Page 1 of The Girl in the Forest

CHAPTER 1

Grayson

The wolf was death… searching. Unwilling to stop until the quarry was found.

Ferocity drove him. Frustration. Even regret.

For five days, we’d been covering the territory around Azul, hunting in patterns, each one farther away from the point where Noa Bishop disappeared. We’d raced through the wilderness, past remnants of deserted outposts—the forgotten places where the buildings were dull and charcoaled. We tore through old-growth forests, across valleys with broad meadows thick with grass and thorns. Into the high misty mountains.

Birds squawked in displeasure, whirling from the trees and leaving feathers behind. Woodland nymphs did the same, fled in shrieking flurries each time the wolf approached.

He ignored them, his muscles bunching, his skin hot and itchy beneath the sweaty pelt… and I wondered if he maintained his break-neck pace because of the rage tearing through me.

We were two halves of the whole, the wolf and I. He was emotion, while I was intellect and cold calculation. But each time his claws tore into the mud or grass or fallen debris, I realized we fought against the same bitter truth.

Noa Bishop was gone, and he’d find no scent, no trace of her because the King of the Forest wanted it that way.

I hated it. Hated it when I’d stood on the upper floor of the ancient stoney watchtower and shouted at the breaking dawn, asking for some other solution—when there was no other solution.

No way to alter the fucking shit-show that started eons ago.

It had taken me two days to accept that I could do nothing. We couldn’t change who we were, what we’d started the night I inked the runes on her skin. When I’d offered my protection. Only the wolf understood, but then, he’d been her ally from the moment she crossed a threshold neither of us could explain. When she touched him. Soothed him.

And now, all we had left was this shared frustration, the helplessness driving both the wolf’s aggression and my refusal to tell him to stop.

Because what happened next wasn’t my decision.

It was hers.

I had no control. Noa’s fate was now irrevocably intertwined with mine—when I fucking did not want it that way. Didn’t want our lives to play out according to some destructive force I could not see or fight.

I wanted to believe we had choices, she and I, and that we didn’t dance to a tune sung by fate. I wanted her to be safe, to have the life she deserved. A chance to smile again. Fall in love, have a family and the children she’d talked about.

Forget this nightmare fate had decreed.

And yet… after the rite, when she’d said her goodbyes… when she’d touched the wolf and said… promise me… all I’d wanted then was to tell her the truth. Even when I understood everything that I hoped for her would never be, if she stayed with me.

From the moment I found her in Leo’s vet clinic, destroying that pig—I’d known I couldn’t give her the peace she deserved. I heard her terrified thoughts. Her heart had pounded with the belief that she’d turned feral, even though she had no wolf and becoming feral was impossible.

She also believed that because I was Alpha, I’d be responsible for putting feral wolves down—putting her down. The idea had sickened me, that she’d believe… but she refused to talk to me. I had no way of explaining. When I searched her mind, she’d shut me out, hiding her fears behind the chants of liar, liar… pants on fire.

Fallon said I should treat her like a young wolf, get her back into training. Mace argued for more time. After the shock of battle, Noa needed to adjust. Accept what she’d had to do in Sentinel Falls during the Gathering, then the destruction of Azul. Except that there’d been no time for either solution because the dead couldn’t wait.

All I could do was ask Noa to honor Halwyn at the rite, and she agreed, even though it broke her heart. She’d never understood the gift she’d given Halwyn. But by using the talent she hated, she’d eased his silent wolf, lessening the torment for those last few weeks. She’d earned the right to grieve with the rest of us. Earned the privilege of standing for Halwyn, with Fallon and Anson Salas—the Alpha of Carmag—at her side.

But what Noa had understood that day—and I hadn’t—was how the pack was reacting.

She’d asked for no pity, none for her before the dead had been honored.

Then she did what I’d always known she would do. She put the pack first, like the wolf she was in her heart. And when she turned and disappeared, she made that decision for those she loved.

While I’d made mine for her. I stood there and said nothing while she walked through the passage, through the magic keyed to her energy, knowing that watching was the only kindness I had left to give.

The day was too warm for marathons, and all the inner arguments had grown cold. I could do nothing where the King of the Forest was concerned, but I had traitors to uncover. Enemies to kill. And when the wolf panted with his tongue lolling out, we agreed to end the search. He was exhausted. If we were attacked, I doubted he’d be able to fight, although fighting didn’t seem likely with Fallon waiting.

I wasn’t surprised when I saw her standing beneath the trees. She’d always been able to find me, even when we were kids. But she wasn’t here for another adventure. Everything about her screamed impatience. Her stiff posture, the way her arms crossed and tightened.

Frowning at the wolf, she said, “Stop indulging him.”

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