Page 77 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

Jared busied himself cleaning out an extra mug once he drew the blinds closed at the front of the portable office.

The space was larger than I pictured it to be.

With a long desk spaced a few feet ahead of the back wall and a plush leather chair sandwiched between it and the wall.

In front of that there were two chairs, for visitors or clients, I assumed.

And on the other side of the long space was a makeshift kitchenette, complete with microwave, plug in kettle, and enough ramen noodle cups and hot cocoa packets to last someone at least a year.

Next to the kitchenette was a deep-burgundy sofa. A pillow wadded up on one end and a threadbare taupe blanket folded over the top.

Jared gestured to the sofa once he was finished adding a small handful of marshmallows to the top of two steaming mugs. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cocoa, and I salivated at the smell when he pressed the mug into my hand.

With the conversation from dinner still fresh in my mind and Jared right here in front of me, I couldn’t seem to think of anything else and easy conversation eluded me.

So, we were dating now. Me and Jared.

Me and Clay.

Weird didn’t even begin to cover it.

Jared sat and thumbed out a quick text to Clay like I’d asked him.

I opened my mouth to attempt to string together some form of a sentence that didn’t giveaway how the twelve inches of space between us was driving me mad, but Jared beat me to it. “How are Layla and Viv?”

Talk about a fucking buzzkill.

Sensing my change in demeanor, his brows lowered. “Sorry.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s okay. You haven’t been at school for a while, so I guess you wouldn’t know.”

I took a deep breath. “I think they’re taking it okay.

I’m not really sure to be honest.” His eyes narrowed.

“They aren’t exactly talking to me.”

He licked his lips, seeming to consider something, as though if he could just think hard enough, he could find a solution to all my problems.

“It’ll be over soon,” he said. “They might not even shift, and then when they don’t, Ry will have them compelled to forget any of this ever happened.”

I sighed.

Ah. The mysterious Mr. Grey. The vampire I met briefly in Ryland’s house the night of the bonfire. Apparently, they had the ability to compel, which from what I understood was just a lax way of saying that they had the ability to fuck with your mind.

The guy already gave me the creeps the first time we met, now he’s firmly in hell-no territory for ever wanting him near me or any of my friends.

It was what Ryland had planned for me the night I took off only to be captured and turned by Devin. He wasn’t going to kill me at all.

Fancy that.

If I’d stayed, I wouldn’t have remembered Jared or Clay becoming wolves. Maybe, if Ryland wanted to be extra cautious, I wouldn’t even remember that Jared was the one who saved me in the woods. I wouldn’t know them. I may not be a shifter right now.

The former are the reasons why I could never wish I’d stayed.

Looking into Jared’s kind stare now only reinforces it: I was meant to meet them. I knew it as surely as I knew the sun would rise tomorrow morning.

I was meant to love them.

I dropped my head. “I know.”

“Have you told them?”

“That if they don’t shift, they’ll be forced to forget it all ever happened? No. Not yet. I think if I tell them vampires are also real right now, they might implode.”

Jared nodded his agreement. “What about Quinn?

Has he remembered anything?”

I sipped my hot cocoa, letting my body meld to the worn sofa cushions.

This was still painful territory he was poking at, but it was less difficult to talk about.

Quinn was the lucky one of the three. He already didn’t remember anything from that night.

“Nothing at all. He still thinks we’re all going to a bush party on the full moon. He has no idea it’s a shifter camp.”

We’d figure out how to handle that when the time came. Layla was adamant that he not be told anything about what happened. Not until he had to know.

I assumed the waiting to learn their fate was eating at them both. I didn’t have that.

I turned mere minutes after I was bitten.

I couldn’t even imagine what they must have been going through…

My chest ached, and I set my cocoa down on the rickety side table, stomach suddenly a bit sour.

“That’s probably for the best.”

“We can trust him, right?” I blurted, needing it to be confirmed at least one more time. “Ryland. We can trust that if they don’t turn, he’ll let them walk out of there.”

Jared’s lips pressed into a thin line, and he reached across me to set his mug down, too.

For a second, he seemed to be chewing on a response, then he looked up at me from beneath his caramel colored lashes, gaze flitting to me briefly before falling back down to rest on the sofa cushion between us.

He shifted in his seat and threw a hand through his tousled hair to get it out of his eyes. “When you were little,” he started, and I’m confused at where he’s going with this. “Do you…”

He paused. Swallowed.

“Do you remember hunting with your dad? You would have been maybe seven or eight.”

He waited, and my heart began to pound in my chest. My skin tingled all the way down to my toes.

It couldn’t have been…

“You came upon two skinned wolves in the woods.”

My eyes welled and a hard ball formed in my throat.

No.

“Huddled against their corpses, there was a young wolf pup.”

Beneath the streaks of dried crimson and clotted dirt in its fur, it was the purest white.

It’d growled at us. Snarled and swiped. But it was starving.

Malnourished. It looked like it had been there for days if not longer.

It was all alone. To my eight-year-old self, it was just a little white puppy with sad amber eyes and no one to care for it.

How Dad had tried to pull me away, warning me with threats that he’d need to take me to get a rabies shot if it bit me. But I’d fought him.

Dad wouldn’t let me take him home. But I wouldn’t leave it with nothing.

Jared’s jaw twitched as he continued, his hands in fists. “You…you came to me even though your Dad was trying to pull you away,” he said with a little laugh of incredulity. “Just this tiny thing…but you had a fire in you even then.”

Dangerously close to tears, I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands, trying to regain control. It wasn’t just my own emotions I had to contend with, Jared’s sorrow pierced me straight through. Like an arrow of misery burrowing its high carbon steel into my still-beating heart.

“You gave me this little dish from your hiking pack and filled it to overflowing with all the water in your canteen,” he said, and some of that sorrow eased. “Then, with your dad groaning at your back, you dumped an entire Ziplock bag of deer jerky onto the ground beside it.”

The memory came back so clear it was startling. I remembered how the little wolf had looked at me curiously, edging closer to the jerky and water with an upper lip curled back, ready to attack if he needed to.

“Do you remember what you said to me?” Jared asked, finally lifting his head, amber eyes bright like warm, spiced cider.

I tried to chase the memory, but it was a faraway thing, flying just out of my grasp.

“You told me I was going to be okay,” he said with a sad smile. “With this serious little face and tears in your eyes, like you were so sure it was true.”

I missed that sense of optimism. It sure would have come in handy now.

At his reminder, the fleeting memory returned, and I remembered how Dad had shaken his head at me. He’d always thought it was strange that I talked to all the animals we came upon in the woods. Little did he or I know that there was one who could truly hear me.

“If it weren’t for you…” Jared trailed off and then seemed to come back to himself, as though he’d shucked off the weight of the memory. Put it back behind him where it belonged.

“Anyway,” he said. “My point is Uncle Ry picked up the pieces. After you…I gathered the strength to find my way back to the pack. He was there for me when I had no one else. He’s an ass sometimes, I’ll give you that.”

He tipped his head to the side with a short laugh. “But Ry is the only family I’ve got.”

“No, he isn’t,” I said, moving myself closer to Jared on the sofa. I waited for him to fix those amber eyes back on me before continuing.

The bond between us pulsed. That tether between our two souls grew taut.

I knew, now more than I ever did before, how much this made sense.

My heart broke for that little white wolf in the woods that day. Dad had to deal with my wailing for the rest of the hunting trip. Something in those sad eyes had sliced into me, burrowed deep.

Even then, I think somehow, I knew…

That maybe there was a connection even then, as children, that could not be denied.

“Ry isn’t your only family, Jare. You have Clay,” I told him, searching his gaze.

He lifted a hand and brushed a length of hair back from my cheek. His fingertips brushed over my cheekbone and I shivered involuntarily, something tightening in my chest.

Jared looked like he was about to disagree, but I wasn’t finished.

“And now you have me.”

His hand stilled, and I glanced at his full lips, my wolf hedging back to the surface.

I don’t know why I ever tried to fight it. It was pointless. This was always going to happen. We were on a collision course, destined for impact. Not a thing in the world could stop it.

“Allie…” My name was a sigh on his lips, and his warm palm pressed against my cheek. I closed my eyes and let out a small sigh of my own, skin bristling.

When I opened them again, Jared’s wolf stared back at me. The glow around his irises and the strain in his expression told me all I needed to know.

He was still holding back. Not allowing himself to take what he thought he couldn’t have.

But hadn’t I always belonged to him? “Allie, I—” he began, but I cut him off. “Just kiss me, you idiot.”