Page 75 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

Grumbling to myself, I took my time draining my coffee in the kitchen alone, needing a moment to process everything that’d just happened.

I was going to be dating two guys.

Two extremely hot, infuriating, and completely different guys who also happened to be best friends.

I shook my head as I set my empty mug into the sink.

This was going to be a complete and utter disaster…

and yet, beneath all the layers of unease, there was something else: hope.

I wasn’t na?ve enough to think that it was all going to work out, but there was a calmness in my bones now.

A sort of peace that had my wolf rumbling contentedly within.

Hope was a dangerous thing, though. I had hope when my father was sick.

I had hope when Clay and Jared took me under their wing.

It was hope I felt when I escaped from Devin at that awful cave in the mountainside.

And there was hope the day I walked into the bloodbath at the Four Corners—hoping that I could bow and that would be the end of it.

Having hope had never helped me. Better not to hope for anything at all.

Smoothing my rumpled t-shirt and pulling my unruly turquoise hair up into a messy bun, I strode from the cabin and around back to Clay’s shop.

When I entered, a leaden weight in my gut, he was standing there in the middle of the shop. In the spot where we’d both had our hands deep in the cavity of an old Harley the night before.

The Harley wasn’t there anymore, though. A yellow Yamaha 250 stood next to Clay instead, gleaming as though she’d just been polished to within an inch of her life.

It took me a second, but I recognized it. Clay and I had worked on that bike for a client barely a week before. “We finished with that one days ago,” I said, confused. “Did something break again already?”

An uncertain smile twisted at the edges of his lips. “No,” he replied. “She’s ready to be returned to her owner.”

I scrunched my nose. “You…want me to help deliver her?”

He shook his head, a rare laugh blooming on his lips as he kicked the stand away and rolled the Yamaha forward. Understanding widened my eyes as he handed her to me. “No need,” he said in a low rumble. “Her owner is already here.”

I floundered for words, wanting to cry and punch him and hug him all at the same time.

I can’t ride it. I don’t ride anymore. Vivid images of riding with my dad bombarded my thoughts and my eyes stung with hot, angry tears.

Picking up on my emotions, Clay settled his wide,

warm hands over my shaking ones on the handlebars. “Hey,” he said, waiting until I met his gaze. “It’s yours, but only if you want it. If you don’t, we can sell her. I got her cheap, real cheap—practically free. And you did most of the work fixing her up. We can sell her and split the—”

“Shut up,” I said, my voice watery.

Clay’s lips pressed into a hard line as I warred with myself over what to do.

My grip tightened on the handlebars and Clay removed his hands from mine, taking a step back while lines formed in his forehead once more.

“Look, if I overste—”

“Shut. Up.”

One deep breath. Two. Three.

Craning my neck to one side so he couldn’t see, I brushed the back of one hand over my damp eyes and gritted my teeth before speaking. “Thank you,” I finally managed around the ball in my throat.

“You want to hit me, don’t you?” he asked in a joking tone. “Because if you do, we can spar, and you can take your best shot. I won’t even stop you.”

“No,” I said with a laugh, a sudden surge of adrenaline spiking my blood. No, not just adrenaline… excitement. I smoothed my palm over her nimble body and the supple leather of her freshly polished seat. “Let’s ride.”

Fire sparked in Clay’s eyes.

“For real?” he asked, barely able to conceal his own surprise.

I grinned at him. “Yeah,” I said through the bubble of a laugh. “Yeah, for real. I want to ride.”

I was even more surprised to find that it was the truth. I did want to ride. I hadn’t wanted to ride since… No, I wasn’t going to think about that right now. I was going to give this beast a proper breaking-in. “I can’t believe you had her all this time and didn’t say anything.”

Clay went and brought his own bike out from the back of the shop, rolling toward me. I knew he owned a big Sportster Forty-Eight. An absolute beast of a Harley. Midnight black with shocks of vivid, shimmering blue and shining silver chrome. But this wasn’t that.

This was a flat black ATK Intimidator. One of the fastest and biggest bikes in the world.

Of course, he would have a dirt bike and a Harley. I shook my head.

“One day,” I said, matching his pace as we rolled both bikes out into the cool autumn night. “You’re going to let me ride that thing.”

He scoffed. “As if. You’d eat dirt for sure. Not a chance I’d let you ride The Direwolf.”

“The what?”

“You heard me,” he said.

“You named your bike The Direwolf?”

“Yeah,” he said with a taunt in his tone as we neared the entrance to a narrow trail I’d never noticed at the edge of their property. “And yours is called The Runt.”

“Fuck that,” I growled, hopping onto the bike’s back and starting her engine.

She flared to life with a rumbling purr that I felt all the way down to my bones.

That adrenaline I was feeling earlier was nothing in the face of this.

As I revved her engine, I felt my body tremble with the insatiable need to feel her move beneath me.

I was ravenous for it. Didn’t realize how much I missed it.

“I’ll show you how fast this runt can move.”

I took off at breakneck speed, lifting my body as she bumped onto the trail and her back end fishtailed as I got the feel for her size and power.

A smile snaked across my lips, and despite all the awful, terrible things that kept me up at night, when I put her into second and then third gear, laughter bubbled up from deep within me.

The whine and rumble of Clay’s bike on my tail spurred me faster.

My canine vision making the trail clear as if it were early afternoon instead of evening.

The cold snap of wind over my body coaxed all my hairs to standing and lit all my nerve endings ablaze.

I whooped as I went around a corner and found a small inclined patch of dirt.

I jumped it, reveling in the split second when me and the bike left the ground. The impact of landing coiled up through my arms, my back tire skidding as I bumped around a corner, staying firmly ahead of Clay.

“Allie!” I heard him call over the roar of the wind rushing in my ears, over the sound of my own heartbeat like a drum in my ears.

“Allie, slow down!”

A spark of defiance zipped down my spine.

What? He didn’t think I knew what I was doing?

Besides, my new wolf-toughened body could handle a wipeout. I smiled at that, empowered by it. A reckless desire to see how far I could push myself stole through my mind, and heedless of Clay’s warning, I kept on, going faster, taking turns sharper. Tuning him out.

There was nothing except me and the bike and chewed earth beneath its tires. There was no Clay. No Jared. No pack alpha.

No best friends who barely spoke to me anymore. No pain.

No fear.

Just wind blowing my hair back and making my eyes water.

Just this bike. This trail. My pulse.

“Allie!” Clay’s bellow cut through my walls only an instant before I saw the turn in the trail. This one was sharper. Too sharp. And I was already on top of it.

I kicked her down a gear and twisted the handlebars, trying to drift her rear end enough to make it around the bend. Heart in my throat, I threw my whole body into the maneuver, the sharp edge of panic twisting her blade in my gut.

Almost.

Almost…

The bike kicked out just a little too much to the right, and I fell to the left, taking her with me. We skidded through sharp rocks and gritty earth, her hot as hell exhaust pipe searing into my inner thigh.

“Fuck!” I cursed through clenched teeth, shoving the bike off me once we stopped sliding over the ground.

Clay’s bike ground to halt and he let it fall to the ground. I only heard his heavy footfalls before my bike was torn out of my grasp and discarded three feet away as though it were a toy.

His hand came around my thigh where a singed hole was burned into the denim of my jeans, revealing bright red flesh beneath. My left arm was chewed from elbow to shoulder, too. I could feel it, but I didn’t move, not wanting him to see.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Clay asked in a voice so cold and so threatening that I flinched.

“No,” I said breathlessly as I batted his hand away. My thigh was already beginning to heal. The itch of the skin renewing itself made me grit my teeth.

He took me by my right arm, wrapping his hand around my upper forearm to lift me to standing. “What the fuck were you thinking?” he demanded, his blue eyes glowing with the presence of his wolf.

I felt my own wolf rush to the surface in response.

Where I was pissed the hell off, she was preoccupied with the fact that we could smell his leather and engine grease scent, and that his warm callused fingers still brushed over the sensitive skin at our elbow’s crease.

I pulled my arm away and took a step back, willing my wolf to be on my side with this.

“Riding,” I snapped. “I was riding.”

He shook his head and a muscle in his temple twitched. “That wasn’t riding, Allie. That was fucking reckless and stupid. You don’t know these trails.”

I poked him in his big fat chest. “You don’t know how I ride,” I countered. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?” he challenged, stepping in closer. “Because it sure as hell didn’t look like it. It looked like you were trying to get yourself hurt.”

The truth in his words stung, and I recoiled from them as though they were a physical blow, teeth grinding.

“Don’t—”

“No, you don’t,” he interrupted in a growl. “You could have been seriously hurt.”

“So what! I would heal.”