Page 15 of Entangled in the Woods
The tent town behind us was large and organized, but I couldn’t imagine they lived here. I had seen no sleeping areas. We got up and walked back to the tent with the cedar-tree flag.
The map-studying session seemed to be over. Everett, Jack, Gavrill, and Kostas lounged on the couches, talking and joking with one another. They were clearly close friends. Wilder sat sulking in a chair at the table in the center of the room. I still didn’t know why he was acting like that. The other people, or should I say shifters, in the group didn’t pay any mind to him, as if this was normal behavior. They obviously weren’t fans of him. His dejected face was such a contrast from last night that I almost felt sorry for him. Why had Everett retrieved Wilder this morning only for everyone to ignore him?
“Does she know?” Kostas asked as he saw us enter the tent. Everyone’s conversation stopped, waiting.
“She knows enough for now,” Kleio answered. “Where’s she going to sleep, Everett? I’m sure she wants some time to herself to process everything. It’s kind of been a whirlwind for her.”
I appreciated her looking out for me. I really did need some time to get my bearings and consider everything I had just seen and heard.
“We only have enough tents set up for us right now,” Kostas said.
“Oh, maybe you can bunk with us, Elise!” Kleio said. “That’d be fun, right, Jack?” She looked at Jack, who threw his hands up as if he was fine with the idea.
My eyes got big at the thought of having to share a tent with a couple, especially one that was as affectionate as Kleio and Jack. Gavrill seemed to sense my apprehension and quickly mentioned that there was an extra tent available but it needed tobe set up. Everett nodded at Gavrill and looked to where Wilder was sitting.
“Go with Gavrill to grab the tent and set it up for Elise,” he ordered. “That is the least you can do after dragging her into this mess.” Everett’s voice was authoritative and deep. Wilder didn’t hesitate to stand up and follow Gavrill to retrieve the tent.
“Let’s go sit in my tent until Wilder is done,” Kleio said. She grabbed my hand and walked me to the back of the tent. There was another set of flaps, and she pulled me through them.
Behind the main tent was an entire city of smaller tents. Many of them placed in a circle around a firepit, like what I had seen camping with my family when I’d been younger. There were even more people around these tents, milling about and conversing. A couple hundred people relaxed, stoked the fires, and laughed with one another. It almost seemed like a family reunion.
Kleio led me to a tent that was farther away from the others and wasn’t next to a campfire. I could only assume why her tent with Jack wasn’t close to any of the others. It was small, but it had a bed and a chair in the corner.
“Sorry for the mess. We didn’t clean up this morning,” Kleio said. She quickly made the bed, finding the sheets on the ground and the blanket draped over the chair. My mind went wild imagining how the bed had gotten in such a state of disarray. I hesitated to sit on the bed, but it seemed clean enough.
She plopped next to me onto the bed. “I need to go see the guys, but you can stay in here and rest,” she said. “You’ll be fine. No one will bother you. Everyone stays away from our tent. Never know what you’re going to find inside,” she added, wiggling her eyebrows at me and laughing. It was nice to have someone provide some comedic relief in a situation that was anything but funny.
I nodded my head and thanked her for letting me borrow her tent for a bit. Being up late last night was catching up to me, and the ambient noise of people’s muffled conversations made my eyes feel heavy.
Lying down, I made sure my shoes were off the bed. I wasn’t comfortable enough to remove them, and I wanted the ability to run if I needed to. My eyes closed. I meant to just rest them, but I fell into a heavy sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A loud hornwoke me up to a tent that was darker than when I had fallen asleep in the middle of the day. The canvas flaps rustled before a large hand reached inside to pull them open. I saw the top of his head, covered with tousled brown hair, before he lifted his face to meet mine, standing tall. What was he doing barging in here like this?
“I want to talk to you,” Everett said. His beard was long enough for me to run my fingers through—and ugh, why was I thinking about my fingers in his beard?
He paused at the foot of the bed, looking over me. I looked down to where his eyes fell as his nostrils flared. My shirt had ridden up while I’d slept, my midriff completely exposed. Sitting up, I pulled the shirt back down, pretending I was unbothered by his stares.
He closed his eyes and shook his head quickly. “You’re a guest here.”
My mind snapped to attention. “Guest? Do shifters use that word interchangeably with the human wordprisoner?”
“I see we have a linguist on our hands. Did your big words confuse Wilder last night?”
“What I did last night is none of your business.”
“Very well, it isn’t.” Everett ran his hand through his hair, smoothing the tousled locks on the top of his head. “But now that you are here, everything about you is my business.” I opened my mouth to mock the certainty of his words, but his voice stopped me. “Now that you’re at Camp for the weekend.”
“For now,” I quipped.
A stern look came over Everett’s face. He took a step toward the bed. I bit down on my tongue to stop the instinct that came over me to scoot back.
“Do you want to know what will happen if you try to leave Camp?” he asked in a low voice.
I sat there with my lips pressed shut. He was going to tell me the answer to his question whether I wanted to hear it or not.
“You will be…what’s the human word for it? Ah,electrocuted,” he said, and it took a lot of self-control not to roll my eyes. “There are wards surrounding Camp. Big walls of energy that keep everything and everyone inside. You humans can’t see them from the outside. Like invisible walls. No one can leave until they’re lifted. Not even me.”
