Thrown to the Wolves (Big Bad Wolf)

  Thrown to the Wolves

  by Charlie Adhara

  Agent Cooper Dayton is going to meet his boyfriend’s werewolf family. Unarmed. On their turf.

  And he’s bringing his cat.

  When Agent Cooper Dayton agreed to attend the funeral for Oliver Park’s grandfather, he didn’t know what he was getting into. Turns out, the deceased was the alpha of the most powerful werewolf pack on the eastern seaboard. And his death is highly suspicious. Regardless, Cooper is determined to love and support Park the way Park has been there for him.

  But Park left him woefully unprepared for the wolf pack politics and etiquette. Rival packs? A seating order at the dinner table? A mysterious figure named the Shepherd? The worst is that Park didn’t tell his family one key thing about Cooper. Cooper feels two steps behind, and reticent Park is no help.

  There are plenty of pack members eager to open up about Park and why Cooper is wrong for him. Their stories make Cooper wonder if he’s holding Park back. But there’s no time to get into it...as lethal tranquilizer darts start to fly, Cooper needs to solve the mystery of the alpha’s death and fight for the man he loves—all before someone else dies.

  Follow Agents Dayton and Park’s turbulent relationship from the beginning. Read The Wolf at the Door and The Wolf at Bay, both available now from Carina Press!

  One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

  This book is approximately 80,000 words

  For Oscar and Freddy:

  the family within our family,

  showing the rest of us how it’s done.

  Contents

  Family Tree

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Excerpt from The Wolf at Bay by Charlie Adhara

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Charlie Adhara

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Sweeping green hills that twisted and overlapped one another like bodies embracing under the bedsheet. Dramatic cliffs tumbling abruptly into the dark sea that tossed and turned far below but still stretched so far that it touched the sky. A winding, never-ending road that seemed to balance and dance along the very edge of the world. It was the sort of place where you could picture someone in a flowing white dress running through the grass to meet their beloved. A timeless, romantic place where breasts heaved, affairs scandalized and love was something to be declared.

  Cooper Dayton looked up from the picture-perfect guidebook he’d picked up in the Halifax airport and out the car window. No one in their right mind would be caught running around in this. Certainly not in a dress, flowing or otherwise. Everywhere he looked there was snow. Filthy snow plowed to the roadside, creating bumper-like barriers, clean snow that dragged and drooped the many pine trees that covered the surrounding mountains and hills, snow that looked more like mist as it hovered and danced just above the icy asphalt. It was cold—even inside the car—desolate, unwelcoming and so goddamn bright Cooper kept having to close his eyes just to avoid seeing spots. February was not when he’d have chosen to come to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, but then again, this wasn’t supposed to be a vacation or romantic getaway or about him at all, really.

  Cooper pretended to look back down at the guidebook but instead slyly examined the man in the driver’s seat and the reason he was on this godforsaken trip to begin with. Oliver Park was as stiff and unwelcoming as the landscape around them, with his own distinct frostiness to boot. There were thin lines of tension like parentheses around his mouth and dark circles under his warm amaretto eyes. His gaze seemed soft and unfocused, not the most reassuring thing considering the brutal cliffside hills he was steering them up and down.

  “I’m fine,” Park said, and Cooper jumped. So much for being subtle.

  “Of course you are,” he said quickly. The sounds of the struggling heater and occasional crunch of tires on ice washed over them for a long minute. Then two. “But if you wanted to talk—”

  “Cooper.” Park’s voice was flat, empty, emotionless. Devoid of the tenderness, amusement or—most commonly heard—exasperation that usually accompanied Cooper’s name. Empty of anything at all, as it had been since receiving the phone call that brought them here.

  “I’m fine,” Park repeated quietly, gentler this time, but still distant and hollow. Carefully he navigated the long curve of the road and started back down a treacherous hill.

  “Okay,” Cooper said, all ease and acquiescence. But the deep, pulsating worry buried at the bottom of his gut flared up again. Not fine! Mayday! Mayday!

  He shoved it down again. What else could he do? For once, this had nothing to do with him. He and Park were good. Great, even. Park knew Cooper was here for him. That he loved him. A fact that still made Cooper feel desperately vulnerable. Christ, he was practically squirming in his seat just thinking the words now. But Cooper knew Park loved him, too, and that helped.

  After the catastrophe of last fall in Jagger Valley, a lot had changed. Cooper had been laid up with a broken tibia, recovering from surgery and unable to put weight on his leg while Park had been on suspension and spent most every day and night at Cooper’s apartment. Park had helped him adjust, wrangled the knee scooter into submission, cooked and cleaned when he couldn’t stand for long periods of time, and generally distracted him when the frustration that came from relearning what he could and couldn’t do for the second time in less than two years threatened to tip him over the edge from restlessness into depression. For just over three months Park had moved in with him, leaving only to shift, check in on his own apartment across town and occasionally meet up with friends. It had been...nice.

  Then, almost a month ago, Park’s suspension had ended. He’d been back at the BSI on desk duty, Cooper’s cast had come off—replaced with a brace while he regained stability and muscle mass—the knee scooter and crutches had been donated, and Park had left.

  Well, not left. That was overdramatic. They still saw each other several days a week. Nights, too, of course. But the clothes that had found their way into Cooper’s laundry basket, dresser and closet were missing, the phone charger by Park’s side of the bed was gone, and the absurd amounts of food that had been packed into the fridge had withered back to his own boring, pre-Park essentials.

  Listed together like that, it seemed silly to be upset by such little things. Not that he was even upset. He was just... Well, anyway. He’d needed time to relearn his new reality. Again. For the third time now. Almost as if Park’s absence was as disruptive as a broken bone or a shredded gut.

  It didn’t help that Cooper himself wasn’t back at work yet himself, or that when he did go back, he wouldn’t be partnered with Park again. News of their relationship had gotten out after Jagger Valley; how could it not? Every official communication was carefully uninterested about the private lives of their agents but reaffirmed their stance that BSI agents engaged in a personal relationship could not be partnered together in the field.

  As for the unofficial response... Cooper was sheltered from most of that. But he hadn’t exactly been Mr. Popularity before..
.

  “You’re overthinking it,” Park had said when Cooper had grilled him on the minutiae of his first day back in the office, looking for any clues that the hostility and suspicion Cooper had acquired from the nightmare of their first case together in Florence had been transferred to Park. “Why would she care? Why would anyone there care that we’re dating?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe...”

  “Maybe nothing.” Park had kissed his nose. “We’re not that important.”

  He wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t explain why Park was still on desk duty and without a permanent partner a month off of suspension.

  Cooper’s gaze snuck back toward Park in the driver’s seat. He had his old classic, neutral mask in place. But after months of living together Cooper could peek under the cracks and decipher hints of exhaustion, tension and something like worry. Worry about what? Work? Seeing his family again? Or something else entirely? Whatever it was, Park wasn’t talking.

  It had been just over twenty-four hours since the phone call had come in while they were sitting in a café drinking hot, spiced coffees. Park had been laughing, loose and relaxed while Cooper filled him in on his own fascinating day of taking apart Boogie’s water fountain and subsequent inability to put it back together, when his cell vibrated. There, in the after-work bustle of the coffee shop, his face had gone from pleasantly surprised to the carefully blank mask Cooper hadn’t seen for months.

  “Something wrong?” Cooper had asked when he abruptly hung up.

  “No. I—Yes. That was Cami. My sister Camille,” he’d stumbled, sounding dazed. “Our grandfather is dead.” Then he’d shaken himself and refused to discuss it.

  There are many ways to grieve—no one way less valid than the others—but this shutting down and shutting out... Cooper didn’t know how to help him. And he wanted so desperately to help Park. To be there for him the way Park had been there unerringly for him the last four months; teasing him out of dark moods, arguing calmly with him when the inertia set his blood on fire, holding him like he was the one sure thing in a life full of uncertainties.

  And now Park’s grandfather was dead. The man who had raised him and his five siblings when their parents had abandoned them to join the rebel wolf group WIP. The man who had lied for decades, telling them their parents were dead to prevent them from ever having a relationship. The wolf who was alpha of the family pack Park had left to join the Trust, hoping to find his mother.

  Frankly, it was enough complicated history to fill its own Ken Burns miniseries. Or one soap opera episode, at least. Park had to have complicated emotions around the man’s death, or any kind of emotion at all, really, but he didn’t say a word. Just insisted they carry on as if nothing was different.

  He’d asked Cooper to continue telling him about Boogie’s broken water fountain there in the café, and when they’d finally finished their coffees, he’d followed Cooper home and fixed the damn thing himself, despite Cooper’s insistence that it wasn’t necessary.

  “I’m sorry that—”

  “It’s fine. Thank you. I’m fine.”

  Then he’d twitched around the apartment as if pacing a cage and shut down any additional attempts at talking or comfort.

  Eventually Cooper had given up and left him to his pacing. He’d retreated to the kitchen to make them dinner only to have Park follow him, all jumpy and wild-eyed, and bend him over the kitchen counter to fuck him.

  “Is this okay?” Park had said, tugging clothing out of the way and dragging his fingers up and down the crack of Cooper’s ass.

  “Yes. Anything,” Cooper had bit back, surprised by the sudden turn of events but not unhappy about it. Especially not when Park dropped to his knees and retraced his touch with his tongue. He’d worked him open with his mouth and hands until Cooper was a gibbering mess, humping against the kitchen cabinets.

  “Can I have you?” Park had gasped, as breathless as if he was the one being thoroughly taken apart, nerve by nerve.

  “Yes. Do it, please.” Cooper had arched his back, searching for Park’s body. “You already have me,” he’d whispered into the countertop, and Park had groaned. Hopefully from the pleasure of pushing into Cooper’s body and not at the cheesy line, but he couldn’t help himself. It was true. Park had him like a fever did. Thought-altering, blood-boiling and all-consuming. Cooper had thrown himself back onto the burn.

  It wasn’t the roughest sex they’d ever had by any means, but there had been a panicked, almost clumsy edge to it that had frankly amped Cooper’s arousal up a notch or two. For a short but glorious time he felt as needed as oxygen.

  Maybe this was a turning point, he’d thought. A dam breaking. A way for Park to reaffirm life and love before responsibly confronting his loss.

  They’d finished on the kitchen floor, Cooper spilling over the tile, on his knees watching the dark shadow that was Park gasp and pump into him via the oven’s reflection.

  “It doesn’t change anything,” Park had muttered afterward, pressing kisses across Cooper’s shoulder blades. “I won’t let it.”

  “What?”

  Park had stiffened and pulled away, avoiding his eye. “Nothing important.”

  Then he’d asked him to come to Canada with him for the memorial ceremony, and when Cooper had agreed—grateful to finally be of some help—he’d promptly excused himself for the night.

  “You’re not staying?”

  “No, I need to shift,” Park had said despite having gone for one of his “runs” that morning. “I’ll take care of the tickets and pick you up before the flight.” He’d kissed him distractedly, and that was it. Not a word since about why they were traveling to the northernmost tip of Cape Breton in the middle of a brutal freeze.

  It was decidedly not the emotional release Cooper had been hoping for. And still, every mile they got closer, the dangerous stillness radiating from Park intensified.

  Worry. It was definitely worry. Maybe even fear.

  Cooper put the guidebook down and cleared his throat. This was getting ridiculous. “Did you tell them I was coming?”

  Park blinked slowly, like he’d been dragged from deep in thought. “Yes, of course,” he said after a long moment. Then, “Don’t be nervous.”

  “I’m not,” Cooper said. Well, I wasn’t until you said that. Truthfully he’d been too busy worrying about Park to consider his own approaching milestone: meeting the family. Fuck. “Will...everyone be there?”

  Park inclined his head. “Mmm, most of us. My two older sisters, Camille and Jackie, should already be there. The two younger siblings won’t make it in at all, though. Addy is doing research for her PhD in Turkey and Simon’s wife, Peggy, is due any moment. It’s been a difficult pregnancy, so they don’t want to travel. My older brother, Griffin, will be here for the service, but I doubt he’ll stay after. He has property in Halifax and it gets—” he shook his head as if deciding on the right word “—crowded with all of us together.”

  Multiple alphas, Cooper thought, filling in what Park avoided. “So who is going to be there?”

  “Look, no one expects you to get everyone’s names right immediately. I know it’s overwhelming. I’m sorry to throw you into the pit like this before you’re ready.”

  “Nonsense. Put me in, coach. I was born ready.”

  Park huffed at the painfully false bravado. “Okay. My grandmother Helena, obviously.” He stopped, looking lost, already struck by some uncomfortable thought or memory.

  “What was your grandfather’s name?” Cooper said softly.

  “Joe.” Park smiled, more of a grimace, and quickly moved on, giving Cooper a rundown of his family.

  He had two uncles, Marcus and Stuart, and an aunt, Lorelei. Neither of the uncles lived with Helena, though they were never too far away, either. Cooper vaguely remembered the names. Marcus, married and childless, was the one who had disobeyed the
pack and told Park the truth about his parents, and Park spoke of him fondly.

  Stuart was a widower, and his daughter, Delia, also lived in DC. Park would occasionally go out to dinner with her. He often invited Cooper along, but Cooper always declined. He claimed it was because couples needed time apart and to maintain separate friends, but truthfully he’d just felt pathetic tagging along like the kid your mother makes you invite. That and he’d been too nervous to meet Park’s cousin. Eventually Park just stopped asking.

  Park’s aunt Lorelei did live with Helena, and that was interesting.

  “What do you mean she and her ex-husband still live there?”

  “Exactly that. Lorelei and Tim have been divorced for, oh, nineteen years, I think? But he never moved out. They raised my cousin Raymond together.”

  “Okay,” Cooper said slowly. “That’s nice.” Maybe. “But Raymond must be an adult now. What’s stopping them from, you know, separating?”

  Park hesitated. “Tim is... Well, Tim isn’t exactly family anymore, but he’s still part of, you know—” he gestured vaguely “—part of the pack.”

  “So he has to stay?” Cooper tried to imagine living with Park for decades after they broke up, and his body recoiled. “That must have been brutal for both of them.”

  Park scrunched up his nose. “I guess. I’ve never actually thought about it. My grandparents aren’t romantically together, either, haven’t been for years, but they always seem fine. Seemed fine,” he corrected under his breath.

  “You know, you say it’s hard for your family to all be under one roof as one super pack, but all these divorces and separations sound like the perfect opportunity to break away and start their own packs to me.”

  “It’s complicated,” Park hedged. “They don’t like when people leave.”

  “You left.”

  Park glanced sharply at Cooper but didn’t respond.

  “You’re one of six. And your dad was one of four, right? That’s some crowded family tree.”

  “There’s a lot of pressure on older packs to reproduce. For the good of the species and all that shit,” Park mumbled. He sounded annoyed, like this was an old argument he’d heard too often.

 
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