Thrown to the Wolves (Big Bad Wolf) Page 8

  Camille and Delia flanked Park and seemed to be vying for his attention in a close family sort of way, almost as much as Jacqueline’s kids were for hers. Interestingly, Camille’s husband, Ricky—a short and skinny Black man with glasses and some kind of comic book figures on his T-shirt—seemed to be in on the competition as well and the three of them were getting progressively louder, speaking over each other in order to drag Park out of his poor mood and update him on their own lives and gossip about the three missing siblings and their families.

  “Where the hell is Griffin?” Park asked the table. “I thought he’d be here before the service tomorrow.”

  “Your brother won’t be making it, after all. He had unexpected business in Halifax,” Helena said. “Allana’s people demanded a meeting.”

  “It’s already beginning,” Stuart muttered, tugging at the corner of his mustache. He was a slightly reedier, grayer and more serious-looking version of Marcus. His face was heavily lined from years of frowning and he had an ugly, puckered scar starting behind his ear that disappeared into his shirt collar. “Vultures. Can’t even give us a day to mourn.”

  “Dad,” Delia said warningly. “Let’s not.”

  “Am I wrong?” Stuart looked around the table, gaze finally landing on his mother. He leaned toward her eagerly. “Now more than ever we should think about selling off some of the reserve land. Really focus our resources.”

  “No,” Helena said simply, not even looking at her son.

  “Not all of it. Even just a thousand acres would be a start. We could stay involved. Delia’s overseen countless housing development projects for underprivileged populations.”

  “It isn’t a terrible idea, Helena,” Tim said lightly. “A spot of charity wouldn’t look amiss during a time like this, and I know Griffin would rather be here with his family than in property renegotiations with Allana’s pack yet again.”

  “But he does so, anyway,” Helena said, calmly stirring her soup, “because it is his responsibility to the land. Something Stuart has never understood.”

  A flash of hurt passed over her son’s features and he looked quickly down.

  That seemed to be that. The conversation quickly shifted to other things, everyone eager to move past the tension, but Cooper continued to watch Stuart subtly.

  “He came back to the pack after he lost his wife. Didn’t want to raise Delia on his own,” Park had said in the car when giving Cooper a rundown on his family. “That’s what brought him back to the pack.”

  “Back? What made him leave?”

  Park had paused. “They didn’t approve of his relationship with Delia’s mother, I think. I don’t know the details, it was before I was born. And Uncle Stuart had already returned by the time my siblings and I were...found.”

  Found starving and abandoned by his parents.

  “So he decided he couldn’t do the single dad thing and they just welcomed your uncle back, no problem?” Cooper said when he had his voice under control.

  “Oh, there were problems. He was the firstborn and that...meant something back then. He lost his position in the pack. Untrustworthiness makes a weak link,” Park had added in a gruff voice that wasn’t his own, like he was quoting someone.

  “You mean he was next in line to be the alpha and now he’s not?”

  Park had frowned. “I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”

  “I know you wouldn’t. I didn’t realize you could reenlist in a pack,” Cooper had said carefully, watching Park’s expression.

  He’d grunted, noncommittal. “It helped that he had three-year-old Delia in tow. They weren’t going to turn her away. And by then my parents had already run off to join the WIP and the pack was looking pretty thin. I guess some betrayals are less forgivable than others. But even still sometimes...well. No one holds a grudge like a wolf.”

  Stuart was picking at his food quietly and tugging the corner of his mustache. He seemed to listen to everything around him but didn’t engage longer than an offhand comment here and there, his eyes occasionally drifting back to his mother. He didn’t particularly look like a man who would run away for true love. But life had a cruel way of scrubbing the shine off people. Cooper felt oddly sympathetic for the guy. He’d given up everything to follow his heart only to lose her and have to come crawling back to his mother, who still seemed to hold it against him, thirty years later. Now his nephew had shown up with his own unconstitutional lover and everyone was being...well, not great. But they hadn’t been cast out in a hail of stones and curses, either. In Stuart’s position, Cooper might have been a bit of a dick as well.

  Of course, their situation was different. Park was already not part of the pack, so they couldn’t remove him. But if he was, and his family had made him choose between them and Cooper, what would he have done?

  Or maybe that’s exactly why he didn’t tell them about you, Cooper thought. Just because they weren’t pack anymore didn’t mean Park didn’t love them. Didn’t want to lose them.

  Cooper felt suddenly ill. He exhaled noisily.

  Stuart looked up and caught him staring. He curled his lip, flashing his teeth. What could just be an awkward smile to anyone who didn’t recognize it for what it was: a warning.

  “Sorry,” Cooper said quickly, embarrassed. But he couldn’t bring himself to look away. This seemed to piss the man off more and his teeth elongated slightly.

  “Goodness, Stuart,” Lorelei said airily, and Cooper looked to her, the moment broken. “Very bad energy. Very bad. The boy already looks like he’s been through enough.”

  “Yes, we heard about your accident,” Marcus added while his wife, Bethany, made a sympathetic cooing sound and poured herself another glass of wine.

  “So unlucky,” she said. “We’ve never had a problem with Michael’s cars before, have we, love?”

  “You always use the same rental company?” Cooper asked.

  “Oh yes,” Marcus said. “Got to support the local wolves, don’t we?”

  Everyone around his end of the table seemed to get a kick out of that. Cooper smiled, too, as if he understood what the fuck they were talking about. Halifax wasn’t particularly local, he thought, but bit his tongue. After all, he’d run into wolves who recognized the Park name as far south as Maryland. Or maybe it was a Canada thing.

  “It’s something our father always said,” Marcus explained kindly, clearly seeing Cooper’s confusion.

  “Every time you buy human, a wolf goes hungry,” Lorelei said gruffly, clearly quoting her father now, too. “Give a human a dime and he’ll take your dinner.”

  Startled by their bluntness, Cooper glanced down the table to Park, who was watching him unhappily. Conversations like this, highlighting the separation between humans and wolves, were exactly the sort of thing Park tried to avoid at all costs. Cooper hadn’t realized just how prevalent they must have been when he was growing up.

  Another perfectly understandable reason why he’d avoided telling them about you. Understandable, not good. But it wasn’t like Park had planned this trip and had plenty of time to come clean. They were here for the unexpected death of what sounded like a pretty terrifying man. A little more of Cooper’s anger eased.

  Lorelei’s voice had returned to its usual airy self. “Remember that time we were in Strasbourg and Marcus bought, what was it, popcorn? Ice cream?”

  “Candied nuts from a human street vendor,” Marcus said. “Forget apples in Eden, this was the real unforgivable sin.”

  “Joe made him hunt for his food for the rest of the vacation.” Lorelei laughed. “But of course he was terrible at it.”

  Marcus flushed but laughed at himself. “I really was. Benjy kept trying to sneak me bits of dinner.” Benjy, Cooper knew, was Park’s father’s name, though they never spoke of him. “But he only brought me all the parts he didn’t like—and neither did I.”

 
Marcus and his siblings chuckled. Even Stuart was smiling fondly. Helena’s gaze was distant, like she wasn’t even listening, and really, who could blame her. Cooper thought this was a pretty fucked-up story to choose as a fun memory of dear ol’ Dad on the eve of his wake.

  “Then Joe caught us and Benjy tried to pretend like it wasn’t from him,” Marcus continued. “Like I’d really managed to hunt down pumpkin soup in the middle of the Black Forest.” They all laughed again. “I really could have used Raymond’s help back then.”

  “Raymond is your son, right?” Cooper said, looking between Tim and Lorelei. He recognized the name and was thankful to finally have something to add to the conversation. “So is he a good hunter or does he just really like pumpkin soup?”

  A tense silence fell over the group.

  “A good hunter?” Tim said stiffly. To Cooper’s right Stuart was watching them, expression amused.

  “Sorry, I thought that’s what you meant by, um, using his help,” Cooper fumbled.

  “No, you’re quite right,” Lorelei interrupted him, though she was looking at her ex-husband as she said it. “Raymond is very...self-sufficient.”

  “Right.” Cooper had clearly said something wrong but for the life of him couldn’t figure out what or how to move past it. “Is he traveling up tomorrow?”

  “He’s already here, actually.” Cooper glanced around the table, startled, but she flapped her hand impatiently and corrected herself, “I mean he’s in the area.”

  “Should we leave a bowl out for him?” Stuart asked. His tone was pleasant enough, but from the reactions around the table the meaning was anything but. Lorelei blinked rapidly, face becoming eerily vacant, and for just a moment Tim’s eyes flashed with pure hate. Apparently the time for sibling camaraderie was gone.

  “Dad,” Delia said sharply from the end of the table.

  “Mai, did you happen to pick up more salt for the driveway while in town?” Marcus asked, obviously the peacekeeper of the family, and the conversation turned to banal things once more.

  Cooper could feel Helena’s eyes on him, her stare so intense he had to look away. He kept his mouth shut for the rest of the meal and instead watched Park mediate the attentions of Camille, Ricky and Delia, listening to each equally while pulling the occasional teary-eyed child into his lap for a snuggle and exchanging quiet laughter with Jacqueline and Mai.

  Seeing him like this made Cooper’s chest tighten up, and the last of his anger begin to fade. Almost from the start he’d noticed Park craved attention, needed to be around people, at least sometimes, in a way Cooper never did. At first he assumed it was in that classic middle child way but was now sure it ran deeper than that. Perhaps this need for others came from his parents’ abandonment. Perhaps it was buried in his very nature. Whether Park chose to use the A word or not, he was an alpha in need of a pack.

  And yet Park was alone almost as often as Cooper was. It was not something he particularly noticed when it was just the two of them. But watching Park juggle his siblings and nieces and nephews with ease while Cooper sat in painfully awkward silence on the other end of the table, unable to make a simple soup joke without wreaking havoc, he had to wonder if he was holding Park back from something.

  Rather than be pissed that Park had led him unaware and unprepared into this situation, he asked himself why he had done it. Was who and what Cooper was holding him back from having this? Was his being here forcing Park to choose?

  Could you see yourself living somewhere like this?

  Cooper coughed, choking on a spicy strip of pepper. Park’s gaze immediately slid toward him in concern, and Cooper shook his head and tried to smile reassuringly. I’m fine. Park raised an eyebrow but turned haltingly back to his brother-in-law, Ricky, who was describing the latest Florence drama. Chief Brown, whom they’d worked with on their first case together, had apparently made a very public declaration of love for snarly bar owner Rudi and there were already rumors of an engagement.

  Well, could Cooper see himself someplace like this? Or Florence? Settling down out of the city and maybe even starting a few rumors of their own...

  He ducked his head, feeling a warmth spread inside him that for once had nothing to do with anger or embarrassment. He was getting ahead of himself. Park hadn’t even been able to bring himself to tell his family Cooper was a boring human, and a pretty awkward one at that. They had a lot to work on before even considering...well.

  Cooper focused on his food for the rest of dinner. When the meal was finished, he didn’t notice who was the first to leave the table.

  * * *

  Cooper slipped into the barn and closed the door behind him with a sigh. He felt like he’d been running on empty for at least the last two hours. The cut above his eye was throbbing and his leg below the knee was pure deadweight. Fortunately, dinner had been remarkably fast. No one at the table seemed inclined to linger once the food was gone, and it was easy for Cooper to slip out with a murmured excuse that he needed to check on his cat. The barn was about a ten-minute stumble away from the house, down a steep but well-shoveled path into a valley blocked from the house by a cliffside and a ton of pine trees. It hadn’t started snowing yet, but the air was a wet, penetrating sort of cold that promised a storm any second, and it was pitch-black.

  The barn was partially converted; about half of the space maintained the structures of its original purpose—a well-worn ladder led up to a darkened loft built above four long-empty horse stalls and various rusty tools hung neatly on the wood walls—but the other half looked more like a clubhouse or comfortable meeting room than anything else. It was well-heated, thick colorful rugs covered the floor, and someone had set up a mismatch of couches, slouchy armchairs and a huge wooden table.

  Park had been right. Boogie would obviously be happier here than if she’d been roaming the overwhelmingly large main house or even cooped up in a single bedroom. It was also a nice excuse for him to get away from the others for a bit. In fact, he was half tempted to crash out here on one of the sofas if it meant not having to speak to any more of Park’s family for the rest of the night.

  “Boogie!” Cooper called, clicking his tongue and listening absently for a sign of her. He looked in the stalls. They were immaculately clean, so much so that he would have wondered if they hadn’t just been built for show if not for a very faint, musty animal smell and some damage to the wooden walls and doors. The top part of the swinging stall door had bars built into a little window. He traced the cool iron and shivered.

  “Boogie! Don’t play hard to get,” Cooper tried again.

  Against the wall opposite the stalls, several dark wood dressers were lined up. They seemed out of place in the barn, even with the other furniture. More like something you’d see in a stately bedroom or executive office. Curious, Cooper opened a drawer at random. Clothes. He opened another. More clothes. He examined them closely. Men’s, women’s, gender neutral, bras, underwear, summer, winter, all of varying sizes and newness and styles. If he had to guess, he’d say every member of the family had at least three complete outfits stored in here. He moved to another dresser and found tons of hygiene products and first aid supplies. The next dresser had a ton of nonperishable foods, like jerky, PowerBars, cans of soup, chicken broth and cartons of soy milk. The last was filled with paper files.

  He hovered his hand over the plastic tabs. What had just been an amusing exploration a moment ago now felt like a big mistake.

  Just close the drawer and walk away, Cooper.

  Breathing shallowly and trying to touch as little as possible, he pushed one of the tabs back so he could read it. A name, Alicia Carter, followed by an X and two O’s. He didn’t know what it meant, but he doubted they stood for hugs and kisses.

  A dull thump sounded somewhere behind him. Cooper slammed the drawer shut and listened to the echo in the barn. “Boogie?”

  In his peripheral vision
he thought he saw movement up in the loft, but how had she gotten up there? He squinted at the shadows, and after a long moment he could see a reflective pair of eyes.

  “What are you doing up there, Boogs?” he said a little tentatively, hoping a horrifying possum wasn’t about to leap out at him.

  The eyes disappeared. He strained his ears but couldn’t locate her again. Outside the wind seemed to be picking up, and some loose snow and ice flecked against the one large window near the roof. Cooper moved to the center of the barn into the circle of chairs and couches. Boogie was more likely to approach you when you wanted nothing to do with her. That was probably why she liked Park so much.

  He noticed a map on the table. It had no provinces, territories, states or even country lines drawn in, so it took him an embarrassingly long moment to identify the land shape as Atlantic Canada, Quebec and Northeast America. There were other demarcations he couldn’t identify, though, and these made the recognizable coastline look strange and unfamiliar. He traced one particularly large area with the tip of his finger all the way down the Canadian coast past Maine, New Hampshire, and into what he was pretty sure would be Massachusetts.

  Thud. Cooper jumped and grunted as Boogie leapt up onto the table.

  “Jesus fuck,” he exhaled, heart beating wildly. Boogie just stared at him like he was the one who had done something unexpected and upsetting. He held out an apologetic hand and she picked her way over the map to accept his touch. “Why are you trying to scare me to death, huh? Do I look like I need more excitement today?”