Thrown to the Wolves (Big Bad Wolf) Read online

  “Is something wrong?” Cooper asked worriedly.

  “No,” Mai assured him. “Let me just...” She shone the light into his right eye for such a long time that Cooper finally had to look away, tearing up. As he blinked away the spots, he heard her step a little closer to him, sniffing, then freeze.

  Mai moved backward quickly, exhaling. When his vision cleared, Cooper could see her sharing a long, searching look with Park, who had no trouble meeting her eye. In fact, he looked angry—or defiant—and his lip was curling as if he was this close to snarling.

  “What’s wrong?” Cooper asked.

  Mai turned back to him. “Nothing at all,” she said briskly. “I don’t see any indication of a concussion. You have a little irritation of your eye, but nothing the body can’t handle on its own with a good night’s sleep.”

  Her voice was still efficient, quick and kind, but her face was alert with intense curiosity and she kept glancing back at Park as if he’d just confessed an unbelievable secret. Bitterly, Cooper supposed he had. “Just let me know if you have any sudden changes in vision,” she added.

  “Well, I can see perfectly now,” Cooper said. He could feel his smile shaking a little. “In fact, I think I’m starting to see things more clearly than I did before.”

  Park winced. Good. He should.

  Yes, Park had told his family he was bringing Cooper, and yes, he’d told his family that they were dating, but it was obvious now he’d left something out. Something that hadn’t even crossed Cooper’s mind to ask.

  Park hadn’t told them Cooper was not a werewolf. And from the look on Mai’s face, this mattered.

  Chapter Four

  “‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,’” Cooper muttered under his breath as the formidable electronic gates swung open to gradually reveal a long, pebbled driveway that twisted and turned up the mountain at a near vertical angle. And just look at how that turned out for the second Mrs. de Winter.

  “Sorry, what?” Mai said from the driver’s seat.

  He winced. He was used to Park being the only person who could pick up on his under-the-breath mumbling. If he didn’t want Park’s family to think he was a freak, he’d need to work on biting his tongue. Well, more of a freak than he’d already be as Park’s Surprise! It’s a human boyfriend.

  It had been an awkward drive from town to the family home. Mai kept up a steady stream of chatter filling them in on who was already there—everyone except Addy and Simon, of course, and Griffin and his family, who had been unexpectedly delayed—but Park was unusually quiet in the front seat and it threw a tense shadow over everything.

  “Sorry, just talking to myself,” he answered Mai, who was watching him curiously in the rearview window. “So. Uh, this must be one hell of a plow job.”

  Wow, scintillating conversation starter there, Coop. He hastily gestured at the driveway as they started up the steep climb. Behind them he could hear the looming gates swing shut again. There had been some sort of design on the gate, black iron twisting into a kind of craggy fruit tree and, surprisingly, a rabbit. Though perhaps a wolf would be a little too on the nose.

  “It is,” Mai replied, taking Cooper’s weak attempt at small talk and running with it. “We have a couple of our own plows here, which helps. You’ll probably see them in action this weekend. Smells like a big snow is coming.”

  Cooper looked out the window. “Mmm,” he said in agreement. He could feel Mai’s intense gaze on him as sure as a touch, but really, you didn’t need to have super senses to know a storm was approaching. Beyond the cliffs, hovering over the sea, the clouds had darkened and seemed to dip toward the earth as if someone above had flung themselves down on a bed and all the earth was stuck looking up at the sagging box spring.

  “I hope the rest of your family doesn’t have trouble travel—” Cooper’s voice dropped off as the driveway crested and the Park house came into sight.

  It was...big. Bigger than just a big house. Bigger than a house had a right to be. It wasn’t a McMansion, either, but old and sprawling and made of beautiful, dark unpainted wood that would not have looked out of place a hundred years ago except for the solar panels glinting across the dark green roof. Lincoln Logs gone wild.

  He supposed he should have expected the size considering how many fully grown adults lived here. Plus, he vaguely knew Park had come from money and, well, there it was. But knowing something and parking in its monstrous looming shadow were two very different things. Cooper felt the discomfort that had been prickling at the base of his skull since the market bloom across his skin. You don’t belong here.

  He told that voice to fuck off and got out of the car, taking Boogie with him and placing her carrier on the ground.

  “I’m going to just run these into the house,” Mai called over her shoulder, hustling past them with more of their bags than an average person would have been able to carry.

  And warn everyone that Park’s new boyfriend is a human, Cooper filled in. Well, at least they’d know what they were getting. Unlike him.

  He stared up at the house, taking in the dark blue shutters and massive stone urns full of winter greenery, dark holly leaves and bright red berries. A heavy brass knocker on the door showed the design from the gate again.

  In his periphery, Cooper saw Park stand beside him, watching his expression closely. “What do you think?”

  “It’s pretty,” Cooper said. Park shuffled in place like he was hoping for more. “Really—” overwhelming, over-the-top, ostentatious “—nice,” he added lamely. He pointed at the knocker. “Wabbit hunting season?”

  “Technically it’s supposed to be a hare. And we don’t kill them anymore. My grandfather used to take his kids out hunting when they were growing up so they remembered their position in the natural order. Top of the animal kingdom,” Park said, disgusted. “That stopped by the time I was living here, thank god. At least some traditions die out.”

  “Now you just post up their little bunny effigies as a warning.”

  “It’s a...family thing.”

  “Like a crest?” Cooper could hear the alarm in his own voice and see it reflected back in Park’s expression. “I mean, that’s...cool. I’ll have to workshop some hare jokes and get back to you.”

  “Could you—” Park stopped, and Cooper looked at him. Park ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands nervously. “Would you want to live somewhere like this someday?”

  “In a log castle?”

  Park rolled his eyes. “No, I mean out here. Out of the city, like this.”

  “This isn’t ‘out of the city,’” Cooper babbled while his mind spun. There was no such thing as casual questions in a serious relationship. Do you want kids? Would you want a big wedding? The unspoken with me was always lurking in the air.

  “This is the edge of the world. They could make a NatGeo series just on making it up the driveway.” Park snorted. “But, uh, yeah. I like...nature.”

  They stared at each other for a moment. “Cooper,” Park said finally, voice gruff. “About before, with Mai, I really fucked up. I’m—” He cut off, eyes drifting and unfocused. He frowned. “Shit, no. Wait...”

  “What—”

  A piercing howl rang out over the wind. Cooper startled and twisted around toward the sound. Fifty feet away by the edge of a copse of pine trees, a large wolf with blondish fur was sitting, head thrown back and howling at the sky. A painful, haunting sound that was too sonorous to ever come from a human throat.

  The howl trailed off, and the wolf lowered its head, abruptly jumped up and ran directly toward them. Cooper tensed but refused to give in to his body’s urge to run. Surely this was a member of Park’s family. Surely they were just coming over for a pleasant hello...

  The wolf was picking up speed now, its shoulders raised and head down like it was gathering momentum to pounce. Cooper c
overed the burning scars down his belly. Steady, men. Hold your stations, he instructed his feet.

  “Wait, don’t—” Park started.

  Don’t what? Don’t just stand there while a two-hundred-pound killing machine barrels toward you? Cooper didn’t have time to change his mind, though. The wolf was on them. It leapt directly at Park, slamming into his chest. Cooper heard himself shout in fear as Park stumbled backward before his arms went up around the wolf and then spun them in rapid circles.

  Cooper took a step forward as if to leap on the twisted merry-go-round as well, then heard Park laugh. The pebbles on the driveway skittered away from his shoes and another sound, like larger rocks—much larger rocks—knocking and grinding together, started to emanate from the pair of them. Cooper had heard that sound once before. He knew what was going to happen.

  The wolf’s head and forelegs were draped over Park’s shoulder, and its tail and hind legs clung to his front, so as Park spun them in circles, Cooper could only glimpse half of the wolf at a time. He saw the wolf’s head, wide and flat with gorgeous thick fur, its eyes closed and mouth open and panting in pain or pleasure.

  One-hundred-eighty degrees and the wolf looked horrifically mangled. The hind legs were now dangling uselessly, spine broken, knees backward, tail suddenly missing altogether.

  One-hundred-eighty degrees and it was an alien face. Closer to human than wolf, but the planes and angles were all wrong, like the chin had been cut off entirely and the nose was so far down the face the tightly shut eyes looked like they’d been transplanted onto the forehead.

  One-hundred-eighty degrees and it was a non-furry human body twitching like the legs were trying to wrap around Park’s waist but the hips were tilted too far back to let them.

  One-hundred-eighty degrees and a laughing woman opened her eyes and ran her clawed hands up Park’s spine to the top of his head to give him a noogie.

  It all happened in less than two spins, barely longer than a single second.

  Three point five seconds my ass. The Trust is holding out on us.

  “What the fuck took you so long! We’ve been kicking our heels for hours,” the woman said as Park put her down. She slapped both hands—now thankfully declawed—against his chest and shoved. “Helena made us wait for dinner and I’m so hungry I nearly took a bite out of Uncle Tim, who’s being particularly annoying tonight.”

  “Car trouble.” Park pulled her in and nuzzled the top of her head with his whole face while she squeezed and punched at his biceps. Both of them kept touching each other in rough nudges and strokes, like they couldn’t resist. Neither seemed to care that the woman was totally naked, so Cooper tried to ignore it, too.

  She was taller than average height and had a powerful build, with thick, muscular thighs, broad shoulders and a plump and squishy tummy. Cooper noticed a smattering of tattoos, including a hare very similar looking to the family crest, though this one was leaping triumphantly out of a magician’s hat on her outer thigh. Her hair, a shade or two lighter than Park’s dark brown, was shaved close to the head except for a thick chunk that fell artfully over her forehead. She looked to be in her forties, but it wasn’t easy to tell while her face was still fairly wolfy. Not quite terrifying like before, but the way he’d seen other wolves get sometimes—hyper-angular, her sharp teeth peeking out between her lips, and the irises of her eyes glowing and blotting out the whites. Still, Cooper could see bits of Park in her face, a familiar nose and chin. Now that she had a chin, anyway.

  He let out a shaky exhale that sounded like a barely suppressed whimper and the siblings turned toward him. The woman’s expression was unabashedly curious, Park’s...nervous.

  Nervous over how you’ll react to seeing a wolf shift for the first time, Cooper thought. He quickly pulled his slack-jawed face into a smile, but there was nothing he could do about the trembling in his legs or the way his heart was beating out of his chest. He wasn’t disgusted or afraid, not logically. But deeper than logic he had just seen a giant wolf snap, crackle and pop into the shape of a woman, and his reptilian, prey brain had already packed its bags and was halfway back to the border. He compensated by smiling even harder.

  Park grimaced at the result and tugged at his own hair again. “Cooper, this is my big sister Camille. Cami, my boyfriend, Cooper.”

  Cooper remembered the people in Florence mentioning Camille before back on their first case. He also remembered thinking she’d been their best suspect in a string of brutal murders, but he hadn’t spent quite that much time alone the last three months to think that was the icebreaker to lead with.

  “Good to meet you.” Cooper started to offer his hand to shake, but still thrown by her nudity—and yes, from the image of her nose and lip fused together a couple seconds ago—he jerked it up into a weird half wave, half salute.

  Camille mockingly saluted back. An abducted waitress had gone to Camille for help with her stalker and the man had disappeared only to be found deep in the White Mountain Forest, never able to harass anything more than the worms that fed on him. Jefferson, Cooper’s ex-partner in the BSI—and current-psycho in a cell—had actually killed him. But more than just Cooper had easily believed Camille plenty capable and the wolves in town had been edgy and deferential at any mention of her and the Park family. Cooper could see why.

  “She looks after the Florence property with her husband, Ricky,” was all Park had said, as if that explained it. But there was something more primal to it than that.

  Camille’s eyes were sharp, and despite being naked she exuded a sort of power and comfort with herself most people had to pay to have tailored into a bespoke suit.

  Being naked... “Oh my god, you must be freezing,” Cooper stuttered, ripping off his coat and offering it to her.

  “Bit nippy,” Camille said, sounding cautious and almost perturbed, as if his gesture was bizarre. She hesitated one more moment, then accepted the offered jacket and draped it over her shoulders without bothering to zip it up. He saw her sniff the collar lightly and frown. “Ugh. Is that—” She shot Cooper a critical glance. “Car trouble, hmm? And who exactly did you call to check under your hood?”

  She turned to Park then, all big sister, stern with just a glint of a tease around the mouth, and Park shook his head, quickly grimacing.

  Camille sniffed again, her frown deepened and the tease disappeared. Her expression was confused and a little disgusted. “Why do you stink like...” She trailed off, inhaled deeply and turned wide-eyed and upset to stare at Park.

  Well. Two for two. That seemed to settle that. Mai was not an anomaly. Park had not told any of his family Cooper was human. Why not? Was it...bad? Was he ashamed? Should Cooper be? From the reactions so far the answer seemed to be yes.

  “Yeah,” Cooper said, because someone had to. The silence was too much. “Lousy detergent.” Lousy genetic code.

  “Right. I should have noticed. Before.” Camille pulled the jacket closed tight as if she was suddenly uncomfortable and her face—which had slowly, almost lazily been finding its way back from feral wolf woman—was abruptly, unremarkably human.

  “Sorry,” Cooper blurted. He felt guilty. As if he had witnessed her shift under false pretenses. But it wasn’t him who had lied, or even concealed the truth. What was Park’s plan? Did he really think they wouldn’t fucking notice? Or had he just not cared, using Cooper as some kind of statement in a tense family relationship he’d refused to explain?

  Cooper hugged himself, feeling a little sick. His only question now was how mad were you allowed to get at your boyfriend while he was in mourning.

  Park looked like he was making similar calculations. Before Camille could respond, he nodded at the house. “Helena is calling us in. Can we talk about this later?”

  “Later,” Cooper agreed. He picked up the cat carrier.

  “Oh, look. Another delightful surprise,” Camille said with enough sarcasm
to curdle the air. “You brought a pet, too.”

  Park hissed at her softly.

  “Uh, this is Boogie. My cat.”

  “Charming,” Camille said flatly. “As in Boogie Woogie?”

  “As in ‘Boot Scootin’ Boogie,’” Cooper mumbled. “Her markings kind of look like cowboy boots and she does this thing with her paws... You don’t care, never mind.”

  Why couldn’t car accidents happen at times like this? Or a nice convenient sinkhole? He never heard about a good old-fashioned sinkhole anymore. That might be the only thing that could save him from Camille’s incredulous and well-past-disgusted look.

  “This—” she gestured at him “—you’re born as. That—” she glared at the cat carrier “—is a choice. And if I were you, I’d choose not to bring her inside.”

  “I can’t leave her out here!” Cooper said, appalled. Was it too late to just highjack a car and make a break for it? This experiment had failed. He wanted to be home, in his apartment, under the covers.

  “It’s not coming in the house,” Camille said slowly, with an unnecessary amount of challenge in her voice.

  The first strike was smelling like he’d gotten up close and personal with that goddamn mystery wolf, the second strike was being a human who had witnessed a deeply personal shift. He hadn’t expected Boogie to be strike three, but here they were. Not even in the door yet and the mighty Casey had struck out.

  “We can put her in the barn,” Park suggested. Cooper made a sound of protest. “It’s fully renovated, insulated and heated.”

  “You don’t mean the South Annex. What about the—”

  Park gave her a warning look. “I’m sure it will be fine. The cat will probably be happier and calmer there in a manageable space than wandering around the whole house.”

  “Plus our uncle Marcus is super allergic,” Camille added. “And so are Jackie and Mai’s kids. And Uncle Stuart just plain hates cats. As does Tim. And Bethany. And—”