Page 25 of Entangled in the Woods
Kleio and Jack came to join us at the breakfast table. We all chatted until it was almost noon. Kostas showed up at the tent with his backpack already packed, and eventually Wilder and Everett entered the tent as well.
“I have everything packed up,” Kostas told them.
“Great. Let’s get out of here,” Everett said. He and Wilder looked like they could use twenty-four hours of sleep and some hot showers.
Kleio gave my arm a squeeze, mouthing goodbye before Jack whisked her away into a car. Everett opened the passenger side of the black SUV he had driven me here in, leaving the door open for me before he walked around the back of the car to the driver’s side. I tried not to take offense that no one had said goodbye to me. It was for the best. I was an unwanted weekend guest who they wouldn’t be seeing again. No reason for goodbyes.
The car ride with Everett was silent, but my head was filled with noise. He kept his right arm draped over the center console, close enough that if he were my boyfriend, I would be able to reach over and grab his hand. My hands twitched. I clasped them together tightly in my hand hiding the involuntary movements. Without turning my head, I glanced over at Everett. His jaw was clenched tight, his head slightly askew toward me, his nostrils flaring in and out with every breath. It almost looked like he was in pain.
“This is as far as I can take you.” Everett stopped the car on the road in front of the driveway to the cabin.
It seemed a little silly that he couldn’t drive me the last one hundred yards to the front of the cabin, but I’d gotten through the weekend relatively unscathed. I wasn’t about to complain.
I hopped out of the car without saying goodbye. I didn’t know what to say.Thank you for kidnapping me this weekend? Thank you for not killing me with your giant fangs and claws?Everett didn’t say anything either, but I could feel his gaze on myback as I walked down the driveway to the cabin. It took all my willpower not to turn around and look into his golden eyes one last time.
As soon as I entered the cabin, Jenny shot up from where she was sitting on the couch.
“Elise, you have to tell me everything.” She didn’t seem alarmed that I had been gone all weekend. Apparently Wilder’s friend had eased any concerns she might’ve had. “I thought you’d spend the night, but the entire weekend? He must’ve really been something.” I grimaced at her evaluation of my weekend. “When his roommates came by on Friday and told me that you were staying the weekend, I was shocked. Who turns a one-night stand into a weekend event?”
Again, I had no idea what I could even say.Well, you see, I got swept up in this Lycan hunting tournament and spent the weekend with wolf shifters.The shifters didn’t seem overly concerned about keeping their presence in this area a secret, but I didn’t know how much I should tell Jenny and Leo. It felt like something I should keep to myself, so I decided to play into Jenny’s assumptions. “Yeah, it was a fun weekend.”
Jenny looked pleased with herself. I felt a twinge of guilt come over me. She clearly thought I had fallen for Wilder, that we’d had a great time together all weekend. In truth, I felt nothing for him. It had been a one-night mistake. I would have to make it clear to her I wasn’t interested in him. A different time. When I’d had time to process the last weekend. I needed to stay far away from the shifters and focus on my research. For now, I let her believe what she wanted to.
“I told you! I knew you needed a little fun.”
I was already walking back to my room, ready to shower off the weekend. “Yeah, fun.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
By Wednesday,I had fallen into a groove. My head was completely healed and the plants I had rescued from my car were thriving in the window of my room. The clear pots I grew them in looked great against the sun shining through my window. I could see all the white roots weaving through the dirt, and it was easy to tell when they needed to be watered. I had even pressed the red-mulberry leaf into my journal, jotting down what I had recalled from the woods that day.
Each day, I’d get up early to go for a run, exploring new trails and paths that had been laid out on the map Robinson had given us. After my run, I’d gather my research supplies in my backpack and set off into the forest, careful to stay within a five-mile radius of the cabin. Eventually I would have to go beyond those boundaries, but I felt more comfortable staying within them for now.
The forest was just as peaceful as I’d thought it would be. The large trees created a canopy over the trails. I felt like I was in a warm green bubble, complete with birdsong and a gentle breeze. This was my happy place. I scavenged for different plants to add to my stash and made notes about the different species that grewhere. My notebook was growing thicker with the fresh leaves and stems I had pressed on its pages.
Today I went a little farther down the trail where I had first met Wilder. I’d had had no other wolf sightings this week, and I was beginning to wonder if last weekend had been a hallucination.
I wasn’t jogging this time, so I could climb the rocks at a slower pace. After climbing over them for a time, the pile of rocks abruptly ended. It was like there had been a single avalanche of rocks over the trail. It seemed unnatural and purposeful. The gravel trail continued as usual after the pile of rocks ended. I brushed off my hands, removing the dirt and dust that had accumulated while I climbed the rocks.
Continuing down the trail, I noticed discrepancies in the forest floor. Some areas were lush and green, while others had turned a purple-brown color. Looking down the trail, this pattern continued as far as I could see.
Crouching down next to one patch of brown, I unpacked some containers from my backpack along with a pair of gloves. It seemed like the plant was decomposing, but it didn’t look like any decomposition that I had ever seen before. The plants in the brown area had withered, devoid of moisture.
I reached with a gloved hand to gather a sample to bring back with me. The stem I grabbed shattered under my fingers, turning to dust. The crinkled leaves on the next plant did the same thing. I had trouble grabbing any of the brown plants before they disintegrated between my fingers. Using both hands, I grabbed a plant between my palms and carried it over to one of my glass containers I used to store specimens.
Carefully, I pulled my hands apart, letting the plant dust fall into the container. I covered the sample with a lid and looked through the glass. How could a plant disintegrate into dust? I couldn’t remember reading anything like this from my textbooksor in my previous research. What made it so odd was that there were perfectly healthy plants growing green next to all the brown ones. Taking out another container, I gathered some of the soil the brown plant had grown in. I wrote some notes in my notebook, then headed back to the cabin.
Professor Robinson would be back to check on us tomorrow. After I labeled the sample containers, I planned to send them back with him to the lab so they could run some tests to tell me what I was looking at.
For a moment I sat there, taking in the stillness around me. It was peaceful but, for the first time, also a little lonely. I missed Kleio and even Gavrill. They had been my pseudo research assistants, helping me navigate the woods. Kleio had been so enthusiastic about the whole experience. Had she told Everett more about our day exploring? Part of me hoped that she had. He’d seemed annoyed with me for going out scavenging, so hopefully she’d explained the innocence of the day.
Why did I care what he thought? I would never see him again. But the way he had flared his nostrils at me, almost like he was smelling me? That had been weird, right? Or had I just imagined that? Everything last weekend seemed more like a foggy dream, fading from my memory every day.
I spent Thursday working on the landscaping around the cabin. A plant with purple flowers covered the entire perimeter of the cabin. The flowers were pretty enough, but I didn’t think the plant was native to the area.
Remembering all the books inside the cabin, I headed inside to see what I could find about it. I didn’t want to get in trouble for pulling out the wrong thing. My fingers brushed along the line of book spines until I found one titledNative Plants of the North.
I thumbed through the pages until I saw a picture of a flower that looked like the ones outside.Aconitum—also known asaconite, monkshood, or wolfsbane—is indigenous to the North.I read from the page. They were native but extremely overgrown around the cabin. My eyes caught on the namewolfsbane, and I wondered if it was a coincidence.
