Thrown to the Wolves (Big Bad Wolf) Read online

  “No,” Cooper said shortly. “But the book said no one should hike alone. What if you run into an animal?”

  “Then there’s a 50/50 chance we’re related.”

  “Oli—”

  Park kissed him. A firm press of closed lips. “I can defend myself. And I can move a lot faster than you.”

  Cooper glared. “The brace is more precaution than anything else. I’m basically—”

  Park kissed him again. “I wasn’t talking about that. I mean I’m going to walk up to the road, get my bearings, and if there are no passing cars, I’ll shift and run to town.”

  Cooper felt his mouth make a small “o” shape in surprise but quickly shook it off. “Okay. I guess that works.” Park was watching him closely. “What?”

  He shrugged and swayed forward as if to kiss Cooper once more but hesitated, expression almost uncertain. That wasn’t like Park at all.

  “Oliver? What is it?”

  Park opened his mouth, closed it, then said, “Nothing. I’m just...glad you could come with me.” Cooper wasn’t sure if that’s what he’d really wanted to say or not but didn’t push.

  “I’m always happy to come with you,” he said seriously. Park winked at him. “Idiot. That’s not what I—” He was cut off by Park’s mouth once more, and while the other kisses had been gentle attempts to interrupt Cooper’s complaints, this one was full of only one purpose, to claim.

  Cooper shivered, a pulse of want rippling just below the skin. He ran his fingers through Park’s hair and down his back to squeeze his ass through rough jeans.

  Disappointingly, Park pulled back. “I should get going. It’s only going to get colder out here.”

  “I can think of a couple of ways to warm up,” Cooper muttered, running his fingers under Park’s coat and along his waistband.

  “Yeah?” Park leaned forward to nuzzle his ear. “And how does the cat figure into these plans?”

  Cooper frowned and let him go reluctantly. “Ugh. Fine. You’re right. You should go.”

  He tried to sound more blasé than he felt as Park released him and opened the back door and started rummaging around. Of course he would stay behind. That’s what made the most sense. But there was a deep feeling of unease sitting at the back of his throat. Why?

  No matter what Park teased, Cooper wasn’t afraid to wait here. Bored? Yes. But not afraid. He also knew Park was more than capable of protecting himself. Besides, what the hell would he need to protect himself against? The cold? It wasn’t like they were here on a case and needed to watch their backs. And moving as a wolf, Park would be the biggest predator around. Cooper was probably just reacting to the leftover tension from the accident swirling around his bloodstream and confusing things.

  Or nerves, now that you’re that much closer to meeting the family.

  “Fuck’s sake,” he muttered.

  “What?” Park popped out with an empty tote bag scrunched in his hands and started taking off his coat.

  “What’s that for?”

  “To carry my clothes and phone while I’m...running.” He leaned back into the car to place his heavy coat carefully in the trunk, presumably for Boogie to curl into, the big softie. “Don’t want to show up totally naked and give the locals a fright.”

  Cooper imagined being a local doing a spot of ice fishing or shoveling snow or whatever people did around here this time of year, and seeing a totally nude and wild-looking Park wandering out of the woods. Unless “a fright” meant something entirely different in Canada, Cooper could not relate.

  Maybe Park was right and he did have a bit of a danger kink.

  “Hmm,” he said, shaking his head. “Wouldn’t it be easier to do it here?”

  Park froze for just a second and then continued arranging his coat into a sort of cat bed without responding. Cooper wondered if he was going to ignore him.

  Trying to sound as casual as possible, he added, “If you shifted now, I could put your clothes in the bag for you and you’d spend less time freezing your bits off.”

  “I’d...rather not,” Park said finally, voice muted.

  “Okay,” Cooper said quickly, not wanting to push. “I was only thinking of your bits.”

  Park snorted, getting out of the car. “You usually are.”

  * * *

  Cooper listened long after Park had disappeared over the ridge, straining to hear some sign of him shifting or maybe even see him reappear as a wolf to howl Goodbye or, more likely, It’s freezing! Wait in the car, you dope! But there was nothing. Just the constant wind whipping off the sea and snow, snow, snow. Cooper wasn’t surprised, really. While some things had changed since Jagger Valley, others had not.

  After Park’s unhealthy avoidance of shifting had nearly torn him apart last fall, Cooper had spent a lot of time trying to figure out why. How had he gotten to that point? What made him compartmentalize his own identity and throw away the key?

  It bothered Cooper. A lot. He didn’t totally buy Park’s flimsy excuse that he’d hated leaving Cooper alone during such an emotional time. Instead he worried the truth had a lot more to do with him. Or more specifically, their relationship. After all, Park had seemed pretty open about being a werewolf and what that entailed when they’d first met in Florence, before they’d gotten together, hadn’t he?

  True, the circumstances weren’t great, what with the forced partnership, Cooper’s recent life-threatening attack and months of Cooper’s ex-mentor and current psychopath feeding him vicious lies about werewolves. But since then Cooper had done a much-needed and thorough self-evaluation to root out any prejudices he hadn’t even known he had. And since Jagger Valley, he’d been trying to be a much more open person. Love and intimacy meant being vulnerable, and Christ, was he in love. So he tried. Every day.

  They’d both gotten better with emotions and relationship stuff, but on the wolf front there wasn’t much progress. Park was back to doing daily shifts but still not where Cooper could see, and while he wasn’t necessarily hiding things from Cooper, he didn’t go out of his way to discuss anything that had to do with him being a werewolf.

  Was Cooper not receptive enough? Supportive enough? Was he doing or saying something that made Park feel like he couldn’t be his authentic self around him? Or was this his authentic self and Cooper’s constant pushing him to talk openly about being a werewolf and packs and shifting put him in a box he didn’t feel comfortable in?

  Fuck, he didn’t know. And he wasn’t getting many hot or cold hints from Park, either. Not that it was his or any werewolf’s job to educate Cooper. But it wasn’t really something Cooper could google on his own, either.

  How to talk to your werewolf boyfriend.

  Your werewolf lover and you.

  Werewolf Soup for the Soul.

  God knew the BSI was no help. While the collaboration with the Trust had made huge improvements to relations with and treatment of wolves in the community, at the end of the day their job was to track down werewolves suspected of killing humans. That was it. And all of their trainings were relevant to that and that alone.

  How quickly could a wolf fully shift and be ready to attack? Three point five seconds.

  Did a wolf need to get undressed to shift? Of course not, but don’t expect those clothes to be in any condition to be worn in the squad car back. Ha ha. Laugh, laugh. Next question, please.

  Um, I’ve never seen my boyfriend in his wolf form. Is this normal or is our relationship doomed?

  Yeah fucking right.

  Anything more in-depth than self-defense—politics, culture, interpersonal relationships, pack rules and alliances—that came up during a case was left up to the wolf agents themselves. The Trust partner dealt with the wolves while the human agent ran interference with the local law enforcement and didn’t learn much more about werewolves than how they could help them or harm them.


  Cooper was sick of it. He was sick of the same stagnant bullshit again and again. The whispers from other agents that had followed him since Florence, the never-ending suspicions of local law enforcement, the interrogation of werewolves connected to the victim for no other reason than they were what they were.

  What had once seemed like a mind-blowing adventure had lost its shine. At the end of the day, the BSI was a government agency struggling to be better while built on a faulty, problematic and hole-ridden system, and under the financial control of a broken and immoral government. The thought of going back in a couple of weeks was almost as bad as the thought of not going back at all.

  Cooper sighed. Park had been gone for over an hour and Cooper had been standing outside waiting this whole time. He was starting to get cold and should have gotten back in the car but resisted. The thought of sitting for an unknown amount of time in that death trap gave him a pulse of claustrophobia.

  He rubbed his hand over his face, feeling the approach of a headache, and winced when he reopened the cut over his eye.

  “Fuck’s sake.” He turned to study his reflection in the car window and recoiled. No wonder Park had run off. Cooper half hoped he didn’t come back. The thought of meeting the family looking like this... Christ.

  He was unbelievably pale and haggard, his hair a mess, and the beginnings of a black eye was thickening his laundry-sized right eye bag. A vicious cut split right through his eyebrow and had spewed blood down the side of his face, Carrie-style. They’re all gonna laugh at you, indeed.

  A branch snapped behind him, a loud crack in the silence, and Cooper whirled around, heart pounding.

  At first he saw nothing. Snow, woods, light and dark. But there it was. Something moving. A shape slinking inside the shadows of the pines, just twenty feet away.

  His eyes struggled to focus past the glaring brightness of the snow and the pounding of his head. It could be a person bending over and creeping, but the shadow seemed a touch too large for that. Nor was it darting from tree to tree as he might expect if a person was attempting subterfuge.

  The shadow’s movements were slow, deliberate and methodically getting closer. A deer that hadn’t noticed him yet? Or something else? Stalking him.

  Cooper took a hesitant step closer to get a better look and could practically hear Park spluttering in his ear. Don’t get off on danger, huh?

  He hesitated and then reached behind him and put a hand on the door handle. If the animal was dangerous, it would take him less than a second to jump insi—

  The shape took another few steps closer, into a shaft of sunlight slipping through the trees, and its tawny coat gleamed. It was a deer. Cooper sighed and laughed slightly at himself, dropping the door handle. The deer looked up as if hearing the noise. It stared at Cooper, unblinking and unmoving.

  “Hey there,” Cooper whispered, raising his hands to show his open palms, like that would mean anything to the deer. Still, she chewed once, a funny circular movement, and flashed her tail in return, a little flicker of white. Behind her in the shadows of the deeper woods, there was another flicker of white and, squinting, Cooper managed to make out a second deer.

  “You have a friend. I used to have one of those. I don’t suppose you’ve seen him. He’s about six-two, pretty cute, may or may not be wearing clothes.”

  He heard a hard huffing sound and the deer in front jerked her head, turned and leapt away, bounding through brush and snow with the second deer just behind.

  “Hey! Don’t tell me you’re offended by nudity!” Cooper called after them. Ah, shit. Alone again, naturally.

  He heard the huffing sound again.

  That didn’t come from the deer.

  He spun. There, behind him, less than ten feet away, stood a huge wolf.

  Its fur was a rich black and it stood poised in the snow, chest out, neck long and tail straight back like it was auditioning for the Westminster Dog Show. It was also laughing at him. Or at least that’s what it looked like with its mouth open and eyes squinting.

  “Oliver?” Cooper whispered.

  The wolf closed its mouth abruptly, cocked its head, then ran straight for him.

  Animal fear took over. Cooper stumbled, brace heavy on his leg, and tried to wrench the car door open. His fingers, numb with cold and panic, slipped once but managed the second time. He fell into the back seat, one knee on the floor, shin throbbing, and yanked the door shut, almost crushing his own foot.

  Cooper braced himself for the feel of the wolf hitting the side of the car but felt nothing. He lay on his back across the seats listening, breathing hard. After a minute, he was tempted to sit up and peer out the window, but every time he braced his muscles all he could imagine was the wolf choosing that moment to crash through the glass and into his face. So he stayed flat across the seats and tried to get his breath back under control.

  When one minute turned to two, he began to feel stupid. What if it was Park? What if this was him attempting to show Cooper this part of himself? Was this what Cooper considered to be receptive and supportive behavior? Or what if it was a relative of Park’s sent here to check up on him or, god, fetch help because something had happened to Park? What if it was just a regular fucking wolf?

  Then the passenger-seat door opened.

  Okay, not a regular wolf, then.

  At first all he could hear was the scritch of claws on metal, the slow unlatching sound and the rhythmic beeping of the car sensor. Then the door jerked awkwardly open in two attempts, as if being maneuvered by a small child.

  Cooper held his breath. From this angle, all he could see was the top of the open door and the dove-gray clouds. Then the black wolf leapt gracefully onto the seat, filling Cooper’s whole field of vision. It stared at him. This close he could see the wolf’s eyes were an incandescent light silvery blue, brighter than the sky. Not Park, then.

  Not his Park, anyway.

  Cooper slowly raised his hands, palms facing out. The wolf blinked its eyes lazily, one after the other, and then climbed with some difficulty over the center console so that its front paws were perched on the edge of the back seat. Every heavy breath Cooper took, every expansion of his ribs, he could feel the wolf’s wet fur brush against the skin of his hip where his shirt had ridden up.

  Cooper kept his hands up, though at this point the gesture felt less like showing he was unarmed and more like warding off the end. This was a different kind of terror from the car accident. He felt utterly paralyzed. Even if he could move, what was the point? There was absolutely nowhere to go. He was flat on his back, unarmed and stuck in a car beneath someone who could finish him with one well-placed swat.

  The wolf leaned over him and started to sniff. It started at his sternum and moved down. When the delicate brush of its nose passed over the scars carved into his belly, Cooper couldn’t help but whimper.

  The wolf immediately pulled back and met his eye again. Then slowly it raised its paw and put it over Cooper’s hand, holding it there for a second before pushing gently down until Cooper’s palm was pressed flat against the seat. The pads of its feet were cold but not really wet. Its fur, on the other hand, dripped water down Cooper’s wrist.

  The wolf blinked lazily again, one, two, huffed and smiled, panting softly. Everything about it said no threat. Cooper shivered but felt a little better. Or at least he no longer felt like he was immediately going to die. Baby steps.

  “Sorry,” Cooper breathed. “I guess I overreacted.” The wolf cocked its head. “Are you, uh, related to Park, uh, Oliver, I mean?”

  The wolf’s mouth snapped closed, and it snorted.

  “Is that a yes or a no?” Cooper said.

  The wolf looked bored with this failed Dr. Dolittle routine and started to sniff him again, moving forward slower this time. It avoided Cooper’s belly completely, starting instead at the hand that was still in the air and seeming partic
ularly interested in the tips of his pointer and middle fingers. The fingers that had been in Park’s mouth earlier.

  Ugh. Please let this not be how he met Park’s grandmother.

  Cooper was just starting to calm down when the wolf snorted abruptly and scrambled forward a little more, claws slipping on the fake leather of the console, until it was looking straight down at him, nose to nose. It stared at him as if cataloguing his face, until one of its ears flicked backward, picking up some distant sound.

  The wolf sighed heavily, as if extremely annoyed, and then, out of nowhere, licked Cooper’s cheek. One quick swipe on the non-bloody side that was still hard enough to move the flesh of his face.

  Cooper didn’t budge. Didn’t think. Just stared. The wolf stared back, ear continually swiveling back and forth, monitoring something outside.

  “Uh, thanks, but I have a boyfriend?” Cooper whispered, unsure.

  The wolf blinked, then started rapidly barking light, high-pitched yelps and shaking its head with its eyes closed. Cooper reevaluated. The wolf hadn’t been laughing at him before, but it was laughing at him now. Suddenly it stopped, looked at him and slowly and deliberately winked.

  Before Cooper could gather his thoughts, it had retreated to the front seat and out of the car. A second later the door slammed shut.

  Cooper slowly sat up, opened the back door and sat half in and half out of the car. He could see the wolf running up the hill, black coat brilliant against the snow, not bothering to disappear into the cover of the woods. He watched it go and then jumped and yelled a bit when Boogie leapt out of the trunk and onto the top of the seat.

  “Oh, nice of you to show up. Thanks for having my back,” he muttered. She licked her paw pointedly.

  Cooper reached up to his own cheek. It was dry now. No trace of what had happened. If he couldn’t still see the bastard, he would half wonder if he’d hallucinated the whole encounter.