Wolf in Sheep's Clothing (Big Bad Wolf)

by Charlie Adhara

  “Ranger’s here a lot, from what I’ve seen,” Park disagreed.

  “But that room? It feels more like someone is drawing our attention specifically to Kreuger. Wants everyone to think he killed Llcaj.”

  “Maybe he did,” Park said. “Something clearly happened between Llcaj and Reggie. Kreuger feels protective or possessive or jealous, pick your poison. So he kills Llcaj and runs. Maybe it really is that simple and the planted shirt is another game entirely.”

  “To what end?”

  Park shook his head. “I think we should take a trip to the lumber mill. Talk to the employees. Find out a little more about Llcaj and this supposed trespassing and theft.”

  They made a quick plan to hike up to the mill. Cooper briefly worried it would look suspicious, traipsing through the woods in weather like this, but it was only a mile away when one took the back trails, and while it was certainly windy outside, the hurricane wasn’t supposed to actually hit until much later that night or the next morning.

  “I doubt we’ll even be the only couple heading outside,” Park reassured him. “They’ll all want to get a good run in if we’re going to be cooped up tomorrow.”

  “All right. So we show up to the mill and claim we got lost,” Cooper said. “Tell them we’re tired. I’m tired,” he corrected, rolling his eyes at Park’s skeptical face. “And that we’re there to beg a ride back to the retreat. Not a completely unreasonable cover story.”

  Park started to respond, but Vanessa was walking back in their direction. “And that’s why I don’t eat lamb,” he said.

  Cooper nodded as she continued past them to the front of the room to call their attention.

  “Thank you for your patience and participation,” Vanessa said, voice clear and gentle. “We’re nearly to the end of today’s workshop. After our last exercise, I encourage you all to take the rest of the afternoon to continue building intimacy with your mate.” She smiled. “You’re welcome to take a candle.” The group laughed.

  Cooper was mildly astonished. Half the advice this place gave was to go have sex. “Morning, noon and night, how is there room for afternoon delight?” he whispered to Park.

  “Hmmm, I’m unfamiliar with that particular sailor’s warning,” Park said. Cooper coughed over a laugh and Jimmy shot him a dirty look.

  “Now, to solidify the work we’ve done together we’re going to finish on a classic exercise of nonverbal communication.” She spread her hands and looked around. “Sharing a hug.” The room awwed. “For five consecutive minutes.” Cooper groaned.

  The point, Vanessa explained, was to move past the initial comfort, into awkwardness and then, through some sort of hug enlightenment, into a deeper emotional connection.

  “I’m in hell,” Cooper muttered into Park’s neck, five seconds into their hug. He felt Park shake with suppressed laughter then squeeze him gently around the waist.

  Over his shoulder, Cooper observed the other couples, curiously. Some were laughing, some were holding each other stiffly, one man and woman whose names he’d forgotten were hugging and pressing their foreheads together and making continuous eye contact which made Cooper uncomfortable to even look at, never mind do.

  Five minutes was a very long time to just stand there and hold someone, even for people who loved hugs. Cooper did not. Though he wasn’t strictly opposed to them, either. He was just...meh about the whole practice. He had to be in the right mood for it. That was just his personality.

  Unless it’s a symptom, too. Cooper stiffened at the errant thought. Surely not. He’d never been one to crave touch as comfort. Not even as a kid.

  But then before today he would have said he’d always been on the short-tempered side, too. Always a bit nervous and jumpy, quick to react, observant, wary. Now all these facets of himself were being called into question. Was that really him? Or was it the PTSD? How could he ever be sure?

  Park had said his core self was contrary. A joke, of course, but who was he at his core if not...this? A super-alpha, like Park thought? A survivor, as Vanessa had alluded to? The obedient mate of the most feared wolf on the eastern seaboard? A dramatic little thing?

  Everyone seemed to know who he was. Everyone but Cooper.

  Park’s arms loosened, dropping gently away. “You’re uncomfortable,” he said. “Do you want to stop? I can fake an emergency if you want.”

  “No, no. I’m fine. I’m just thinking.”

  “About running a marathon? Your heart is beating out of your chest,” Park said.

  “Shhh,” Cooper said. “Hold me tighter,” he added impulsively.

  Park hesitated, then did. Cooper sighed, a bolt of pure fondness warming him from head to toe. A separate thing from love. Related but different. God knew he loved Park. But to be very honest, he’d been in love before. Knew Park had, too. Cooper believed you could love lots of people in your time. Really, genuinely be in love with them whether you chose to remember it that way or not. But this feeling he had for Park—this irrevocable, gravity-altering, forever feeling... It was different.

  This was quite simply it for him. The end of the line. The relationship that changed the laws of physics. The person he’d always, no matter what, consider a part of him. Consider his family.

  “Oh, fuck,” Cooper said emphatically.

  Park pulled back again to look at him, clearly startled. He raised a questioning brow and scanned the room as if looking for the danger. But there was no danger out there. Well. Besides a potential murderer and/or violent game of blackmail, sabotage and control. But Cooper had more pressing epiphanies to deal with at the moment.

  He wanted to spend the rest of his life with Park. Okay, not exactly breaking news.

  He...maybe, sort of, kind of might want to marry him.

  Perhaps that wasn’t so mind-blowing for some people. But Cooper hadn’t been that kid who got to take for granted that he’d fall in love with someone one day who loved him back, get married and live happily ever after. Growing up, he hadn’t seen a lot of queer people settling into long-term love. Not that they hadn’t existed; of course they had. But not openly in Cooper’s small Maryland town and limited world exposure.

  In his childhood, it had been a precious and secret joy to even glimpse stories of boys who had feelings for other boys at all. Thrilling to know they fell in love and lust with each other and recognize that in himself. Unheard of to see them grow old together, happy and safe forever.

  No. If someone had told little baby Cooper he’d grow up and get married to the man he loved, he would have laughed his head off. Of course, if someone had told little baby Cooper he’d grow up and spend the week mansion shopping with his hot werewolf boyfriend, he’d have laughed, too. And then likely given himself carpal tunnel jacking off.

  But lo and behold, here he was. Building a whole-ass life with someone. Growing as a person with someone. Making a family or pack with someone, whatever you wanted to call it.

  Of course, growth and love and commitment didn’t need to look like marriage. Not at all. Anyone who didn’t want that, who chose not to express their partnership that way, was no less valid. It was personal choice. But for the first time in Cooper’s life he felt like that choice was his to make. He was in the position of asking himself if he wanted to get married. If he wanted to be the thing he hadn’t gotten to see, hadn’t gotten to imagine as an unsure, anxious little gay boy in small-town Maryland who had no fucking clue what life would allow him to do or be.

  And the answer was yes. He did. That’s who he wanted to be at his core. Not alpha, or survivor, or mate, or overdramatic, anxious, cantankerous grump. Not even husband, really. Those were all facets, badges. At his core, he wanted to be his own wildest dreams come true.

  Sometimes realizations took time to puzzle out. Sometimes they just showed up in your brain with no forewarning and asked where to put their baggage. This one had just kic
ked the door down and set fire to his entire head. He was going to ask Park to marry him.

  Cooper put his mouth against Park’s shoulder to muffle his shaky exhale.

  “Are you crying?” Park asked, appalled. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Is it the hug?”

  Cooper shook his head, sniffed a bit to clear the prickling at his eyes, then looked at Park. “I love you,” he whispered.

  Park’s expression went from anxious to completely gobsmacked. “What?” His hand came up to cup Cooper’s forehead “Do you feel feverish again? Light-headed? Nauseous? I knew we should have gotten you to a doctor.”

  “No! I just—will you stop that?” Cooper had to wrestle Park’s hand away from checking his pulse. “Forget it. I take it back. I don’t love you anymore.”

  “Hmmm.” Park gave him a long, critical look, then apparently seeing something that satisfied him, pulled Cooper close again. Sounding far too smug, he said, “Too late. No take-backs. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.”

  Cooper purposefully stepped on Park’s toe, but smiled when he felt a gentle kiss to the side of his head and heard the words whispered into his hair: “Love you more. My absolutely rabid porcupine.”

  A thrumming sound pulsed through the air, and with a little flicker the lights came on overhead as the generators finally got working. Around the room people dropped out of their hugs to applaud, but Cooper held on to Park and closed his eyes. He didn’t mind one more moment of this. He had suddenly found himself in the exact right mood.

  * * *

  With the distraction of the returning electricity, it was easy enough for Cooper and Park to set out on the trails unnoticed.

  They’d grabbed one of the trail maps from the lodge, but Cooper also had his phone out, looking for inconsistencies between the map offered and the pictures of the one they’d found stuffed up Kreuger’s desk leg. Like the version offered in the welcome packet, the lodge map was a bit basic, but from what Cooper could tell there were no major differences. Why go through the trouble of hiding it?

  Cooper snuck a peek at Park walking beside him in his sleek black rain jacket and sturdy hiking boots, dark hair collecting pre-rain mists blown in on the wind. He looked like a rugged wet dream. Literally wet, though.

  Might just have to ask him to marry me right now. Cooper laughed out loud, a short, almost hysterical sound, and Park looked at him, alarmed. “Now what?”

  “Nothing,” Cooper said quickly, and went back to looking at his feet so that they stayed firmly out of his mouth.

  The trail was unexpectedly clear considering the acrimonious relationship between the businesses, and Cooper considered Paul’s assertion that Monty was sabotaging her neighbors. Would she really go so far as to fake a death to drum up some bad publicity? What about Paul? Obviously Vanessa was the one who loved this place, who had grown up here, who wanted to work in counseling. If Paul was just along for the ride, maybe he was ready to get off at the nearest stop. Return to the best pack of his life.

  Kreuger was an anachronism, too. A bully and ex-pack leader, an outcast with a broken spirit, the man who had heard Reggie missed being outdoors and crafted a way for her to always look at the sky. No one working at the retreat seemed to even consider the possibility that Kreuger had killed Llcaj. He’s not like that, Reggie had said. But Cooper had been working in this field for long enough to know there wasn’t one type of person who killed.

  A slight rustling sound had started, and Cooper took a moment to realize it wasn’t more wind but the beginnings of a drizzle against the leaves, too slight to penetrate the forest canopy.

  “The rain’s started earlier than it was supposed to,” he said with slight concern. The real brunt of the storm wasn’t supposed to hit until the night. He hoped this stayed a manageable drizzle.

  “We’re close,” Park said. “I can smell the sawdust.”

  Cooper compulsively inhaled, getting nothing but rain and summer earth. Park was watching him, amused. “Checking to see if that bite’s kicked in yet?”

  Cooper’s face heated. “I didn’t think I was going to...change entirely. I just thought it might have, you know, an effect.”

  Park hummed. “Disappointed?”

  “That feels like a trick question,” Cooper said. Then, impulsively, “Are you?”

  Park looked perplexed. “Why would I be disappointed?”

  Cooper shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  That was a lie. We need to be around our own kind, Muñoz had said. Not the first time Cooper had heard a sentiment like that. He was not a good boy from a good family, as far as the Park pack was concerned. Park himself had never given any indication that he wished Cooper wasn’t human. But the prospect of an engagement made you rethink these sorts of things.

  Cooper’s pulse was pounding. “When you were young, what did you imagine your life would be like at forty?”

  “Steady on,” Park said. “I’ve got a few months yet.”

  “I mean, did you think you’d be working criminal investigation? A professor? A bachelor on the town? Big family? Dating another werewolf? Ma-married?”

  “God, no,” Park scoffed, and Cooper’s heart jumped into his throat. “I couldn’t comprehend a life beyond the Shepherd. Almost from the moment we moved in with my grandparents, I knew I was being groomed as the enforcer of the pack and that one day I’d take over as alpha. Leaving was unthinkable. If I thought about the future at all, it was that. But I tried not to think about it.”

  A rumble of thunder sounded and the rain started falling harder, droplets sneaking between the leaves and onto their heads, running down their faces. Cooper pulled his hood up and slipped his hand into Park’s. “And before that? When you were younger?”

  Park was quiet for a while. He rubbed his thumb over the back of Cooper’s hand, thoughtfully. “When I was six or so, I had one of those little plastic toy tow trucks. I can’t even remember where we got it. Maybe it was one of my older siblings’ once, but I was obsessed. Latched onto it like kids do. Took it everywhere, slept with it. When my little sister Addy was teething in fur, she gnawed the boom right off, but I still loved it. I thought tow truck drivers must be the luckiest. Always driving around helping stranded people. Making new friends every day.”

  Cooper smiled, tickled. “So you wanted to be a tow truck driver?”

  Park hummed in disagreement. “We moved around a lot then. Now I guess it was because Mom and Dad were with the WIP,” he said, naming the Wolf Independence Party. An organization whose members ranged from protesters lobbying for power reform on one end of the spectrum to domestic terrorists on the other. It was unclear where exactly Park’s wayward parents fell on that scale. “As a kid I didn’t know why we were always moving. I assumed it was because we were poor and not supposed to be cramming eight people into a one-bedroom apartment in the first place. The point is, sometimes I’d get home and all our stuff was in the car ready to go or I’d be woken up in the night and told we were leaving right now.” He paused and ran his free hand through his wind-blown hair only to have it tossed into disarray again.

  It almost seemed like Park had come to the end. Wasn’t going to say anymore. But haltingly he continued, “One time, I woke up and we were already in the car. Apparently, my dad had carried me while I was still passed out. Of course I’d dropped my truck. On the couch I slept on or on the way out of the apartment somewhere—” Park shook his head, cutting himself off. “It doesn’t matter where. The point is it must have fallen out of my hand and Dad didn’t notice. I cried and begged them to go back, but we were already an hour out by then and it was just a stupid little plastic truck.”

  He laughed oddly. “God, we must have been annoying. Six kids complaining and crying while you’re on the run for your lives and trying to stay incognito. I can’t believe I never once guessed they left us behind by choice.”

  Cooper squeezed Park’
s hand, his throat tight. “I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Park said dismissively, though the hurt in his voice belied his words. “It was a toy and our lives were in danger. But I didn’t know that then. All I knew was that one day I was going to grow up and live in my own house that no one could ever make me leave ever again.”

  Cooper was silent. Heartache was an odd feeling to have when one was contentedly walking hand in hand with the person they loved. But he felt it all the same. Heartache for that little boy begging to go back for the only consistent, sure thing in his life: the truck he’d played with while imagining any possible way to make friends.

  Cooper tugged Park to a stop. Looking up at him, just slightly taller, meant the rain fell into his eyes and he had to keep blinking to see Park’s gently confused expression. Cooper took hold of Park’s head and pulled him down for a deep kiss. His lips were cool from the rain and it was an odd contrast to the warmth of his mouth.

  “What was that about?” Park asked afterward, a little breathless.

  Cooper shook his head. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a dick about this whole buying a house thing.”

  Park’s soft, curious look froze then shifted into something more concerned and self-conscious. “Not a dick,” he said carefully. Cooper raised an eyebrow and Park conceded, “Maybe a little prickly. Dick-lite. But I don’t blame you. I didn’t think about how buying a—a forever home is different from me moving into your apartment. It’s a big step and I rushed you into it and—” Park took a deep breath “—if you need to hit pause, back up, stay at yours longer or maybe just find somewhere a little bigger to rent instead, I’m okay with that. Really I am.”

  “No!” Cooper protested loudly, clearly surprising Park, but he couldn’t help it. The thought of not settling down together, building something long-lasting with Park, was much scarier than the thought of giving up his own space. Joyce was right. He’d been clinging to the familiar, resistant to change, because for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t running from anything. Nothing in his life was bad. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t get better.