The Wolf at Bay (Big Bad Wolf)

by Charlie Adhara

  A wave of blackness hit him, and for a moment he couldn’t think anything at all. There was only shock and pain.

  When he got his sight back, he realized he was gasping and choking on the brackish water.

  Get up. Get out.

  Bracing himself, he bucked back toward the surface while trying not to move his leg. It didn’t work. The pain winding up his shin and thigh and into every other corner of his body was nauseating, but he kept swimming up, reaching for the surface...

  His hands brushed something smooth and solid above him. He opened his eyes. All he saw was darkness. Was he under the boat? Or had he drifted under the dock? If he moved to the right would he find the crack he’d come down through, or would he be moving farther under the warehouse floor?

  What had started as an itch in the base of his lungs was rapidly becoming a desperate need for air so intense it was even beginning to mute the agony in his leg. Cooper couldn’t feel grateful. He spread his arms wide over his head, feeling the expanse of the thing above him. His depleting oxygen supplies had unhelpfully prompted a fluttering panic inside his skull, and he swept his hands back and forth as fast as he could under the water, searching for some way up.

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to end. Not here and not now. He still had something he needed to tell Oliver. He still had everything he needed to tell Oliver.

  Suddenly the thing under his palms started to move, and Cooper pushed at it desperately as if he could speed it up. The water above his head became slightly lighter and he kicked up, hard, fuck what it did to his broken bones. All his limbs felt so light the entire bottom half of his leg might have clean fallen off and sunk to the bottom of the bay and he would not have noticed right then. He could see the light now and, hoping to god it wasn’t some divine tunnel shit, reached up, up, like he could grab onto the air itself to pull himself out.

  Then there were arms around his chest and a body behind him in the water, and he was dragged swiftly to the surface.

  Cooper took heaving drags of air, choking and expelling water faster than he could replace it with oxygen. He realized he was being held up above the water by a person, and that the person was growling “Fucking asshole” and “You idiot” and “Stupid, lucky porcupine” in his ear over and over.

  Cooper turned his face into Park’s neck. “Eliza,” he said, or tried to. What came out was unintelligible sound and yet more of the bay.

  “Shut up. You’ll hurt yourself,” Park said harshly, and then a bit apologetically, “Dean and Joon got her.”

  Dean? Cooper’s eyes fluttered open. The boat that had trapped him below, the Eglantine, had been shoved up against the other one so hard it had done damage and was tilting, a literal shipwreck. Eight violent gashes ran down the side, utterly destroying the twisting vines and leaves meant to memorialize Rose. The moorings had been ripped straight out of the cement somehow and were hanging uselessly into the water. Neither Eliza, Joon, nor Dean were on deck.

  He tried to turn and look for them in the boathouse, but Park’s arm tightened around him, holding him in place.

  “Stop squirming,” Park said into his ear. “I need to get you out of the water.”

  “Leg...broken,” Cooper managed, or an approximation of it anyway, and felt Park’s arm squeeze him again, like a spasm. The movement forced him to cough up more water, and his throat burned fiercely.

  “Can you hold on to the dock for a second?”

  He didn’t bother wasting what little energy he had left on responding, just grabbed on. Park lifted himself out of the water in one inhumanly graceful movement and then got his hands back on Cooper immediately, like a second was literally all he trusted Cooper could manage on his own.

  Cooper didn’t take it personally. At the moment it felt true.

  “Count of three.” Park hoisted him straight up into the air, and laid him carefully on the ground and okay, fuck, now he could feel his leg again.

  Cooper swore, his head jerking back and grinding against the concrete, an almost pleasant distraction from the fire below. He felt Park fuss around the wound so delicately that he looked down there half expecting to see his partner blowing on it.

  “Wha—” He stopped. Park’s face was...different. He looked, well, wolfier than Cooper had ever seen him. His eyes were completely changed, his teeth were fully out, and his face was sharp and off somehow. Like a piece of Escher art where the eyes couldn’t quite compute how the planes and angles lined up.

  Cooper glanced back to Eliza’s boat. He could see now that the eight gouge marks through the decal were made by claws, and the angle it was tilted and rapidly taking on water made it look like someone had picked it up and tossed it across the boathouse, like a child flinging toys in the tub. But that couldn’t be possible. Right? He stared at Park.

  “Hlehm.” Cooper made some kind of watery noise of surprise and pain, and Park looked up at him, and despite all the other changes, he recognized that look. Shockingly vulnerable, hopeful, and warm with a heavy overlying layer of pure exasperation.

  Cooper reached up to brush Park’s wet hair plastered over his face away and then let his fingers trail across the changed bone structure, the flattened cheekbones and elongated jaw. Park stilled beneath the touch, not even breathing when Cooper’s fingers finally traced his elongated teeth. “Oli—”

  Suddenly Park’s eyes flickered up toward something behind Cooper and widened.

  What now?

  Cooper jerked his head around expecting to see Eliza back with more tools.

  Instead he saw his father. His father, who was holding his weapon pointed straight at him.

  “Dad?” Cooper croaked, and it sounded more like “Dlehb?”

  “Get away from my son,” Ed said, holding his gun steady.

  The hell?

  “I said get away from him!”

  Cooper pulled himself up to sitting so he could face his father. Park didn’t move at all. Just stared calmly, but intently at Ed. “I’m just trying to help, Mr. Dayton.”

  His face was abruptly back to being unremarkable. Like it had never been any other way. Cooper could see the confusion in his father’s eyes.

  “No,” Ed said firmly. Confusion didn’t mean doubt. “I saw you. You’re the one who attacked him. Let go of my son or I will shoot.”

  Park slowly released Cooper and started to raise his hands in the air. Cooper slapped them back. “Dad, put it down. Eliza attacked me.”

  “No. No, I saw him...change. Your teeth, your eyes, your claws. You gave him those scars. You’re the—Cooper, get out of the way!”

  Cooper had managed to drag himself in between Park and the gun, though his head was back to feeling gaseous and floating about three feet above his shoulders and his leg was...not something to think about. “Dad, stop. Oliver has never hurt me. He saved me.”

  “You didn’t see. You don’t kno—”

  “I know, Dad, okay? I know him. Everything I need to. And I love him. I really love him. Please just...” Cooper reached toward his father. “He makes me happy, remember?”

  Ed lowered his weapon, and Cooper let out the breath he’d been holding, his eyes drifting shut in relief. Then they stayed shut because he didn’t have the strength to operate his lids anymore and the warm darkness that started in his eyes was leaking into the rest of him, blanketing his thoughts with heavy, blissful, numbness.

  Blood loss, Cooper thought dreamily. Finally something’s going my way.

  Somewhere above him he heard a voice, a really lovely voice—his favorite!—mutter, “Ditto, you sap,” before he didn’t hear, see, or think anything more.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Cooper woke up in the hospital. His mouth was dry and he couldn’t feel his right leg at all.

  The last time he’d woken up like this they’d taken thirty percent of his intestines out and he couldn�
�t eat solids for a week.

  He reached down and breathed a sigh of relief when he felt his limb continue below the knee, albeit beneath a thick cast.

  He opened his eyes. In the chair beside his bed, Ed was leaning forward, elbows on his knees and glaring suspiciously across the room. “Da—Dad?”

  Ed startled and turned to him. He still looked tense and grim. “You’re awake. Good.” His hand reached toward Cooper as if to sweep the hair out of his eyes, stopped, and just patted the mattress a couple times instead, his eyes darting back across the room.

  Cooper turned to follow his gaze slowly, conscious of how thick his head felt, and realized Park was standing in the corner, against the curtain that divided the space, with his arms tightly crossed and looking as tense and grim as Ed.

  Cooper made an embarrassing, whimpering sound of relief, and Park’s expression softened slightly but he didn’t move closer.

  After a couple moments of awkward silence, Ed cleared his throat. “Your brother and Sophie are downstairs getting something to eat.” He hesitated. “They’ll want to see you.” He looked at Park, then back at Cooper. “Should I—do you want me to go tell them you’re up?”

  “Yeah. Please,” Cooper croaked.

  Ed stood and hesitated, hovering over the bed and fiddling with his mustache. Then he swiftly leaned down and kissed Cooper on the top of his head.

  “Okay. Yes. Fine. It’s fine,” Ed said more to himself than anyone else, and left the room with one final tense glance at Park.

  “Have a nice chat while I was napping? Did he tell you to call him Pops?” Cooper said as brightly as his throat would allow when he couldn’t hear Ed’s shuffling footsteps anymore.

  Park uncrossed his arms and moved to sit on the edge of Cooper’s bed. “How are you feeling?”

  Cooper shrugged. “You know more than I do.”

  “You have a compound break of your tibia, possibly a slight concussion, and everyone agreed it’s disgusting that you drank bay water.”

  “Yeah, my bad.” He processed that. All in all, it could have been worse. Especially considering he’d really thought he was going to drown for a moment or two there. And all because Eliza Bell had caught him off guard. Stupid. Though he supposed that was what she was best at. You had to have an ability to lull a false sense of security in people as a politician. It wasn’t really surprising to realize those same skills doubled for her career as a triple murderer.

  “So, uh, what exactly happened back there?”

  Park narrowed his eyes. “If you’re about to tell me you have some sort of amnesia and can’t remember you confessing your undying love for me and pretend it didn’t happen again, I honestly might slap you, concussion or no.”

  Cooper laughed, and it sounded slightly hysterical. Park quirked his eyebrow. “No. I—no. I meant what happened there with Eliza and, uh, you know.” Cooper gestured at him and bared his own teeth.

  Park blinked at him, face utterly blank. “I have no idea what you’re talki—”

  “Oh, stop it. My dad obviously saw something. I saw it, too, you going all majorly wolfy. And Daugherty told me you’re...unstable. That you haven’t shifted in too long and it’s screwing you up.”

  Park opened his mouth as if to protest, but Cooper put his hand on his leg. “It’s not like I haven’t noticed something was wrong on my own. You’ve clearly been struggling. So. Is that why you lost control?”

  Park tilted his head and then nodded. “Yes. Well, my fear from smelling your blood on the dock and you missing is what did it technically. But the”—he frowned—“the wall wouldn’t have been so thin if I’d been shifting when I was supposed to.”

  Cooper nodded. “How did you know I’d gone into the water? Did Eliza...?”

  “No.” Park’s mouth was tight. “When we got there she was wiping down a bloody wrench before running off and leaving you to drown. Fortunately Agent Joon saw enough to make even her suspicious of someone besides me. When Eliza bolted, she and Dean followed.”

  “When did you realize Joon was tailing you?”

  “When I left the hotel.” His eyes darkened. “I was having a little chat with her when I missed your call. Why you decided to confront the unsub on your own—”

  “I didn’t think she could overpower me,” Cooper grumbled.

  Park held up his hand. “Regardless, I wasn’t able to shake Agent Joon, or convince her to pursue other leads, and she trailed me to the marina, where your father and Dean found me. They were looking for you, too, and figured you’d be here where the action was.”

  Cooper snorted. “But how did you find me?”

  Park coughed. “I, uh, tracked your scent into the boathouse where we saw Eliza and”—he scowled—“that’s when I heard something hitting the bottom of the boat.”

  “So you just decided to...move that out of the way for me?” Cooper said a little breathlessly. “Decent of you.”

  Park gave him a look. “You know boats weigh significantly less in the water, right? But yes, I had to. And because I wasn’t shifting, I lost control of myself. Badly. In front of your father.”

  Cooper let that sink in, so to speak, Rose Daugherty lingering in the back of his mind. But Park didn’t hate who he was. How could he possibly?

  “So,” he said. “Why weren’t you? Shifting every day, I mean.” He took a breath. “Is it because I’ve done something wrong? Made you feel like—”

  “No. No, Cooper, you didn’t do anything.”

  “Then what is it? Because I was seriously worried. Shit, I am seriously worried.”

  Park looked away and muttered something.

  “Sorry, what? Not all of us have super ears.”

  “I said I did it for you,” Park said so loudly Cooper jumped. And then in a normal tone of voice, “Not because of you, but for you. I wanted to make a good impression with your family. I wanted to be there for you because I could see how hard it was for you being here. I didn’t want to just...disappear on you.”

  Cooper’s pulse sped up. “Why?”

  Park shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment as if in exasperation. He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and looked straight at Cooper, a peculiar expression on his face, almost embarrassed, but defiant, too. Determined. “Because I do all sorts of idiotic things around you. Like protect you when you don’t want protecting and get on a goddamn floating nausea deathtrap just so your family likes me and twist my body inside out so you don’t have to be alone, and because obviously I love you.”

  “You—you love me,” Cooper stuttered.

  “Obviously,” Park said. “For quite some time now.”

  “Quite some time now,” Cooper repeated faintly. “And you didn’t tell me this before because...?”

  “I didn’t want to rush it and lose you. Or worse, pressure you into saying the same. You know, put flower juice in your eye. I even wondered if some space would help but”—his expression turned serious—“like I said, I have a hard time walking away from you.”

  “Oh. Well. That’s good. Nice to know, I mean.” Cooper poked at the hospital blanket, rearranging it over his lap. “As you pointed out before, I’ve made my feelings clear. So.”

  Silence. He glanced up and was caught in Park’s slow smile.

  “What?”

  The smile widened. “Papa, no! I luurve him,” Park said dramatically, and put a hand to his brow.

  Cooper reached over to shove him away, but somehow his fingers grabbed hold of Park’s shirt instead and pulled him down toward the bed. Park caught himself with his hands on either side of his head so as not to jostle Cooper’s leg.

  “Shut up. You know what I meant.”

  “It’s still nice to hear, though,” Park whispered, his breath ghosting across Cooper’s lips.

  Cooper sighed. “Okay. I can’t seem to remember why at the moment
, but...I love you, too.” He kissed him, and what was supposed to be a brief, hard kiss turned tender and lingering. “I love you,” he said when they finally parted, and then, bumping noses, again. “I love you.”

  “All right already. Sheesh, I heard you the first time.” Park rolled his eyes, but his huge grin belied his words.

  “I know you’re bad at it, but you’re really going to have to work on that poker face if we’re going to keep this on the down low at work.”

  “Ah,” Park said. “About that...”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been suspended.”

  Cooper sat up straight and his head spun at the sudden movement. “What? Why?”

  “For revealing myself to the unaware.”

  “I can’t believe—did my dad—”

  “No, though I did hear him tell Dean and Sophie, so prepare yourself for that.” He sighed. “I told them, actually.”

  “But why? And what were they even doing here?”

  “When Joon and Dean caught Eliza wrench-handed, if you will, she snapped. She’s had a busy schedule of murdering, framing, and campaigning to keep up these last couple days, and trying to explain away an assault was the last straw.”

  “Sounds like politics per usual to me,” Cooper muttered.

  “Anyway, since she calmed down she’s been telling anyone who will listen Rose was some kind of monster with fangs and glowing eyes and she killed her in self-defense. Not sure how she’s going to work Hardwick and West into that narrative, but word travels. And as soon as your name was checked into the hospital, the bureau was alerted, got wind of Eliza’s story, and decided it was worth a trip down. They saw the...damage I did to the boat. I can’t exactly pretend those were done with these.” Park held up his average, clipped-short nails. “And I wasn’t sure what your dad was or wasn’t going to say, so I told them the truth.” He paused and smiled tightly. “You should know, Ed didn’t snitch. And I’m positive that’s for your benefit, not mine.”