Page 97 of The Wolves of Forest Grove

“Whoa, Allie, slow down. You aren’t making any sense.”

Clay’s hands came around my arms and squeezed. He licked his lips and glanced around us, as though afraid someone might overhear. “Come on, let’s go back. We’re too close to the edge of the warding spell.”

I let Clay take my hand and tug me back the way we’d come. He stopped only when we could see the cabin through the trees and turned to face me.

Sometime in the last few seconds what I’d told him must’ve sunk in because he didn’t look so confused anymore. He looked pissed.

Like, not normal pissed. Clay level pissed.

With bulging veins and cheeks so red they were verging on purple.

“Calm down,” I told him, trying to barricade myself against his raging emotions before they could seep into my own veins, lighting fire to the gasoline already lingering there.

“I’m sorry,” Clay spat, his voice dripping sarcasm. “Calm down?”

“Clay—”

“Did you say he threatened you?”

Crap. Maybe I should’ve left that part out.

I grasped for a response that wouldn’t set him off even more, choking on several sentence starters that would only lead to more rage.

Exasperated after a minute of trying, I huffed out a curse and gave my head a little shake. “Look, I can’t talk to you when you’re all murdery. Can you just take a fucking breath, please?”

He reeled back as though stung, but did what I asked, working hard to calm himself enough that he began to look more like a regular human being instead of a mass of veiny stone.

“Better?” he grunted.

It was the best I was going to get. I nodded.

“Good, now can you explain to me exactly what the fuck you’re trying to tell me? Maybe at a normal speed this time?”

I ignored the dig and gave him a short glare before launching into a less chaotic explanation. This time, I maybe glazed over the thinly veiled threat Ryland gave, making it sound more like maybe I was just being paranoid and he didn’t actually threaten me at all.

It wasn’t exactly a lie. I could have been blowing it out of proportion. Ryland may not have meant it that way.

But even I had to admit it wasn’t as if I was telling the whole truth either.

Anyway, that wasn’t the point. The more important bit—the one that I really needed someone to talk to about, was the shifters who’d mysteriously vanished.

I focused on that part when I did my reiteration to Clay. Explaining why I thought it was bullshit and what I wanted to do about it. I got more and more nervous as I spoke, watching Clay’s face harden with each word.

I thought he would understand—that if anyone were going to help me do this it would be him. Had I been wrong?

Was this yet another colossal mistake? I wouldn’t have been surprised, making mistakes seemed to be all I was good at nowadays. I should just make a sport out of it.

“I want to go to the eastern pack,” I told him, praying it wasn’t the final nail in my coffin. Clay was either going to be with me on this or he was going to be firmly against me. I half wondered if he might lock me up inside just to keep me from trying to go instead of coming with me.

“It doesn’t add up Clay,” I continued when he didn’t immediately reply. “Something is wrong. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I have this…this feeling in my gut that—”

“I think you’re right,” he interrupted, eyes darting this way and that as he considered.

“You do?”

I wasn’t sure if I should have been elated or terrified that someone else agreed with me about this. If I were being honest, it was a bit of both.

“You’ll come with me then?” I hedged. “To the eastern territory? To speak to the alpha?”

His face screwed up into a scowl. “You can’t go there, Allie,” he said incredulously. “They wanted you dead, remember?”

“Which is why I thought it might be wise to bring some backup,” I replied pointedly, jabbing two fingers at him. “Instead of going alone.”

“It isn’t safe.”

“Safe?” I hissed. “What the fuck is safe anymore, Clay? If you can honestly tell me that I’m safer here, then go on, say it, and I’ll believe you.”

He ground his jaw and cut me a scathing glare, some of the redness blooming back into his cheeks.

“I’m right, and you know it.”

“I’ll go.”

“Alone? The hell you will. Either we go together or not at all.”

“Why didn’t you tell Jared any of this?” Clay asked, seemingly out of the blue until I realized I’d also been thinking the same thing pretty much during this entire conversation.

I should have. I knew I should have.

I should have followed him out to the quarry with Clay after we dropped off the girls, and we should have hashed this out together, but…

“You know why,” I told him, and he dropped his head.

Not only was Ryland Jared’s uncle, but now we knew the lengths Jared was willing to go to keep me safe. My heart ached just thinking about it.

He’d actually threatened Ryland on my behalf. Threatened his own uncle. The last living member of his blood related family.

His alpha.

It was why I couldn’t find the words to tell him before he left.

I was in shock. I was having a hell of a time rectifying what Ryland told me he did with the visual of him in his uncle’s office at the quarry, explaining to me how Ry was the one who helped put him back together after his parents were killed.

They shouldn’t be the same person, and yet they were.

He was a fucking idiot for threatening his uncle, but wouldn’t I have done the same thing for him?

Wasn’t what I was doing right now not in some ways for him?

If Ryland was what I thought he might be, then I didn’t want Jared or anyone else I loved anywhere near him. I didn’t need to hurt Jared more than he was already hurting until I had something more concrete to tell him.

That was why I hadn’t been able to speak before he left, him pressing his lips gently to mine in a whisper of a kiss before shifting into his wolf and taking to the trees.

“We can’t tell him,” I said finally, having worked out the best course of action.

“What?” Clay demanded.

“Not yet. Not until we actually have something to show him. Or something more…I don’t know, real to tell him.

He’s already on edge. He fucking threatened Ry.

” I shook my head in disbelief. “I don’t want to lie to him, but if we’re wrong, then there’s no reason to tell him all my half-baked theories. ”

Clay thought about it, and his nose wrinkled as though he caught a sour odor on the chill breeze. “I don’t like it.”

“You think I do? I didn’t want any of this shit, but here I am, wading through it all the best I can.”

Clay grumbled something unintelligible to himself, and I groaned. “So will you come with me or not?”

“Fine,” he hissed. “It’s not like you’re giving me much of a choice.”

I narrowed my gaze at him. “I guess I’m not,” I agreed. “But I could have not told you anything and just gone alone.”

His eyes darkened and after a moment of teeth- grinding silence, he let his shoulders drop and pulled me into his chest. I was surprised enough to squeak out a little chirp of surprise before we collided.

“Thank you,” he whispered against my hair in a rare moment of disarm. “For trusting me with this. I’d have fucking lost my shit if you went alone.”

I chuckled against his chest. “I know.”

I wrapped my arms around him, pressing my cheek into his chest enough that I could hear the hard, steady beating of his heart. The comfort of his nearness nearly made me forget all the terrible, awful thoughts that’d been dancing and swirling in my mind since the full moon.

Here, amid the trees, with Clay’s spicy engine grease scent filling my lungs, I could pretend, just for a minute, that everything would be okay.

“When do you want to go?” Clay asked after a few moments, still holding me tightly against him.

“I was thinking tomorrow after school? Ryland hasn’t given me orders to get back on rotation with Charity yet, but I’m assuming he will sooner rather than later.”

Clay nodded against the top of my head. “What about work?”

“What work?” I asked, my voice dripping sarcasm. “I’m pretty sure I have a voicemail waiting on my phone from my boss that’s going to let me permanently off the hook for that.”

“Allie—”

“This is more important, anyway. I’ll get another job. It’s fine.”

“But—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

A tight minute of silence followed my snapped reply before Clay softened beneath me once more and my pulse quieted.

“All right,” he said, and I could tell he was working hard to sound understanding but there was a tightness around the words that gave away his anger. “We’ll have to be back before eleven. I have to meet my sister at the borderlands and escort her onto our territory.”

I’d almost completely forgotten his sister was coming. I didn’t want to say it but now wasn’t exactly the best time for a visit. Judging by his pained expression when I pulled away to look at him, I could tell he was thinking something similar.

“Do you think she’ll like me?”

I wasn’t sure why I asked; the words came unbidden to my lips and I didn’t realize until after I spoke them how much I dreaded hearing the answer to that question. How much I cared.

Sam was Clay’s only remaining relative save for Grams, and I still wasn’t even clear on whether or not they were blood related or just really close. I wanted her to like me. To approve of the female her big brother mated with.

Clay quirked a brow at me and a slow smirk tugged at one corner of his lips. I’d surprised him. “That’s not something I thought you’d care about.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

He pondered how to respond for a second before speaking, making me even more on edge. “Sam is…”

Clay trailed off, his face pinching. “How do I say she’s a bitch without saying she’s a bitch because brothers aren’t supposed to say that kind of shit about their sisters?”

I chuckled. “Difficult?”

“Yeah. She’s difficult. And opinionated. And after…what happened…she finally got the mean streak me and pops thought might’ve skipped her.”

“So, she’s going to hate me is what you’re saying?” I asked, wincing.

Clay bit his bottom lip, considering. My skin warmed and a flush rose to my cheeks. Fuck, why was that so hot?

“I’m saying,” Clay corrected. “That you should take everything she says with a massive amount of salt. Who knows? I haven’t seen her in a couple years, maybe she’s different now.”

He said that last part like he didn’t believe it even for a second but had at least a sliver of hope that it might be true.

Clay brushed his palm against my cheek, pushing his fingers deep into my hair until he had me firmly in his grasp with a grip on the back of my neck.

He tipped my head back so I would look him in the eyes.

“Hey,” he said, brows lowering. “I don’t care what she thinks.

Hell, I don’t give a fuck what anybody thinks.

You’re mine, and nobody is ever going to change that. ”

My thighs squeezed and a violent shudder raced down my spine, making a delicious ache spread through my belly.

My lips parted in a silent plea before I could get control of myself. From somewhere deep within, my wolf came to life, flaring in my eyes and growling in my chest.

Mine, she roared.

Clay’s irises flared to twin halos of glowing blue, awakening to my desire. Before I could change my mind, I yanked him to me with clawed fingers knotted into the soft fabric of his shirt and crushed my mouth to his, eager to touch—to taste.

His fingers tightened on my neck while his other hand wrapped securely around my middle, helping to lift me onto my tip toes so I wouldn’t have to crane my neck to reach him.

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I let him in, the kiss no longer a quick theft beneath the moonlight.

Clay swept in with his tongue, drawing a moan from my throat and making my whole body clench, pressing into him as tightly as possible.

I couldn’t seem to get close enough. A burning desire to remove every bit of barrier between us had my hands pulling and tugging. Removing his shirt and then mine. Our lips were apart for only a second and it was too long.

I rushed back to him, hungry and grasping. His warm hands gripped my sides, fingers splayed over the back of my bare ribs.

It felt so good. I never wanted it to stop.

His lips kissed a hard path down my neck, stopping just above my breasts. A small sound left my lips with my heavy breaths, something like a whine or a pained moan.

I delved my fingers into Clay’s dark hair, trying to tell him it was okay—that I didn’t want him to hold back. I didn’t want him to stop.

His lips brushed over the swell of my left breast and my back arched at the violent sensation that rocked me all the way to my core. The tether linking us together vibrated with tension and heat, getting tighter— stronger—the further we went.

I fumbled with the zipper of his jeans, and his grip on my ribs went rigid.

“We can’t,” he whispered against my neck; the brush of his breath against the tender flesh there driving me insane. “The rules…”

“Fuck the rules.”

Clay growled, lifting my feet from the ground.

My back knocked into the rough, mossy bark of a tree, and I glared down into the heated gaze of my mate.

A war raged beneath his stare. With each puff of hot air clouding the space between our lips, I knew he was considering how much he could bend the rule without breaking it.

I knew because I was thinking it, too.

He leaned in for a rough kiss and pulled back, chest heaving. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stop,” he gritted out through clenched teeth.

The truth was, I wasn’t sure if I would be strong enough to stop it, either, but I was beyond caring.

Clay began to robotically pry himself from me and my chest ached with his loss. I knew he was right, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

“Sleep with me,” I blurted before he could fully disentangle himself from me. “I mean—not like that. Just…sleep.”

I hadn’t been able to shut my mind off for days. Maybe with him there I could finally get the rest I desperately needed. Tackle tomorrow with a clear head.

Clay’s jaw clenched. “I don’t cuddle.”

I smirked, turning on the pouty eyes. Vivian always said no one could ever say no to me with that look. “For me?”

Clay rolled his eyes, and I grinned, knowing that even the strong and grouchy Clay wasn’t impervious to my exaggerated pleading. “Fine.”

I began to consider all the different ways I could make this more painful for him. Sleeping nude may have an interesting effect.

Maybe he’d break the rules for me after all.

Clay shook his head. “Clothed,” he amended, taking the wind from my sails.

I smirked at him. “You’re no fun.”

“You’re going to be the death of me, woman.”