Thrown to the Wolves (Big Bad Wolf) Read online

  Park cut her off. “Okay, thank you, Cami. Not fucking helping.”

  She shrugged. She seemed almost excited for what she obviously expected to be upcoming drama.

  “Ready to meet everyone else?” Park asked.

  “Do I have to be there for that?” Cooper said, and Camille laughed.

  “Oh, Ollie, and here I thought your return to the family seat would be uncomfortable,” she said. “But I’m sure nothing bad will happen now.”

  * * *

  Thanks to what Cooper assumed was Mai’s quick work, no one else seemed terribly surprised by his disappointing humanity or tried to engage him in any more wolf greetings or secret handshakes. In fact, no one seemed inclined to get close to him at all.

  He’d been hoping for an opportunity to freshen up—or at least scrape some blood off his face—but they were all waiting for him as soon as he’d finished setting Boogie up in the barn. Park ran through the briefest of introductions while what felt like the entire family stood at the opposite end of the massive entry hall. Eleven adults and seven kids. All staring at him like he’d tumbled out of an exotic animal cage for their entertainment and repulsion.

  Only Park’s grandmother Helena approached him while the rest of her pack looked on warily from behind. And even she stopped a good three feet away from Cooper before giving him a cool, disinterested welcome. She had to be in her eighties but looked quite a bit younger thanks to her perfect posture. Her white hair was buzzed and her skin was weathered and wrinkled like someone who had spent a lifetime outside, but she was sinewy strong and moved without an ounce of frailty.

  There was something a bit more...off about her than any other wolf he’d ever met. Less likely to pass as your average human granny, especially to those in the know. Partly it was in the way she didn’t blink, not once, while examining him. Partly it was because the youthful fat that softened a face and body had fallen away to reveal a skeletal structure that was just a bit too pointy and strange.

  But there was something else, too. Something that made her seem just this wrong side of wild, even in her loose flannel, leggings and chunky silver and turquoise jewelry. Maybe it was the culture of her generation to try less to fit in with humans. Or maybe when you hit your eighties you lose your very last fuck to give about pretending to be what you’re not. That was certainly his own retirement plan.

  “It’s good to meet you. I’m sorry for your loss,” Cooper said when it became clear she wasn’t going to say anything and the tense silence in the hall became too much for him to bear.

  She gave him a long, appraising look and nodded finally, less in approval and more to signify her inspection was finished. “Thank you. It was generous of you to come so far just to support Oliver.”

  “Oh, well, despite appearances, I’m here of my own free will, I swear.” He pointed at his face. Helena didn’t smile. “I mean, but yeah, of course I want to be here. He’s important to me,” Cooper mumbled, feeling extremely flushed under the eyes of the pack.

  “And how long have you been mates?”

  “Um...” Cooper looked at Park, who was just looking at his feet, unhelpfully. “We met about eight months ago? Right?”

  Park just grunted.

  “And you met where? Oh—” She flapped her hand once up and down in the most unnatural imitation of an oh never mind gesture he’d ever seen. “You met in DC, I suppose. On one of those apps or whatever the people use now. Delia has mentioned that Oliver was seeing someone in town. Though she didn’t tell us...much about you.”

  Helena glanced coolly back at a slim woman in a suit. Delia herself, he assumed. Uncle Stuart’s daughter. She reminded Cooper of one of those preppy white suburban women who runs 5K every morning, manages three charities, commutes into the city to CFO some company and carries little bottles of wine around wherever she goes.

  “I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Cooper myself, Helena,” Delia said, sounding a bit strained. Cooper got the distinct feeling she was in trouble for not giving the family an appropriate heads-up.

  “Actually,” Cooper said, trying to ease the tension, “Oliver and I met through work. We were, ah, partners.”

  “Not for the Trust,” Helena said flatly.

  Cooper glanced at Park, whose face had gone full mask of stone now. “Uh, no. The BSI.”

  The ringing silence in the hall was not curious now, but outright hostile. The temperature felt colder inside than it had out.

  “I see,” Helena said finally. “Well, we best be careful not to step out of line with one of the BSI’s finest in our midst,” she said over her shoulder, and some of the others laughed. “Oliver?” She held out her arm for him to take, as prim and proper as you please. “Shall we eat?”

  Park hesitated and looked to Cooper. Rarely had he seen Park look so miserable, so...unsure. Helena, too, turned to watch him and Cooper forced himself to smile easily and nod. Go ahead. Everything is fine.

  It abso-fucking-lutely was not fine. But what could he do? Was Cooper uncomfortable at the lack of a warm welcome? Of course. Was he hurt and confused that Park had put him in this position by not telling anyone he was bringing home a human or a BSI agent? Obviously. But a surprising and intense defiance had risen up under the disbelieving gaze of the family. There was no way in hell he wanted any of them to see a single crack in their relationship.

  This guy? Really?

  You better believe it.

  He had plenty of time to be pissed at Park later in private. And pissed he sure as hell would be. For now, though, he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing anything less than a solid, happy couple.

  He smiled even harder for the family in the back and gestured them forward. “Lead on.”

  With one last worried look, Park took Helena’s arm and they made their way toward the adjoining dining room. Everything is fine. Cooper started to follow but felt a light touch at his back.

  “Not yet,” a man murmured. He looked a good deal like Park plus twenty or thirty years. Handsome, broad-shouldered and gentle amaretto eyes but with silvery hair, a softer jawline and a fair bit of gut. In his mind’s eye Cooper couldn’t help but imagine Park as an older man. As handsome and debonair as ever. The already creeping wrinkles becoming deep and permanent around his eyes and forehead from decades of exasperation with Cooper.

  He cleared his throat, feeling a flush of warmth in his face. “Uh, sorry.” Past them Park’s family members were moving into the dining room in twos and threes. Mai gave him a small, encouraging smile, Camille a smirk, and the rest just looked curious. Only the children seemed unimpressed by his presence as they giggled and ran past the others. “Is there an order of precedence we go in or something?”

  “Oh, I hope you don’t think we’re as bad as all that.”

  “You know, I’ve been hearing that a lot today and have come to realize it’s Park shorthand for yes, we are that extreme, but I don’t want to give you details. Just shout jump when it’s my turn.”

  The man chuckled genuinely. “Well, maybe we are that bad, but you don’t have a place here, so it doesn’t affect you.” Cooper tried not to flinch at that. He got what the man had meant and he wasn’t wrong. “Truly, I was just hoping we could have a word. I’m Marcus, Oliver’s uncle.”

  He held out his hand to shake and Cooper took it, reexamining him with new eyes. He remembered that name from a conversation he and Park had in Jagger Valley. This was the uncle who had gone against the pack’s orders to tell Park the truth about his parents. He had gotten into some trouble for it, too.

  Park was grateful to him, but Cooper hadn’t been able to see past the question Why not sooner? How could you spend decades telling children their parents were dead when they weren’t? The only reason Marcus finally did confess the truth was because Park’s father had actually died. Now that was a relationship he would never get to have. Not that he had
managed much of a relationship with his still-living mother, who refused to meet with him. But still. Wasn’t knowing the painful truth better than the comforting lies? At least then Park had agency. Though Cooper supposed it all came down to whether you really believed ignorance was bliss.

  Marcus continued, “I just wanted to say I, for one, am happy you’re here.”

  Cooper sighed slightly. “I didn’t realize quite what a minority opinion that would be,” he said. What did Marcus expect him to say? Was he supposed to be thankful his existence wasn’t repellent? He cast a surreptitious look toward the dining room, which Marcus clearly caught.

  “Don’t mind them,” he said. “Nearly every mate brought into this house has undergone some type of inquisition one way or another.”

  “And nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” Cooper said automatically, blinking a bit at being referred to as Park’s mate for the second time in two minutes. “Or me, apparently.”

  “We wolves are known to adapt fast,” Marcus said.

  “I’m sorry you have to. Especially at a difficult time like this,” Cooper said, thinking of Helena’s graven face. It definitely set back his goal to be the most supportive partner he could be when his presence was already kicking up trouble, and he still wasn’t sure how to feel about Park pretty much tossing him in the ring to fend for himself.

  “We’re all just happy Ollie is happy. He’s been punishing himself for far too long.”

  “Punishing himself?” Cooper said lightly, half joking, half asking. “It’s the general consensus back home that perfect Oliver’s never done anything wrong in his life.”

  “And since when does guilt require sin?” Marcus raised his eyebrows, bemused.

  “Well, maybe not sin,” Cooper agreed hesitantly. “But something.”

  “Haven’t you ever felt bad about something that wasn’t your fault? Or even wrong at all? Of course you have. Why apologize for not being what you think we wanted, otherwise.”

  “That wasn’t—I wasn’t apologizing for being me.”

  “Good. Don’t let them make you. No one should feel like a dirty secret.” He gently placed his hand to the back of Cooper’s arm, just above the elbow. “Jump.”

  “S-sorry?” Cooper stuttered. Marcus nodded at the now-empty room. “Oh, I see. So this is my position? At the bottom?”

  Marcus’s eyes crinkled. “Everyone needs to start somewhere. Don’t apologize for that, either,” he whispered.

  Cooper laughed despite himself. The man was a bit odd. Or eccentric, thanks to his wealth. But he was the only family member who had yet to squint at him as if he was the punch line and they were trying to figure out what the joke was.

  They made their way into the dining room. The children had disappeared into the kitchen to eat separately and the rest of the family was all standing around the heavy pine table laden with an absurd amount of food. Cooper could spot two large dishes of fragrant coconut rice, two pots of curry soup and three ginger-heavy vegetable stir-fries served straight out of the wok.

  He wasn’t surprised to see Helena at the head of the table. It was obvious from the way the others moved around her that she was in charge here. He was a little thrown to see Park taking up the other end of the table—shouldn’t it be the next powerful person in the pack? One of the older uncles or aunts?—but his understanding of seating hierarchy was limited to watching period pieces on PBS, so there was an eighty-five percent chance he was talking out his ass.

  Cooper made for Park, but Marcus’s hand tightened slightly on his arm and with a subtle shake of his head nudged him toward the other end of the table with the aunts and uncles and away from where Park sat with his cousin, siblings and their partners. Cooper’s gut tightened, but he accepted his assigned position between an older man and woman. Not that extreme, indeed.

  “My brother Stuart and sister, Lorelei. You all play nice now,” Marcus said quietly, patting Cooper on the shoulder, then left to stand by a quiet, heavily freckled white woman with red hair and glasses who seemed to have started drinking already. Bethany, Marcus’s wife, Cooper remembered from the hall introductions.

  Cooper looked after him longingly. Couldn’t he just work on winning over one—albeit weird—family member? Alternatively, he wondered where Bethany had gotten that generous glass of wine she was cradling. Unfortunately, neither option seemed available to him. He nodded in greeting and his new seatmates—or standing mates—stared at him blankly, as if at a complete loss as to who Cooper was or why he was here. Relatable.

  Stuart was even sneering at him a little. Lorelei at least smiled eventually, but her dark eyes were cold and seemed to catalogue his entire body with a detached sort of curiosity like he was a surprising mushroom that had shown up one day on a favorite walking path and she was making note of his particular flaps, folds and colors to look up later. She was wearing a lot of flowing fabric and looked like the sort of person who could finally tell Cooper what exactly retrograde meant in regards to the planets and if that was supposed to be a good or bad thing. He didn’t need a horoscope to tell him dinner was going to be exhausting.

  He fidgeted, trying to put as little weight as possible on his bad leg, and wondered if there was any subtle way he could readjust the brace. Slowly, keeping his eyes up and engaged—difficult when no one was actually engaging him—Cooper reached down and tugged on a Velcro strap. Which was, of course, when Helena finally pulled her chair out. As if choreographed, everyone sat down as one. Everyone except Cooper, who had to scramble a second behind to follow.

  He was squeezing past an annoyed-looking Stuart, wood chair making monstrous scraping sounds across the floor, when Lorelei gasped. “Stop! If you sit, there will be thirteen at the table.”

  Cooper hovered, ass out, leg trembling, unsure if she was joking or not. “Um...” She didn’t look like she was joking. But then what did she expect him to do, sit at the kids’ table in the kitchen?

  “Oh, let him sit, Lollie,” Stuart said, surprising Cooper. But then maybe the man was worried about another brush-by if Cooper was forced to leave.

  “But someone at the table will die!”

  “Yes. Me. From starvation,” Camille grumbled.

  “No,” Lorelei said breathlessly. “Whoever gets up first will die within the year. And should we really be risking it considering—”

  “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Mai interrupted patiently.

  Cooper glanced at Park, whose expression seemed tighter than usual, then sat. Lorelei whimpered. They tucked into the food, anyway.

  “This looks wonderful,” Cooper said to no one in particular. Best to cast a wide net if he wanted to catch anyone’s attention. “Is it...all vegetarian?”

  “Is that a problem?” Stuart on his right asked.

  “Oh, no, I just meant—I’m supposed to—I have some dietary restrictions,” Cooper said lamely, realized he was touching his belly and dropped his hand quickly.

  “We don’t eat red meat,” Marcus said worriedly, and checked his watch—understated but stylish enough that Cooper was sure it cost more than a month’s rent. “I could run out and grab you something if this doesn’t suit. Ollie didn’t tell us you were ill.”

  “But he was so forthcoming otherwise,” Stuart muttered.

  Hearing his name from the other end of the table, Park perked up. “Who’s ill?”

  “No one,” Cooper said firmly, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut. The last thing he wanted to talk about with Park’s family was his werewolf-shredded gut. “This is fine. I mean, more than fine. I was just...”

  “Surprised?” Stuart asked coolly. “Does the BSI think we simply drag a carcass into a cave?”

  “That’s not what he said.” Park’s voice was tight and angry.

  Stuart laughed. “Because they have such a reputation for always saying what they mean.” Cooper wasn’t sure if he meant th
e BSI, humans or, hell, vegetarians.

  Park started to reply testily, but Cooper cut him off with a hard look. He was frustrated that Park was making a bad situation worse. Maybe it was a lost cause, but he couldn’t help that he still pathetically wanted Park’s family to, well, like him. He’d never met a boyfriend’s family before. Was it too much to ask to at least pretend it was going well? “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any offense. I really just meant everything looks wonderful.”

  “We’re quite committed to sustainable cooking here,” said the man across from Cooper, either throwing him a life preserver or simply oblivious to the way the conversation had turned. This must be Lorelei’s ex-husband, Tim. He looked disturbingly more like Lorelei than she did the rest of her family. He, too, had long, tangled blond-gray hair, glasses, was wearing fabric that looked simultaneously rough and flowing, and had numerous rope necklaces peeking through his partially unbuttoned shirt. Apparently even post-divorce they had continued to be one of those couples that blended styles.

  “Joe thought if you couldn’t hunt it yourself, you shouldn’t be eating it.” Tim winced, expression less than fond. “A little extreme, perhaps, but we do try to keep our food locally sourced. Do you know how high the carbon footprint of the meat industry is?”

  Cooper, in fact, did know. He hastily pretended he did not, just grateful that someone was speaking to him if not kindly, at least without obvious hostility.

  Around them the others began to chat about normal things. Cooper was surprised. Not because a wolf pack liked talking about hockey, but because he’d expected a lot more solemnity from the group in general. But the others seemed to be taking the Park route and entirely ignoring the reason they were all there. They just talked amiably. He heard not one word about tomorrow’s wake. Cooper felt like more of a specter at the feast than the actual dead man.

  The other end of the table was quite clearly the fun end, or at least was trying to be. There Park continued to glance up at Cooper with worry and obvious guilt, but the rest of his family laughed downright merrily around him. Mai sat with her wife, Jacqueline, who was a soft-looking, giggly woman who shared none of Park’s features and spent half her time staring adoringly at Mai and sneaking kisses to her shoulder and the other half sorting out complaints, requests, arguments and Oops, I forgot my question’s that her four children—all under ten—kept reporting to her one at a time from the kitchen.