of her hair shaved in human form.

I wondered offhandedly if it was done in tribute to her wolf.

Jared and Clay left their positions at my flank and came to stand at my shoulders.

“What’s happening?” I breathed. “Layla and Viv—”

“We know,” Jared said, hushing me with the words.

Clay shucked off his shirt, baring his steaming chest to the frigid air. His breaths whistled in and out through his teeth, nostrils flaring. “This is bad,” he said, his voice brutish and deep, vibrating in behind my breastbone. “We need to get Allie the fuck out of here.”

Ryland turned his head, eyes bright as ember. “No one leaves,” he ordered, spittle flying from his lips. “Not until I say.”

Clay buckled under the order and then stilled, his jaw twitching.

The large wolf leading the pack of six stopped about twenty yards away. A sharp cracking sound sent sleeping birds scurrying from their nests, taking flight into the black sky as he shifted into his human form.

The slate gray wolf became a man at least six feet tall. Naked, his body was coiled with lean muscle. His… package hung like another appendage between his legs. But it was his eyes that I couldn’t stop focusing on.

It was as if they were bleached of color and glowed white against his overly tan skin.

“Samson,” Jared hissed, shuffling his feet until he had himself positioned more in front of me than beside.

“What are you doing here?” Ryland bellowed across the space between them, his words snatched up by a rogue wind.

“Same thing as you,” the naked man shouted back. “Offering this girl a place among my people. With my pack.”

Ryland scoffed. “She’s already chosen,” Ryland growled, but something in his tone told me he wasn’t certain of that himself, and the other wolf picked up on his hesitance, too, grinning wickedly.

“Is it true, girl?” The shifter called to me, his white eyes piercing my resolve.

My wolf shook. I braced myself against Clay.

“Have you chosen your pack? Speak now and we’ll leave in peace.”

And this was it.

My chance to leave. I’d abandoned the idea this morning after talking to Jared. I had myself convinced that running would be the coward’s way out. I didn’t run. I never did. No matter how much I wanted to sometimes.

I didn’t give up just because things got hard. That wasn’t me.

That wasn’t who I raised to be. But now…

Maybe—

“Is it true?” Another voice joined those of Ryland and Samson, and my gaze drifted to another naked man. This one flanked by two equally massive wolves— both big enough to almost rival Clay in size. “Is her will stronger than yours?”

Ryland balked, skidding a step back as though the other shifter had struck him.

So, they did know.

Clay put his arm around my waist, holding me up as my knees quaked. Jared reached a hand back to brush his fingers against my wrist, reminding me he was there.

“Does she have two tails?” another called. The fourth alpha shifted to ask, revealing a short, thick man in his early forties with silver threaded hair and a thick beard. “Has she mated to two shifters?”

My head grew light as my breathing picked up. The short breaths not working to pump oxygen to my brain.

“She cannot be allowed to live among us,” The bearded one called into the clearing. “We must cast her out!”

“Pipe down you old crackpot,” Samson lobbied back, stretching to limber up his spine. His gaze fixed on me and I found his intent in his stare.

Where the others were wary of me—a shifter who was so far from what was safe and known—Samson was the one who saw me as a trophy wolf. Much like Ryland did.

They wanted to collect me. The idea of forcing a being stronger than themselves to kneel before them excited them. I could see it in the wild hunger in Samson’s gaze as his eyes roved over my body—over my mates at my sides. As he pulled his bottom lip in between his shining white teeth.

He wanted to own something unownable. I felt sick.

I heard whispers from behind us and coughed to try to cover the sound. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I watched the bearded one and other curiously picking apart the shadows at our back.

Oh shit.

Fuck.

“I’ve chosen my pack,” I shouted with all the force I could muster, shaking as my lower rib popped out of place and the one above it snapped. Clay gripped me tighter around the waist, as if he was trying to hold me together, too.

Knowing the consequences of what could happen if I shifted.

Ryland turned to me with a smile, closing the distance between us to pull my free hand between his own. His acrid peppery scent was magnified from how much he was perspiring, and I choked on it, gagging.

“Repeat after me,” he said, his long hand falling forward to curtain off his fiery stare.

I shut my eyes, bristling as his callouses rubbed along the ridges of my knuckles, making me shudder. Making my wolf want to rip his fucking throat out.

Jared and Clay held me between them, acting as my reluctant anchors. Neither could look at me, nor at Ryland as he spoke the words I was to repeat. I could feel their revulsion. They didn’t want me to do this any more than I wanted to. But to save me—to ensure my safety—they would endure it.

As I would.

“Of my own will—"

The bearded one charged. I gasped, catching the movement just before he launched himself into the air, turning from man to beast faster than I could blink.

But before his front paws could connect back with the earth, another wolf tackled him down, his shining jaw clamping around the throat of the other wolf.

There was a cry of anguish and a sickening snap.

Then the attacking wolf was raising his massive head, jowls dripping with steaming blood and mats of shorn fur. White eyes setting their murderous sights on Ryland.

Samson had killed him. Just like that. Someone had just died.

A life had been taken.

Gone.

Did the bearded shifter have children? A mate?

I bent and wretched into the grass. I’d have fallen if it weren’t for Clay still holding me up.

The wolf that’d been with the bearded one tucked tail and loped into the brush, retreating from the corpse of its dead alpha with a pain-filled whine.

“I…can’t,” I managed as my human canines began to elongate and sharpen, pressing into my lower lip. Another of my ribs cracked and I screamed from the wrongness of the sensation, the scream itself bringing more pain than the bone breaking. Even breathing was painful now.

I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I was losing control.

Ryland shifted and Samson snarled at him, slate gray hackles raised.

“Allie!” Vivian’s voice rose above every other sound, shattering any bit of composure I might have retained.

No.

All eyes, canine and human, turned to find the source of the call. A blond-haired head and wide- fearful eyes stared back from the brush. Vivian’s hands were fisted at her sides. Her chest heaved. Quinn and Layla quivered beside her.