Page 1 of Oakheart

CHAPTER 1

Cash

Even after seven years away,I knew this forest better than I knew my own mind.

Some of the trees were thicker, the brush had changed, but the scents were all the same. The way the creek ran through to the west had hardly changed. The sounds of toads and crickets sang in the air beneath the sharp crunch of dry leaves under the girl’s feet.

She was running from me, fast as she could, her jet-black hair swinging behind her. I didn’t want to catch her yet. The point wasn’t if I could get her the fastest, but drawing out the chase.

The hunt.

Sometimes, we did it on four legs, streaking through the trees as fast as we could. Today, we were upright, and her feet were as sure over the leaves and roots as her paws had been.

We’d been at it for more than an hour when I was ready to stop. I pushed my legs—longer than hers. She was only nine, but what I had in height, she made up in energy.

When I sprang at her, she darted around the wide trunk of a tree. I zipped to the other side, thinking I’d catch her off guard,but she’d let out her claws and was scrambling straight up the side of a thick oak trunk.

Damn. I thought about following her, but before I could make up my mind, she had pulled herself up onto one of the lower branches and ran along it, tracking back the way we came, hopping from one tree to the next more like a monkey than a wolf.

She sped along branches that would never hold my weight, leaping nimbly between them, leaving me on the ground with a curse on my lips.

I streaked off, but even on solid ground, it was hard to keep up with her. She ran and ran, and the branches bent under her steps, but Evie was fearless. They didn’t break, and she adjusted her sense of balance as naturally as breathing, like she was certain she could fly.

We kept up our chase for ten minutes before I doubled over. “Okay,” I shouted. “Okay, I give.”

A high-pitched laugh tinkled above me. A few seconds later, Evie dropped out of the tree. She crouched to absorb the shock of hitting the ground and straightened with a broad grin.

Something in me lightened at that smile. I’d never tire of letting her beat me, but this time, she’d earned it.

“Christ on a cracker, Evie, that was something else.”

Evie looked at me like I was batshit crazy. To be fair, werewolves didn’t typically go in for the whole mainstream monotheistic thing, but I’d spent seven years out in the human world, apprenticing and working under a carpenter.

It’d been tempting to stay out there, hiding who I was and disappearing into the modern world. I wasn’t going to everbesomebody, not like Jax and Jillian had become out west. When my friends had left the Wildwood pack, they’d challenged the alpha directly, then gone off and founded their own company.I wasn’t anybody, so it would’ve been easy enough to get away, turn off my mind and the guilt piling up on me, and disappear.

I wouldn’t have ever had anything—no family, nobody who’d know who I was—but I would’ve been safe.

I’d come back for two reasons: my father, who got around as well as a man could on one leg but needed help, and the girl standing in front of me, who was just starting to grow into the heap load of sass she’d been born with.

Her mama had taken off to the woods; that’s what Pa said in the letter he’d sent my way. I’d quit without notice and come back, because no matter how much I liked Mr. Edwards, that wasn’t the real world.

It wasn’tmyreal world, anyway, and I was needed back home.

I wasn’t under any illusion that a cousin she hardly knew coming home made up for losing her ma, but Evie seemed to like the company anyway.

And I liked her—she was the brightest spot in the bleak hovel we lived in, and I’d do anything I could to keep her safe.

“I’ve been practicing,” she announced, hands on her hips.

As much as I didn’t like the idea of her on her own, unsupervised, out here in the middle of the woods was about as safe as she was ever going to get. Furthermore, there was a reason we didn’t take the same route every time we ran—I wanted her scent on every inch of this goddamn forest.

Maybe she’d never have reason to run away from Wildwood, but if she did, I was going to give her the best shot at getting out that I could, and that meant making sure there wasn’t a clear trail to follow.

“You’re amazing, kid.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and ruffled her hair. She wasn’t even winded, but a young wolf wouldn’t be.

We made our way back toward the center of—well, it was hard to call Wildwood a town. It was a collection of rundown cabins all huddled together out in the middle of nowhere.

“You want to come over for dinner?” I asked when it was time for her to turn her way and me to go mine. Uncle Tommy’s place was across the... what might’ve been a square, if anything were arranged with any foresight or intention. “Pa put on a roast. I’m sure there’s plenty. For you and Uncle Tommy too.”