Thrown to the Wolves (Big Bad Wolf)

by Adhara, Charlie

  “I’m sorry, I don’t see how this is any of your business,” Cooper said coolly.

  “None of my business?” She stopped and turned to face him, forcing Cooper to stop abruptly. “All four of Jackie and Mai’s children were born to human parents impregnated by werewolves. Humans who didn’t know what they were getting into until it was too late and tried to abuse the difference out of their children or simply abandoned them entirely.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “That’s fear and ignorance. Would you know how to raise a werewolf, Mr. Dayton? Would you know what to do when they scream their way through the first shift? How to guide them to the other side and coax them back when they get stuck in between, weeping mutations of flesh, fur and bones that don’t fit together anymore? Or would you avoid all that messiness and just adopt humans? Pull Oliver even further from himself until he’s repressed his nature so deeply it’s not even spoken of? Not even the children know. His shifts will just be Daddy’s special alone time.”

  Cooper stared at her. “That isn’t—I would never ask Oliver to be something he’s not. I would never want that.”

  “And yet he hides and twists the truth for that very reason—so that you don’t see the real him and you never have. None of my business,” Helena repeated with disdain. “My business is the survival of our kind. A responsibility I inherited from my parents, who got it from theirs. Do you have any idea how many generations of wolves have fought and died to protect our way of life?”

  Helena’s voice had gotten very quiet. “Joe and I dedicated our lives to creating a safe territory for wolves, and it is my turn to pass that to my children and the children of my children. So yes, they are my business. Oliver is my business. And you, a tool of the people who hunt and steal from us, think you can walk in here and just take him from me?”

  “I’m not taking anything,” Cooper said. They were standing in the frigid shadow of the cliff, but he felt ablaze and trembling with anger. “Oliver doesn’t belong to you anymore. He’s not your pack. He doesn’t belong to me, either.”

  “Then leave him,” Helena said quickly, almost desperately.

  Cooper frowned. “What?”

  “Walk away. End it. He needs to be with his own kind. Someone who understands what he’s been through, what he goes through every single day and will for the rest of his life. Someone who sees him unflinchingly for what he is.”

  “I see him.”

  “No. You only see what he wants you to see.” She sighed. “I can’t fault you that. But you’re enabling his lies and they’re only going to get worse. He’ll keep trying to be the simple human boyfriend for you until he doesn’t even recognize himself anymore. I think you know that, Mr. Dayton. I think you’ve already started to see it yourself. Oliver wasn’t meant to be alone. He needs a mate he can actually build a pack with. Would you stand in the way of that?”

  Cooper shook his head. “I—”

  Helena held up her hands, almost begging. “If he doesn’t belong to you, leave. Let him be his own wolf.”

  “I can’t do that,” Cooper whispered.

  Her face hardened first to disgust and then to a politely blank, almost bored expression. “Then you’re lying to yourself as well. You don’t really love him. Not any more than a man loves a pet; something for you to obsess over because you like the way he makes you feel about yourself. But like any wild animal forced to heel, you’ll kill him in the end. One way or another.”

  She turned and continued down the path. Cooper stared after her. His heart was beating wildly and his whole face hurt.

  “You’re wrong,” he said, knowing Helena could still hear him. She didn’t turn around. He walked after her and shouted this time. “You’re wrong!”

  His voice bounced between the hills surrounding them, and three birds startled out of a tree, taking flight a hundred feet farther up the cliff to land in a different tree. Cooper stared after them.

  Wasn’t she? The memory of Park’s face, that desperate sadness. But Park loved him. He knew that. Didn’t that mean they were right for each other? Wasn’t love enough?

  The birds suddenly scattered again, trilling in fear. Cooper squinted at their abandoned roost. Movement between the branches. A glint of sunlight on metal. A long, narrow barrel poking through the needles.

  “Get down!” Cooper screamed.

  He ran, slipping in the snow, and threw himself onto Helena without a second thought. For a millisecond he felt her body resist, felt her superior strength stop him midflight like a brick wall. It knocked the wind right out of his lungs and he barely registered a prickle of pain in his leg before they both crashed down into the snow. Cooper shielded her with his body, his own hands instinctively covering the back of his head.

  Then...nothing. No gunfire. No shouts. No explosion. Even the birds were quiet.

  Slowly Cooper picked his head up to look around. He didn’t see anything.

  Well, shit.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Helena hissed beneath him.

  “Sorry, I thought I saw...” Cooper shook his head. His own voice sounded strange—distant and echoing—and the trees blurred a bit. He squeezed his eyes shut, then open. Perhaps he’d hit Helena harder than he’d thought.

  “I thought gun,” Cooper tried again, pushing himself up off her. But the ground wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and he lost his balance and collapsed onto Helena’s warm and surprisingly firm body with an oof.

  Helena was talking again, but it was like listening to voices filter through an air vent, at the same time clear and distorted.

  What was he—? Why had he—? Cooper wet his lips and focused on picking out one question he could answer.

  The world spun, and suddenly the back of his head rested in a cushion of snow and he was staring up at the dark mass of branches that created patterns against the sky. It was like looking at a Rorschach test. What did what he see say about him?

  Helena’s face popped into his test. She looked pissed.

  “Uh-oh,” Cooper said. He reached up to touch her cheek. Was it as soft as it looked?

  She slapped his hand to the side and held up a cute little pink feather. No, not that. Cooper squinted. A tranquilizer dart. Not good.

  Take cover, he tried to say, but he had no idea what his mouth was managing. He reached up to shove Helena away instead. His arms felt unpleasantly light and he overshot, knuckles connecting with her chin.

  “Run,” Cooper slurred. But his eyes closed before he could make sure she listened.

  Chapter Six

  Cold air against his shoulder. Gooseflesh prickled down his arm. Cooper tucked his elbows in, pulled the heavy down comforter tighter around himself and scooched closer to the warm body beside him. He felt a hand come down gently on his head and stroke his hair. Park’s hand, of course. And it was Park’s hip that he was burying his face into. Park’s familiar smell, fresh and earthy. He was so rarely here when Cooper woke in the mornings that it deserved celebrating.

  Cooper nuzzled beneath the edge of Park’s shirt until he found a warm patch of skin just above his waistband. He kissed it and sighed. “Mmmm.”

  The hand on his head patted him dismissively, as if to say all right, that’s enough of that. It was not the reaction he’d been hoping for.

  “Cooper, wake up.”

  “I’m awake,” Cooper sighed.

  Sort of. His eyes were still closed and he was having a harder time than usual pushing past that last layer of heavy fog. Lazy morning sex would help.

  He tried to hook one of his legs up and over Park, only to realize they were on opposite sides of the comforter. Unacceptable. Cooper snuck an arm back out of his cocoon into the cool air to snag Park’s shirt and drag him down.

  “C’mere. Let me show you my rise and shine.”

  Park resisted, but he sounded amused.
“It’s not morning.”

  “Yes, it is. Cock just crowed. Hear him?” He thrust pointedly.

  “Is he always like this or is it still the drugs talking?”

  Cooper froze at the new voice in the room. He flung himself away from Park, scrambling to an upright position, and got hopelessly tangled in the comforter. His unbearably—unnaturally—heavy and clumsy limbs weren’t helping, and by the time he was sitting up against the headboard, his head was spinning and he was gasping. And...naked?

  “What—what happened?”

  Mai was standing in the corner of the bedroom dressed in dramatic black gaucho pants, boots and a cloak, and unwrapping a rubber hose. To strangle him with and put him out of his humiliated misery, if there was a merciful god.

  She waved the hose at him, which turned out to be attached to a blood pressure cuff, so apparently not. “I’m going to check your vitals now. Try not to come on to me again.”

  “What?”

  He looked at Park, who smiled faintly, but his eyes were dark, serious and strained with worry. “You’ve had a couple, ah, false starts. What do you remember?”

  Cooper ran his hand over his face, then jumped when Mai’s fingers firmly pressed around his wrist to take his pulse. The feel of her holding him prompted a memory, and the morning’s events stumbled haltingly back. The naked man in the kitchen. Raymond. Had he attacked—? No, Helena had come in and they’d walked in the snow, where she’d gone full Lady Catherine de Bourgh on his ass.

  Cooper grunted, a wave of rage rolling through him as the particulars of that conversation trickled back. He’d been so angry, and hurt, and just a little bit afraid Helena was right...

  Then there was a gun in the trees, and after that, nothing.

  “I was shot?” Cooper asked doubtfully. His body felt uncomfortable, a little buzzy and stiff like it was shaking off pins and needles, but he didn’t feel any serious pain. Nothing like the agony after his guts had been ripped apart or even the exhausting ache of his broken tibia.

  “Tranquilizer dart,” Mai said, pulling his arm straight and fixing the BP cuff tightly beneath his armpit. “You took in a nasty load of sedatives. A specialized cocktail, we think.”

  “You think?” Cooper said as Mai started tightening the cuff. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad not to be in the hospital, but...why am I not in the hospital?”

  Park looked uncomfortable and just a little bit angry. At him?

  “I have everything needed to monitor your recovery here,” Mai interjected before Park could speak. “There’s nothing else the hospital would have done but watch and wait.”

  Maybe. But what if the dose had been too much for his body weight? Couldn’t people die from tranquilizers? He had no idea how that stuff worked.

  The cuff was so tight now he felt his own pulse pounding in his bicep, quick and alarmed. As Mai released the pressure, they both watched the dial marker jump. “Still a little low,” she said, releasing the Velcro. “How do you feel?”

  Cooper licked his lips; his mouth was disgustingly dry, and he felt sort of...floaty and one step removed from his own feelings, like he’d taken more than a couple Xanax. But with every passing second that sensation was fading, replaced with a growing, urgent need for answers.

  “Thirsty and confused,” Cooper said finally. “Who shot me? Did the cops find anything?” He thought of the hunter slash guide Girard galloping off after that wolf. “Was it an accident or—? Did Helena see—”

  Mai stood, exchanging a look with Park, who put his hand on Cooper’s thigh and said the least two helpful words in the history of answers: “It’s complicated. We don’t know much. I haven’t spoken to the others since Helena carried you in.”

  Helena had carried him all the way back? Even with werewolf strength, that couldn’t have been easy for her.

  Park pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of his lips, bumped his nose against Cooper’s chin and inhaled deeply. “You scared me.”

  Cooper closed his eyes and leaned into Park’s touch. He wanted to reassure him, but frankly he was scared, too. There was no way whoever the shooter was hadn’t heard Helena and Cooper arguing. No way he or she had mistaken either of them for an animal. No. Not either of them.

  “It was meant for Helena,” Cooper said. “I saw the barrel. Thought I did, anyway. The gun was aiming for Helena. We weren’t even standing close at the time.”

  Mai zipped the cuff in a little leather pouch. “You should get dressed,” she said. “Everyone’s waiting downstairs. And we all have questions.”

  * * *

  The dining room seemed to double as a sort of meeting room. Or at least that’s what it looked like with the whole of Park’s family gathered ’round the table in a very similar order to dinner last night. Today gave off less mealtime vibes, more cabal about to perform a ritualistic killing, though. Especially with everyone dressed in funeral black and looking furious, as if they had been the ones shot and drugged.

  Cooper took a deep breath and smoothed his hand over his own slate-gray blazer, the feel of it unfamiliar. He had bought a new suit, selfishly wanting to look good when meeting Park’s family. Now he wished he was in his familiar jeans and T-shirt. He started for his previous place between Stuart and Lorelei, but Park snagged his arm with a quiet “No” and pulled him to his own seat at the other end of the table.

  For a horrifying moment Cooper worried he’d be dragged right into his lap, but after Park gave her a quick look, Delia offered Cooper her place instead and went to sit by her dad. It was all very awkward, made worse by the fact that no one was speaking a word.

  “About time,” Stuart said when they’d both settled, though under the table Park still clung to his wrist tightly like a child with a balloon. “What the fuck happened?”

  He directed the question solely at Cooper, and it sounded like an accusation. However poorly he thought he’d gotten along with Park’s family yesterday, he had a feeling that it had been one big group hug compared to what was coming now. He quickly relayed everything he could remember about that morning.

  “That’s it?” Lorelei asked. Her dreamy voice took the bite out of the words. “A flash of sun on metal and you immediately thought gun? You saw nothing else?”

  “FBI training. I wasn’t thinking, just reacted,” Cooper said, and Lorelei sighed heavily.

  “What were you two doing out there in the woods, anyway?” Tim asked, a bit suspiciously.

  Cooper met Helena’s eyes. “I asked to see some of the property,” he said. “Mrs. Park was kind enough to show me around.”

  Helena’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t contradict him.

  “Planning on moving in already?” Camille asked lightly.

  Cooper ignored her. “What about you?” He turned the accusation back at Helena.

  “What about her?” Stuart snarled.

  “Well, did you see anyone after I passed out? Or, you know, smell anything?”

  Helena stared at him, unblinking, as the whole table hung on her word. “No,” she said finally. “All I know is I was walking when you jumped on me from behind. After I located the dart in your leg, I thought it best to focus on relocating you to cover.”

  “Thank you,” Cooper said. It was hard to be frustrated with Helena after she’d concentrated on saving him when she easily could have just run. “What about the police? What did they say?”

  “This isn’t a police matter,” Helena said.

  “What? I was shot.”

  “We do not have the luxury to welcome cops into our lives without consequence. And we have our privacy to protect. There are too many questions we can’t answer.”

  “The BSI, then,” Cooper said. “I can call—”

  “No. Unnecessary,” Helena said with finality.

  “Un—” He looked around at the blank faces, finally turning to Park, who just shook
his head slightly. “But—but you were attacked. Someone tried to put you down with a tranquilizer gun. You, Mrs. Park, not me, and you have no idea who or why, but I think we can assume it wasn’t well-intentioned.”

  “It definitely was not,” Marcus said, and Stuart hissed. “What? For god’s sake, the man was shot. Shouldn’t he have all the facts? Oliver, at least, should know.”

  “I am well aware of what you think Oliver needs to know,” Helena said sharply, and Marcus flinched at the pointed reminder of his defiance and his whole body seemed to slump pathetically. Park hadn’t been kidding around when he said wolves held grudges.

  Everyone in the room looked down and away, as if not wanting to get caught in Helena’s glare. Even Park had frozen in his seat, waiting for something. The air was suffocating with tension. After a long moment, the room relaxed as one, reacting to some signal Cooper hadn’t seen. Maybe couldn’t see.

  He felt a twinge of annoyance at Helena’s words still floating around his hazy brain, and shoved it away. She’d been wrong. He and Park were fine. That’s all there was to it.

  “What do you mean it definitely wasn’t an accident?” Park was saying.

  “Oliver,” Helena started, then with a peculiar, almost reluctant expression added, “Mr. Dayton. I’m sorry to say this isn’t the first attack on the pack. Joe—your grandfather’s death may not have been...natural.”

  “What do you mean?” Park said quietly, dangerously. He squeezed Cooper’s hand tightly, then released him to grip the arm of his chair instead.

  Helena looked to Lorelei, who jumped a little in her seat, like she hadn’t expected to be called on in class. She cleared her throat. “I found him. In the east woods. I was running, looking for Raymond, and—” she glanced at Helena “—he had been dead for some hours, I think. I found three darts in his leg. Same as the one pulled from Mr. Dayton.”