Page 82 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

How much longer do you think he expects us to keep looking?” I asked Charity as she, Destiny, and I dressed away from the male members of the group so we could head back into camp for a quick bite before we all went home to bed.

Exhaustion clung to every inch of muscle and bone in my body. Over the last three days of nightly searches, we’d covered nearly a thousand miles of land. Not only did we not find the missing wolves, but there wasn’t even a trace of them anywhere outside the borders of Ryland’s territory.

Turned out those names on the password protected files on Ryland’s computer were the names of the missing wolves.

I had to admit, I was a little disappointed, but also a little relieved to know that.

Ryland was obviously asking this ‘X’ person for help finding them.

The images were likely last known locations or houses they were known to frequent or something like that.

“As long as it takes,” Destiny replied as though it were obvious.

Charity rolled her eyes at the purple-haired girl with the perfect tits and sighed.

“I don’t think he’ll make us look much longer.

If we’d picked up a trail anywhere at all, then maybe, but they’re just…

gone. It’s a waste of pack time and resources to keep looking.

Especially when Ry would probably just wind up banishing them anyway. ”

“Pfft,” Destiny chided. “Banish them?” she asked. “You really think he’d make us go to all this trouble if he just wanted to send them away himself?”

She asked this like it was the most obvious thing in the whole world.

“He’s not going to banish if we find them, Charity. Don’t act so na?ve. He’s going to want to make an example out of them. He’ll execute them to send a message to the other new recruits that no one leaves the Forest Grove pack without his say so.”

She’s right, I realized. And I wasn’t sure how I didn’t realize it sooner.

If we found them, Ryland would want to make an example out of them like he was making an example out of me. Except he couldn’t just kill me. Not now that I’d bent the knee.

Though I got the very distinct feeling that that is exactly how he would prefer to handle me, even if Jared disagreed.

“I think you’re wrong,” Charity replied to Destiny, lifting her chin as she finished pulling on her shirt.

Destiny smirked. “You think you know him just because he let you into his bed, what? Once? He’s still the alpha, Charity.”

“Oh, fuck off, Destiny,” Charity muttered.

Destiny shrugged and moved past Charity to head the rest of the way into camp.

I bumped Charity’s shoulder as I passed, trying to get rid of the frown on her lips.

I couldn’t agree with her, in fact, I was with Destiny on this one, even if I found her to be an abrasive, doesn’t-ever-sugar-coat- anything sort of person.

“I’m starving,” I told her. “Let’s eat something before I pass out. ”

Between school and the nightly searches, I barely know how I managed to stay on my own two feet these days. Even Layla and Viv commented on my new zombie- chic look at school this morning, and that was saying something since we all seemed to share that look lately.

Purple half-moons beneath our eyes. Sallow cheeks and bent spines.

It got worse each day that brought us closer to the full moon. In less than forty-eight hours, it would be here. It felt like time had sped up and we were all being dragged along with it, hurtling toward it.

Clay was at the point where he was threatening to do something about Ryland working me to the bone. I didn’t know what that something was, but to avoid it, I’d been staying here with Charity for the last two nights.

Sleeping so close to where Ryland rested his head in the evenings brought me no comfort, but at least Clay and Jared didn’t have to see me stumble into bed each night, half dead, and dirty from not having the energy to shower.

There were whispers at pack camp that Clay had been wanting to challenge Ryland for a while now. The only reason he wouldn’t is because of Jared. How could he kill his best friend’s uncle? And how would Jared feel if his uncle killed his best friend? It was a Catch-

22. Ry took over uncontested from Clay’s father after he passed because Clay had been unable to stomach doing anything but to sleep and drink for months. Now that Clay was a bit more stable, it was too late.

But for me...

I didn’t want to find out what he would be willing to do.

He or Jared.

I’d seen the rage in Jared’s eyes the night at the bonfire. If things kept going the way they were, I wondered if Jared would even try to stop Clay if he challenged Ryland openly.

I shook away the thought. It was barbaric. Savage to even think it.

But my wolf had no problem reminding me every time we saw his scarred face and those creepy orange- tinted eyes: she wanted him dead.

Even now, with this will exerted over us, she craved the feel of his windpipe in her jowls.

The taste of his blood on her tongue. She still wanted to see him under her paws, obedient, submitted. Lifeless.

I shuddered.

“Hey,” Charity said as we approached the fire ring, mostly embers now, a few stragglers huddled around it against the chill of the autumn night. “You okay?”

“Hmm?” I said, coming back up for air. “Oh. Yeah.

Fine. Just tired.”

“I feel that,” Charity agreed and gave me a pat on the back. “I’ll run and get us some food and then we can hit it. Want a drink?”

“Just water.”

She nodded and then left. The guys, Seth and the mated couple, Trey and Todd came out from the tree line laughing, making their way through tents and cabins of sleeping wolves, probably waking them all up with their raucous laughter.

As they passed by the cabin Forrest and Harrison shared, I grudgingly hoped they were loud enough to wake them.

They got back hours ago, having been given the better of the two available search shifts. Fuckers. I guess it paid to be a bootlicker in werewolf land.

Sure enough, a muffled shout of shut the fuck up filtered through a window as they passed, and they stifled the sound. I giggled.

The tents were a new addition. It was where the new pack members would sleep until more cabins could be built. There were already a few timber frames started around the perimeter. They should be finished before the first snow.

I dragged a few chairs toward the low embers in the pit, eager for some extra warmth. A lone chair was already there, filled with a guy I didn’t yet know. He had reddish brown hair that glinted in the glow of the embers and brown eyes that looked near black.

“Hey,” I said, trying to make awkward small talk while Seth and the others made their way over to us. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” he grumbled, and I noticed the half empty bottle of gin clutched loosely in his hand and the three empty beer bottles at his feet.

Okay then.

“And you are?” I asked, raising a brow. “Sully.”

“Which pack were you from?”

He took another swig of his gin and grimaced. “Samson’s,” he said and then fell back into silence.

This was the other problem with staying at pack camp. I had my small cluster of friends and the rest saw me as something quite the opposite. Being here all the time, it was hard not to notice the way some of them stared. How they whispered. I could hardly blame them.

I was the reason their alphas were dead.

I was the reason their lives were uprooted and they were forced to move to Forest Grove.

But I didn’t ask for any of this.

“Nice to meet you, too,” I muttered to myself as the guys made it to the fire ring and took the seats I set out for them.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” Sully said, slurring the words a little. “I know it ain’t your fault. Not really, anyway.”

“Gee. Thanks.”

“This guy bothering you?” Seth asked, flipping his mop of dark hair out of his face to stare unblinking at the drunk guy next to me.

I shook my head. “No, it’s fine.”

“Is it?” Sully asked. “Because I never asked to be part of that asshole’s pack.”

He jabbed a thumb toward Ryland’s house only fifteen meters or so from where we were sitting. The windows were all dark, but that didn’t mean Ryland was asleep. This guy should be careful what he said.

“Ry’s not so bad once you get used to him,” Seth said, and I could tell he was trying to put an end to this conversation.

“Tell that to Dean and Andreas.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, friend.”

“What?” I prodded, my interest piqued.

Sully pulled himself upright and pointed two fingers at Ryland’s house with a sneer. “Bastard killed them.”

“Okay,” Seth said, rising. “Where’s your tent, dude? I think it’s time for you to hit the sack.”

Sully laughed. A throaty, hollow sound that gave me chills.

He wiped at his watery eyes. “You really believe the bullshit yarn he’s spinning?” Sully asked Seth. “That Dante’s pack is to blame for them vanishing? That that coward has somehow grown the balls to stand up to anyone?”

Seth opened his mouth to rebut, but I interrupted him. “What is he talking about Seth?”

Seth pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “There are whispers that the other pack alpha that was at the Four Corner’s that night is trying to pick off our numbers bit by bit.”

I remembered the one alpha who ran away when the fighting broke out. The one who looked like he was in his forties. Short and stout. Both the wolves he’d come with had been collateral damage in the fight, and he’d left them to die. Some alpha he was.

“Is that what Ryland said?” I asked.

Seth gave a one-shoulder shrug. “I mean, it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

No. I didn’t say it, but I glanced at Sully, a question in my stare and the answer in his. I agreed with him. That coward wouldn’t be picking off our numbers, but apparently Ryland had the whole pack believing it.

“Then why don’t we take the fight to them if Ryland is so sure?” I asked Seth in a whisper, eyeing the alpha’s darkened cabin at his back. Being careful of my words.

Seth shrugged again. “No proof. Ry knows it’s possible they’ve just run away, which is why we’re looking for them.”

“Right,” Sully said with a sniffle, dragging the back of his hand over his running nose. “It has nothing to do with the fact that my boys had some dirt on your dirty alpha.”

They were his friends then. A vice clamped around my heart.

I wanted to ask him what sort of dirt that was, but I got the feeling he wasn’t about to tell me even if I asked.

Not in front of the others. Especially not now that Charity was approaching with a tray full of steaming dinner.

It was common knowledge now that she had the hots for the alpha.

Sully may have thought he could get away with saying some shady shit in front of Seth and the boys, but if he had half a brain cell left in that skull, he would know saying that shit in front of her would not bode well for him.

I’d have to get him alone when he was less intoxicated if I planned to find out what it was he thought got his friends killed.

“I’m sorry,” I told him instead of pressing further, eager to change the subject before Charity got back. “About your friends. Maybe we’ll find them.”

Sully shook his head and got unsteadily to his feet.

He leaned to one side and nearly fell. Without thinking, I jumped into action and caught him before he could trip backward into the firepit.

His head kicked against mine, and he whispered breathily in my ear, his eyes aglow with reddish light. “We both know they ain’t coming back.”

Then he left, stumbling and nearly falling every few steps as he did, until he vanished from view.

“Allie?” Charity called, eyeing where the drunken shifter had vanished around a cabin at the edge of the camp. “You good?

“Yeah,” I said, gulping down the feeling of dread as the lie slid from my tongue. “I’m good.”