“Darling, it’s not even eleven p.m. You’re embarrassing us both.”
“That doesn’t make it okay,” Cooper said as he rubbed his eyes roughly, forcing himself into a more alert state. “This is extremely not okay. I could have been...busy.”
Eli pointedly eyed the poker and the bottle of wine abandoned on the nightstand. “Yes, I’ve obviously interrupted a thrilling evening.” He held up his hands defensively when Cooper started to sputter. “I did knock, you know. Quite loudly and for a very long time. I could clearly hear you were in here. What if you were incapacitated by some villain? Tied to a running table saw or in a glass box slowly filling with water? All while I stood outside twiddling my thumbs because of some outdated, human, capitalist construct of personal property? Think of the guilt I would have suffered. It would have killed me outright. How would you feel then?”
“Pretty bad since I’m apparently also dead à la’80s spy thriller,” Cooper said, but he put the poker down and didn’t ask Eli to leave, irritation losing ground fast to curiosity.
“I know the hour is unconventional, but I’m in a rather time-sensitive situation. One might even say, an emergency,” Eli said, moving closer. He made as if to sit on the bench at the end of the bed before sniffing the air delicately, and briefly twitched a small moue of distaste.
Cooper flushed in awareness of what the bench probably smelled like to a sensitive nose. “That’s what you get when you barge into someone’s bedroom uninvited,” he said, refusing to feel ashamed.
“Did I say anything?” Eli protested. “Did I even breathe a complaint? As you’re living with one of us now, someone ought to teach you basic werewolf etiquette. Lesson number one, never draw attention to others’ private scents. Even when the seat your host offers you stinks like a come rag,” he added in a mutter, and for just one moment, his sharp, hyper-enunciated speech slipped into a broader, rural accent. Something northern, certainly. But from where exactly, Cooper couldn’t tell with so little to go on.
The unexpected crack in Eli’s usually controlled persona along with all the other obvious signs of exhaustion he’d noticed that afternoon made Cooper reluctant to kick him out.
Clearly sensing weakness, Eli widened his eyes pitifully and spoke in a gentle, broken voice. “Will you really turn me away? Now, in the very darkest hour of my need?”
Cooper sighed. “Fine. You can tell me about your emergency downstairs.” He made to stand up, then realized he’d already used his boxers as the come rag in question and passed out naked. He adjusted the sheets self-consciously in his lap. “Er, could you give me a minute?”
“No need to trouble yourself, darling. This will do fine,” Eli said, immediately sounding like his old self, again, before leaping up and over the bench in a distinctly inhuman manner to land gracefully in the bed.
Cooper squawked. “You can’t—I’m not dressed!”
“Werewolf etiquette lesson number two: the naked body is not inherently sexual and should never be treated as such unless explicitly invited to do so.”
“Well, excuse the fuck out of me, Miss Manners,” Cooper said.
Eli adopted another absurd pout. “You don’t really mind, do you? Of course, I’ll leave if you say you do. It’s just that I’m feeling awfully emotionally fragile today, and this room is so soothing with all its”—Eli cast his eye around—”tarnished brass detailing and crushed velvet upholstery.”
“Oliver decorated,” Cooper murmured defensively.
“Mmmm, yes. I rather did think I detected his reclusive Fifth Avenue heiress touch.”
Eli and Cooper exchanged knowing looks and they both laughed, some of the tension easing.
“All right, fine, stay if you’re staying. What’s this emergency?”
“To be honest, I’m in a bit of a pickle.” Eli faltered and fell silent. It was so out of character, Cooper didn’t realize what was happening until a full minute had passed.
“What, uh, what sort of pickle?” he prompted.
Eli cleared his throat. “I’m—well, you see, I’m being blackmailed.” He glanced quickly at Cooper and then away.
“Okay,” Cooper said calmly. “By who?”
“I’m not sure I can properly explain without giving you a coveted peek into my origin story.” Eli hesitated, then settled delicately into Park’s spot, over the covers and sitting up against the headboard. It was awkward for Cooper to look at him like that, being side by side, but from the way Eli turned his head slightly away and avoided eye contact, Cooper guessed that was intentional. “You see, I was not always the sophisticated wolf-about-town you know and love so well.”
Cooper raised an eyebrow but let that go.
“I believe I once told you that before the Park family took me in, I was involved with a rebel pack out west. Has Ollie told you anything else about my past?”
“No,” Cooper replied honestly. “He’s said rebel packs are unpredictable and cruel with an obsession for submission. But that your story is yours to tell.”
Eli rolled his eyes. “How endlessly morally superior of him.”
He tapped restlessly at his own thighs, and Cooper noticed his nails looked slightly longer and pointier than one would expect, then shrank, then grew again, never quite fully becoming claws. Of course, Cooper was plenty familiar with shifts by now. But he had never seen a wolf play so delicately with their own transformation before. The degree of control necessary to keep the changes infinitesimal, never becoming fully nails or fully claws... It was almost mesmerizing.
Cooper got so lost in watching, he jumped a little when Eli finally spoke. “I became involved with the rebels as a very young man. Still a child, really. For reasons best left in the past, I was a terribly vulnerable and naïve creature. Not that any child should be expected to be savvy. But I was...very new, to everything, and desperate for connection to my own kind. The alpha of the pack was a man named James. He found—found me.” Eli stuttered slightly. “I thought he was the cleverest, worldliest person I’d ever met. I practically begged him to let me join.”
Eli’s eyes flickered, and he pulled his cell out of his pocket, swiped through it and then showed Cooper a photo of a man, clearly taken covertly at a distance. The image was zoomed in, blurry, and the man was wearing sunglasses and speaking into a phone, face half hidden. Beyond being an older white guy with a pretty tattoo of leaves and flowers covering his bare forearm, it was hard to determine anything about him.
“In some ways you could say he was the first werewolf I’d ever met. He was definitely the first alpha of a pack I’d ever met,” Eli said. He took the phone back and studied the photo himself, though Cooper got the feeling from the speed with which he’d pulled it up that Eli already had it memorized like the back of his hand, had spent hours staring at it. “I was desperate to prove my worth to him, whatever it took.” His expression turned wry and he put the phone away. “Of course, that went about as well as it always does.”
Cooper winced—Eli’s words striking a little too close to home—but quickly pushed the thoughts back, not trying to steal focus. “What happened?”
Eli looked at Cooper, assessing. “I have a somewhat uncommon talent. I don’t suppose Ollie has mentioned that either.”
“Actually,” Cooper said, remembering a conversation they’d had directly after meeting Eli for the first time, “I think he did say something about you having valuable assets but didn’t explain what that meant.” He was acting unsure, but he remembered the conversation clear as day. The exact wording had stuck in his brain because he’d been a little, ah, jealous at the time and had repeatedly wondered what said assets were, exactly.
“Hmmm,” Eli said, studying Cooper’s expression. “Undoubtedly, I’m equally talented at whatever you’re imagining right now that’s put such a dazed look on your face. But I was actually referring to one of my nonsexual gifts. Have you heard the term
slipping?”
Cooper shook his head, and Eli explained, “It’s basically being able to shift specific parts of your body without triggering a full change. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, most wolves can slip their eyes.” Eli’s irises expanded so that the white disappeared. “Or their claws.” He flipped Cooper an excessively sharp bird. “It can be intentional, instinctual or tied to our emotions.”
“Same as fully shifting, right?” Cooper asked, oddly invigorated to be talking about this so openly. Park rarely brought it up and Cooper didn’t feel right pushing him to. But Eli seemed very comfortable talking about the subject. Far more relaxed than when speaking about James. “Oliver once told me that poor emotional control can lead to someone losing control of their shift as well.”
Eli tilted his head. “That can be true, yes. But shifting is a highly individualized experience. I suppose none of us can truly know what it feels like to anyone else. I’ve often heard Ollie describe his shift as ripping off something that’s stuck to him. A pleasurable pain. Immediate. Freeing. For others it’s a methodical and agonizing reorganization of their very bones. Many, many more exist somewhere along the vast expanse in between.”
Cooper nodded, all of this aligning with what he’d observed himself.
“The thing is,” Eli continued, “I’ve never quite understood what they mean. This description of transforming from one thing to another—I don’t experience that.”
“You don’t shift?” Cooper said, confused, and immediately kicked himself—he’d literally seen Eli in fur that afternoon—but for once Eli didn’t mock him.
“It’s more that I never quite stop shifting,” he said thoughtfully. “If most of us board a shuttle between two distinct stops, my body...decides to go on a walkabout, see the sights, wander as far or as near in any possible direction that I desire.” He shook his head. “The point is, this makes me unusually good at slipping.”
“Like what you were doing with your claws before,” Cooper guessed.
“Yes, but not just with claws and eyes.”
Eli reached up and ran his fingers through his own dark hair and pulled a chunk of it upward. Except it wasn’t hair—it was a single, pointed, furry wolf’s ear. Seemingly just plucked from the top of his head. As soon as Cooper registered it, Eli was tugging the ear flat to the scalp and let his hand keep falling, smoothing down the side of his face to reveal his usual human ear. Had that disappeared when the other one had appeared? Presumably so, but Cooper hadn’t even noticed.
“Am I drunk?” he wondered.
“Possibly,” Eli said cheerfully. “But you saw what you saw. I can slip most any part of myself to most any degree. It can be quite the horror show, I’m told.”
“I think it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” Cooper blurted out. “Sorry. I’m just—that was incredible.”
Eli eyed him beadily. “Yes, well. I don’t know what do with this earnest Cooper. Kindly return to your usual irritating self, posthaste.”
Cooper cleared his throat. “No, I mean, yeah. So, this is what you told James?”
Eli hummed confirmation. “He definitely saw my worth then. Under James’s leadership and with my abilities, the pack became, well, rather prolific thieves.”
“Just because you can slip?” Cooper asked, confused.
“I think you’re underestimating how advantageous it can be to bend your joints forward and backward at will, change your face just subtly enough to look completely unrecognizable, or shrink your body to half the size while retaining use of your thumbs. Never mind being able to covertly and publicly pull up a whole other set of senses that work infinitely better than those of even other wolves in skin.”
That...made sense. “Point taken. Please, continue.”
“We stole from other rebels, the humans, even the nearby ruling packs. We accumulated quite a lot of money and quite a lot of enemies in a very short amount of time. The water, as they say, was getting hot.” Eli fell silent, and Cooper waited as patiently as he could, though he was fascinated to know the story.
It was a long couple of moments before Eli spoke again. “I’m not sure what made James do what he did, exactly. If something happened or if he could just sense our luck was running out. He always did have a knack for staying ahead of the shit storm. Untouched.”
His eyes closed and he took a deep breath. “To make the long story short, a group of humans became aware of us, or thought they were, anyway. We had no one to turn to without admitting our own guilt. James told me he had a plan. He just needed my help, my trust, and we’d all be fine. Of course, he was lying. He’d made his own deal with the humans. His safe escape with half the fortune we’d acquired in exchange for...me. A very, very slipped me. Humans have an easier time believing the only monster in the room is the one that looks monstrous. James didn’t look like a monster, so he could convince them I was the only unnatural thing there and just...walk away. He left me trapped with people who kept me in fur on a chain like a guard dog, a yard pet.”
Eli opened his eyes but didn’t quite look at Cooper. “Even still, I thought it was all part of one of his clever plans and that he was coming back to get me any day now. I don’t remember when I finally realized no one was coming. I don’t remember a lot about that time in the usual sense. When Ollie and his uncle found me, I’d been in fur for quite a long time.”
“Jesus,” Cooper murmured, feeling ill.
“Mmm. The Park pack did what ruling packs are good for. Bought silence, pulled strings, sent lives hurtling toward certain disaster. I wasn’t really tuned in for that. Afterward, they took me in. Gave me a chance to heal, the choice to stay with them, if I wished, and a promise that they would never force me to use my slip.”
“And James?”
“In the wind. Later I found out James had betrayed the rest of the rebels as well. Everyone was dead and he’d just walked away scot-free. The humans were evil, hateful creatures, but it was James I was most angry at. He was my pack, my kin, my kind. He knew what it would do to me to be treated like—like that. He knew.” Eli’s voice cracked a bit. He pursed his lips and shook his head as if to keep the words inside. The silence lingered on, growing increasingly tense and painful. Not between the two of them, but between Eli and himself. Like a dark, malignant thing within him had heard its name called and woken from a long slumber.
“Are you okay?” Cooper asked.
Eli squinted in the middle distance, then shook his head slightly again. A small, fragile gesture, all the more painful because small and fragile just didn’t suit Eli’s personality at all.
“Right.” Cooper nodded. He wondered if he should reach out and touch him in comfort, but quickly dismissed it. Cooper sure as hell wouldn’t want to be touched right now, and he had a sense Eli was more like him in certain ways than not. “Do you want a drink?” he asked, instead.
Eli’s expression turned surprised and briefly unguarded. “I could use a tipple.”
Cooper leaned out of bed, grateful he’d left the wine bottle here to deal with in the morning. He only had the one glass, but poured generously and offered it to Eli, who held it in both hands and swirled it gently, less like a sommelier and more like he was grateful to have something to do with his hands. Something to focus on.
“I never could decide if I should go looking for him or not,” Eli said abruptly. “People like to throw around words like closure and forgiveness, but I’ve long suspected that’s because they don’t want to admit how often healing is cruelly arbitrary. Some things just hurt until they don’t anymore and no one can tell you why, so they pretend you must have gotten closure.” He sighed. “Regardless, the decision was taken out of my hands. A month ago, I got a...letter. He found me.”
“James is blackmailing you?” Cooper asked, not sure if he was more astonished or repelled. Hadn’t the man done enough harm?
Eli shrugged, looki
ng exhausted. “He has a...recording. Incontrovertible proof of what I can do and what I did do. He wants payment or he’ll send it to those big packs we stole from.”
“But wouldn’t they come after him as well?”
“What’s more valuable, revenge for money lost or a brand-new key to the bank? Anonymity is the only thing protecting me right now.”
Cooper nodded.
“I tracked him down here to DC. He works as a zookeeper. Rest assured the symbolic resonance isn’t lost on me.” Eli’s mouth twisted into the semblance of a smile and he stared at the swirling wine. “I’d always felt he was out there still. But there’s a difference between knowing someone’s alive and seeing them living. Breathing air, drinking coffee, existing. Like he still has that right.”
“What did you do?”
“I followed him,” Eli admitted. “I started following him a lot.”
“To kill him?” Cooper asked.
Eli held eye contact. “Would you? If you were me?”
Cooper tried to imagine being in Eli’s shoes. Realized he couldn’t even begin to.
Eli didn’t wait long for an answer. Just shrugged and looked away again. “All I knew was I wasn’t going to let him control me like that. Not again. Not after what happened last time. It’s money now, but what happens if he wants something else later? I just want this to end.”
“I can talk to Cola, my boss,” Cooper said. “She can—”
“The statute of limitations has long passed in all states we stole within,” Eli said hastily. “So if you’re thinking of turning me in—”
“Of course that’s not what I meant,” Cooper snapped. The thought had honestly not even crossed his mind. Even if Eli could still be charged—a child on his own, manipulated into stealing by the closest thing to family he seemed to have, abused, abandoned, and tortured, now being blackmailed twenty years later, so let’s send him to prison? What the fuck was that supposed to do?
“I meant Cola can help you with the blackmail,” Cooper said.
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