Page 73 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

Put your body into it,” Clay said, studying my form as I squared off to take another swing at his heavy bag.

“I am putting my body into it,” I hissed in reply, throwing my shoulder into my next hit. The heavy bag swung and the chains holding it in place rattled.

Clay stepped up behind me. “That isn’t bad,” he said. “But you’re still not putting your whole body into it. There’s more force you can tap into if you move your whole torso.”

His hands settled onto my hips, squaring me off again at the bag.

Sweat beaded along my brow and the tops of my breasts.

With his hands on me, my body grew hotter.

When his fingers brushed over the bare skin where my tank top rode up, I wanted to scream.

Not even the cool autumn breeze blowing into the shop was enough to douse the flames.

He moved one hand to tap the side of my right thigh. “Dig your heel in and push off with your legs. Then turn your whole body into it.”

Clay guided me into the next swing, showing me how my body should move in slow motion.

“See?”

“Yeah,” I gritted out, swallowing and shaking off the tremors caused by his touch. My inner wolf whined audibly in my mind, trying to clamber to the surface so she could reach out and touch him. Since I was too afraid to.

I wasn’t sure I could stop if I did.

I continued throwing hits, switching sides every so often. Clay watched with his arms crossed over his thick chest. His sea-glass eyes never leaving me. Every so often, he adjusted my stance, gently nudged my legs back into place.

This was a tame selfdefense session with Clay.

Usually, he had me run for an hour before we even started.

Then he would have me spar with him until my muscles were shaking.

It was why I preferred it when Jared taught me, but I knew—despite how much I ached after a session with Clay—that he would push me to learn more. To learn faster.

Where Jared was patient and took more time to explain the why behind everything, Clay just shoved me to the edge of my limits. And every day, those limits grew further and further away.

If I were being honest, I preferred to be pushed.

When the initial shock wore off after the Four Corners, I couldn’t stop moving. Silence and stillness turned to buzzing, unstoppable energy. If I stopped, I would have to think. To remember.

Charity managed to get Quinn to an Alchemist in time to save his life. She was paying for that kindness now. Ryland was none too pleased that she’d left without asking his permission. That she saved a human boy without so much as a word from her alpha.

Lucky for Quinn, he couldn’t remember a thing about that night.

I wished Layla and Vivian had been as lucky.

They were cursed to remember every awful, blood-soaked moment.

After we brought them back to the cabin that night, got them bandaged up, the guys and I did our best to explain things.

I’m not sure what they actually digested.

They’d been in shock. Angry. Hurt. Terrified.

I explained as best as I could what might happen to them on the next full moon, even though they were the hardest words I’d ever had to speak. I explained how they couldn’t tell a soul and that if they did, I may not be able to protect them.

They nodded and sniffled and waited until I was finished. That was when Vivian asked if they could leave. She tucked Layla under her arm and accepted a ride home from Jared. The sound of the screen door banging shut behind them felt like a slap in the face. One I deserved.

They hardly talked to me now. Or each other, really.

We sat together at lunch like we always did, but now the easy laughter is gone.

Quinn tried his best to lighten the mood.

He always had his arm around Layla. The poor guy didn’t understand that there was nothing he could do.

I think Layla resented a little that he was the only one blessed with the ability to forget it all.

I’d have left them alone, but Jared insisted we keep an eye on them.

The best part was that after Layla and Viv left around eleven, the night wasn’t even over for me. I began to feel the effects of the moon-triggered shift coming on just ten minutes after they left.

I got to learn where the other locked door in the cabin’s basement went. A cell. Or I guess they called it a moon room. Clay had to be the one to chain me up. Jared couldn’t stomach it.

Clay was the one who stayed with me through every aching moment. He listened to me scream in agony as the moon-triggered shift stole all my self-control. Snapped each of my bones. It was nothing like a voluntary shift. It was torture.

And when the shift was finished and I was left on all fours, sweating and whining through canine lips, there was only the barest trace of my consciousness remaining.

I knew what was happening, but I couldn’t control myself.

Couldn’t control my urges. I nearly tore my arm from its socket that night trying to get free.

The moon released me after a mere twenty minutes, but it felt like hours.

And apparently, I should have been grateful for that.

Jared told me most wolves couldn’t change back so fast after a moon-triggered shift.

Most remained feral in their wolf forms until dawn.

At least, that was how it was in the beginning for changed wolves.

Or how it should have been, but I guess I had to be an anomaly in all things.

In this, at least, I was grateful. Twenty minutes was plenty.

“Okay,” Clay said, putting his arm between me and the heavy bag. I glared at him.

“You’re not here right now, Allie. Your form is all over the place. What’s up?”

I gave his arm a little shove and went back to work on the bag. “I’m fine.”

I got in three good hits before Clay moved his whole enormous self in front of the bag. I ground my teeth. “No. You’re not.”

He jutted his chin in the direction of the worn sofa across the shop. “Take a breather.”

“I don’t want to take a breather.” I wanted to keep hitting shit.

Between my early morning bow practice, my early afternoon run, late-afternoon self-defense, and late nights spent helping Clay in the shop with his bike repairs, I’d been doing pretty good keeping busy.

It was only when Jared or Clay forced me to stop that things got shitty again. The emotions kept at bay by busy hands and a focused mind came slowly creeping back in. They whispered things.

Like how I am death incarnate. How everyone I love gets hurt.

Like how every good thing in my life must be paid for by at least two bad things.

And then the most agonizing thought: It’s all my fault.

My fault.

My fault.

I shook my head and sighed heavily. “I just need a drink, then we can go again.”

“No, Allie. That’s enough for the day.”

“The hell it is,” I retorted, feeling my inner wolf rear her head and my upper lip curl.

Clay just raised a brow and recrossed his arms.

Amused.

The bastard.

He looked me up and down, a frown drawing down the corners of his lips. “You need food,” he decided.

It was no secret that I was getting a little on the thin side. With no appetite to speak of and the inability to stop moving, it was bound to happen.

“Come on, we’ll make some dinner before Jared gets back from the Quarry.”

I groaned, letting my head fall back in frustration as I shoved my wolf back down with a promise to let her out for a good long shift later tonight.

I’d been shifting daily now for almost five days.

Turned out Clay and Jared were right, the more I shifted, the more cooperative she was willing to be.

And I needed her to cooperate. Now that Ryland wasn’t as busy with getting the new pack members into line, he wanted to see me. Tomorrow. Well, not just to see me, really.

How had Clay put it? Oh, right. He will want to assert his dominance. I.e. he was going to want to use the pack bond and his rule to control me.

If Clay were right, he’d want to make an example out of me. Bend me to his will. Though Clay had assured me that his interest will fade in time. He made Clay run that gauntlet once, too. Now, Ry pretty much leaves him alone.

I could only pray that his power trip would be over quickly.

“Come on,” Clay urged. “I’ll get you some ice for those.”

He pointed at my hands. Even through the wrappings it was clear how swollen my knuckles were. I had no doubt that if I removed them, they would be an angry red. There really wasn’t much point in using ice, though. My body would heal by the time dinner was ready. If not quicker.

It healed the mangled bite in my ankle from the wolf I’d killed at the Four Corners in less than twenty- four hours. A few bruises were nothing.

“Fine,” I said, setting to unwrapping my hands, discarding the tensor strips onto the chair pressed against the wall. “But I’m cooking.”

Clay rubbed a wide hand over his face but said nothing. He knew better than to argue with me these days. He wouldn’t win. I wasn’t afraid of his grumpy ass anymore.

I followed Clay from the shop, falling into stride next to him. I didn’t miss how he was working his jaw. Or how hidden within the pockets of his jeans, his hands were balled into fists.

“Are you, uh…” Clay said, and I could tell he was working through how to say something, as he’d taken to doing more and more lately instead of spewing the first words to come to his mind. “Ready for tonight?”

I dug my fingernails into my palms and licked my cracked lips. A sarcastic laugh bloomed on my lips.

“Are you?” I scoffed.

He inhaled deeply and then shrugged.

That’s what I thought.

I still didn’t know whose idea it was, but I could guess.

The guys wanted to have a chat tonight. About us.

As if there weren’t a million other more pressing things to fucking worry about.

“We don’t have to—”

“No,” I interrupted him. “We should.”

As much as I didn’t want to have this conversation, it needed to be had. Might as well get it over with. I had a pretty good idea where this chat would lead us, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit. Though it was probably for the best.

Clay and Jared had been tense with each other since Clay kissed me and then went and confessed to Jared before I could be the one to do it.

Their friendship was more important than whatever this thing was between us.

Sacred or not, the mate bond only complicated things.

When they told me they’d decided to both keep their distance, to remain only as friends, I’d agree that that was for the best. And I assumed to be able to do that, they would need to ask me to move out.

It was too hard to ignore those urges living under the same roof.

I’d tell them that was for the best, too.

No matter that it was the last thing in the world that I wanted.

Certainly not what my wolf wanted, either, but I could go back to ignoring it, right?

I could pretend like every time Clay touched me, I didn’t quake inside.

I could act like it wasn’t the hardest thing in the world not to allow my gaze to fall to Jared’s lips when he spoke to me.

That it wasn’t impossible not to imagine what it would be like to kiss him, too.

Those were things I could totally do.

“Coffee?” Clay asked, holding open the door for me to walk inside the cabin.

At that, I smirked. “Do you even have to ask?”

A grin that didn’t reach his eyes pulled at one side of his mouth as he flicked on the Bluetooth speaker and set to pulling out coffee and what looked like the ingredients to make pasta to go with our nightly steaks.

It had become something of a habit since I came out of my shock coma and Ryland sent Jared away to work at the Quarry—Clay and I cooking together while we listened to music instead of talking.

Sometimes, when he forgot I was listening, he would even sing a few lines. His voice deep and yet soft as butter.

“I’m going to wash up really quick and then I’ll chop, ’kay?”

Clay nodded, scooping several heaping tablespoons of ground coffee into the filter.

Past him, out the window by the little table pressed against the wall, my wolf sensed Jared approaching. Sure enough, within a few seconds, I caught glimpses of his lithe white wolf snaking through the trees.

“Jared’s home,” I told Clay, and then rushed the rest of the way upstairs, eager to put off the talk for as long as I could.