“He’s okay!” Paul Claymont called out, as if they weren’t all gathered close enough to see that for themselves.
“You saved my life!” Lisa repeated.
“And he’s a hero!” Paul added with extra enthusiasm. He started clapping and other people hesitantly joined in.
Lisa hugged him, and as soon as her arms squeezed around him, Cooper felt a bolt of rage. Why won’t they stop touching me?
But it was gone as quick as it had come, leaving him feeling nothing, again. Over her shoulder he saw Park’s worried eyes, Jimmy loudly saying it was Lisa’s “fucking fault the idiot went over in the first place,” and the white wolf walking into the woods, unnoticed by everyone except Nielsen, who watched it go, his pretty face twisted with pure hatred.
* * *
After that, the commitment renewal ceremony was decidedly anticlimactic. A hard feat for a ritual Cooper was sure was stolen from actual cults.
But Dr. Joyce still gamely encouraged each couple to the cliff’s edge and led them through a gentle exercise of listing what they valued in their partner, what had first drawn them to each other, the ways they felt most supported and finally, the things they didn’t want to say goodbye to. The roaring falls masked each person’s hushed words, making what might easily have been silly seem intimate and sweet.
Cooper felt mildly reluctant to participate as “Kyle and Andrew,” like it was bad luck to lie about something like that in a place like this. Fortunately, literally no one expected him and Park to participate. It was hard enough convincing them Cooper didn’t need to be airlifted off the mountain. But no one could argue with the fact that aside from a couple minor scrapes, he was physically uninjured. That didn’t stop Dr. Joyce from giving him liquid electrolytes, Paul from practically force-feeding him three protein bars, or Mutya from checking his pupils at least ten more times.
Cooper watched it all happen as if from a distance. The heaps of attention and praise that would have embarrassed him any other time were just words and couldn’t affect him. Nothing could. He responded when spoken to and did as they asked, only resisting when yet another soft packet of vitamin mush that resembled a blood bag but tasted like grapes was pushed into his hands. Nielsen claimed to have made them himself, and Cooper had already obediently sucked down two before refusing any more. “I don’t need replenishing. I’m not hungover.”
“No, you’re just a lucky bastard,” Mutya had said, laughing, though her eyes were still gentle and worried. “And that’s my official medical diagnosis. Now try to stay warm.”
The packs of gear had included towels and multiple changes of clothing—wolves hardly ever traveled without, in case of impromptu shifting leaving them naked—and at the group’s insistence Cooper was now wearing someone’s baggy sweatpants and a frankly enormous sweatshirt. He looked all of eight years old and had to walk holding his pants up. But at least he’d stopped shivering and eventually the others stopped asking him if he was okay.
Left in peace, Cooper was finally able to stop smiling and just stand there silently, aware but untroubled by Park’s quiet presence behind him. He watched the others become shady silhouettes after the sun had slipped behind a mountain and transformed into a brilliant pink glow, reflected on the water below. He watched their eyes become reflective in the dusk—little hovering orbs of white-green light. He’d never been around this many wolves in the evening before. If he squinted, their eyes almost looked like the distant horizon of a city.
Cooper walked to the edge, away from the group, and peered out over the drop into the lake. It looked impossibly black. A pool of ink that the violent falls battered at but couldn’t break through entirely. A body could be lost in the dark here and never be found.
It was then that Cooper fully came back into himself.
“God.” He sucked in a deep breath at the alarming flood of emotions all demanding his immediate attention, like a crop of children who all wanted to tell their story first.
He felt Park’s hand squeeze his. “Okay?” Park murmured.
“Mmm? Yeah, I’m—” Cooper exhaled shakily and looked up at Park. His eyes were lost to the reflective light, too, of course, and it was harder to read him like this. Still, Cooper felt a watchful, wary sort of energy emanating from him. “I don’t know why I was so out of it there for a bit. Sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Park said carefully. “Everyone saw you pull Lisa out of the water. Figures, you’re at wolf camp for less than a day and you’re already everyone’s hero. Can’t take you anywhere.” Park squeezed his hand again, almost too hard, as if he was terrified Cooper was going to fly off the cliff edge and get lost in the dark. He cleared his throat. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I couldn’t...hold on to you. I thought—”
Cooper leaned over and kissed Park quickly on the cheek. “Figures, I almost drown and you make it all about you,” he said. “Can’t take you anywhere.”
Park grabbed the back of his head and pulled him back for a real kiss, an edge of desperation to his touch. When he finally pulled back, Cooper was breathing heavily.
“Why can’t you ever just let me self-loathe in peace?” Park whispered.
“Not allowed.” Cooper rubbed at his ribs and they ached. He could feel a bruise forming. “Did you see what happened, exactly? I’m a little...confused.”
Park frowned. “Lisa lost her oar and tried to grab it ’cause of that dick mate of hers. She went over the edge and you grabbed her. We were all trying to help you pull her up, but when she fell back into the boat, you tripped and went over. I couldn’t see you at first. Then suddenly you were behind us, splashing and ye-yelling. I tried to grab your arm, but—” Park swallowed convulsively. “I lost you and the raft was going too fast. Then Vanessa was in the water. She pulled you to shore.”
“The white wolf? That was Vanessa?” Cooper confirmed. He supposed it made sense, with her silvery-white hair. “Did I—was I doing anything when she pulled me out? Saying anything?”
Park looked blank. “Just floating,” he said hesitantly. “You were really calm, actually. The rest of them don’t know whether to be impressed or freaked out.”
Cooper looked out over the edge into the water again, processing that. It was possible he’d imagined someone shoving him overboard. Well, obviously someone had hit him in the ribs—he’d have the black-and-blue proof within an hour—but the raft had been a rocking mass of chaos trying to grab Lisa and it could easily have been an accident. A stray oar swinging around, perhaps. At the time, he’d been sure someone had purposefully attacked him. But in the water, he’d also been sure the long-dead Jacob Symer had appeared and was peeling his belly open.
Cooper touched his scars absently, and the thick ropes of raised tissue tingled. He didn’t quite trust himself right then. But he did trust Park. His partner. The person he knew he could always rely on.
Cooper quickly told Park everything he’d noticed—or thought he’d noticed—including the sharp, shoving pain in his ribs, the weird jumping thing of Jimmy’s face, and the hateful look Nielsen had given the white wolf as she walked away.
The only thing he left out was his own...momentary confusion in the water. Obviously Symer hadn’t really been there. It wasn’t even the first time Cooper had imagined such a thing, though it hadn’t happened this badly for over a year. With no bearing on the case—or them as a couple—he figured the quicker he buried the episode the better.
Park was understandably upset about the potential attack on the raft. “My money’s on Jimmy,” he said. “I could feel him glaring at me the whole time.”
“Maybe,” Cooper acknowledged. “Though what would be the reason? ’Cause I was helping Lisa and not him?”
“From what you described, I’d say Jimmy is someone who’s having a hard time controlling his shift.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s so tied to our emotions, especially as kids. We have to learn to separate the two. But if Jimmy’s got problems controlling his shift, that could also be affecting his emotional control and vice versa. It’s a two-way street.”
Cooper considered that, but his focus was all over the place. He felt like he’d been awake a thousand years. He glanced over at the dark shadows of people talking and laughing. Eyes glowing, even without the moon. “I should thank Vanessa,” he said.
“She went back to the lodge right after pulling you out,” Park said. “With everything that happened, I think they’re arranging to have a van pick up anyone who doesn’t want to hike back at the nearest service road.”
“Hike back?” Cooper said, bewildered. “Is their theory that happy couples are just too tired to fight?”
Park laughed. “You heard Lisa. A lot of wolves are forced to live in cities or suburbs. They can’t afford time away and don’t get a chance to be in nature as much as they want. It’s...restorative. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these couples spent the whole night outside.”
“How come you and I are looking at houses in the city then?” Cooper asked.
Park blinked, the glimmering lights of his eyes blacking out once, twice. “I thought you wanted to live in DC.”
Abruptly, Cooper felt very tired and very frustrated. “I want you to have an opinion on the house that you insist on throwing an obscene amount of your money away on.”
“I have opinions,” Park said slowly. “I’m the one who keeps pushing for us to move at all. I know you want to stay in that—in the apartment. But yes, beyond that, it is important to me that you get your dream home.”
“Well, that doesn’t work for me,” Cooper snapped. “So please stop doing that.”
“I don’t know why you’re upset,” Park said.
Cooper took a deep breath in and out. He wasn’t sure why, either. It seemed like the absence of emotions over the last hour had left him abnormally sensitive to them on their return. He realized his hands were shaking and he shoved them deep into the borrowed sweatshirt. “I just don’t want you to wake up one day and realize you’ve given me everything because I’m—whatever you think I am, and then it turns out I’m really not.”
Park tilted his head. “Is this because of that ridiculous AQ test?”
Obviously. “No!” Cooper protested. “I mean, it’s not just that.”
He thought of the casual way Park had said the others were compelled to be near him, to check in on him. He thought of Muñoz, speaking of Kreuger. I loved him. I mean, he was my alpha, how could I not? Was this why Park was so obsessed with taking care of him? Was this why he’d been so careful and generous with Cooper’s erratic, sometimes unreasonable feelings since they’d first met? What about what Park had said about how unpleasant it was to leave a pack? Obviously Cooper didn’t want Park to leave him and certainly didn’t think Park wanted to, either. But if that ever were to happen, if he was unhappy one day and needed...more, Cooper didn’t want him to feel stuck.
How could I not? Muñoz had said. Like she was bound to Kreuger. Like she was cursed to feel for him forever.
“I just don’t want you trapped or—or tied to my happiness because you see me as this figure you need to please. When I’m not. When I’m actually an enormous mess.” He looked away from Park’s searching expression and stared at the dark water of the quarry. “More of a mess than I think you even realize,” he murmured. “But even if I was your whatever, I wouldn’t want you building your whole life around my happiness because that’s not something I can guarantee. It would fuck me up, Oliver, if you ever thought my shit was because you...failed me. ’Cause you haven’t. The opposite. Okay?”
Park contemplated him for a long moment. “Okay. Understood,” he said finally. “Thank you for being open with me.”
They both watched the water, allowing the crackling, raw emotion of Cooper’s words to fade. It had needed to be said. He only hoped Park really heard him. After a few moments, Cooper slipped his hand into Park’s. “The more I look at it, the more unreal it seems,” he said, staring at the water. “Nothing should be that black and empty. Like beyond this cliff, the world just disappears.”
“‘And when you gaze long into the abyss,’” Park quoted.
“The abyss says, do I have something on my face?”
Park’s shoulders started to shake and he pulled Cooper’s hand up to his mouth to press a kiss to his knuckles. “Just so you know, it wasn’t your AQ that first drew me to you. It’s the way no one has ever made me laugh like you do. When I’m with you, I don’t feel trapped at all. I feel lighter, stronger. For the first time in my life, I feel free.”
It wasn’t exactly the commitment renewal ceremony Dr. Joyce had wanted. But it was what Cooper would return to when things got hard and he needed to remember what he was fighting for. Needed to remember just how very much in love he was in that moment, standing on the edge of the world, holding Park’s hand in the dark.
* * *
Cooper woke up shivering. Every muscle in his body hurt from tensing with cold and his jaw was trembling, seconds away from a full-blown teeth chatter. Fucking air conditioner must have kicked back on with a vengeance sometime during the night. He rolled to the edge of the bed—sitting up dragging the blanket with him around his shoulders—so he could turn the ice monster off, and was immediately faced with an unfamiliar window.
Cooper blinked at it, so deeply disoriented he felt a little dizzy. The waning moon blinked cheekily back from behind quick-moving clouds. With a rush, he remembered being in North Carolina on a case.
The retreat. The cabin. The river...
Another violent shiver racked through his body, and he quickly lay back down and pulled the blankets closer around him—lightweight summer weaves that did little to help. Every time his muscles clenched with cold, his bruised ribs ached and his calf itched awfully. Hesitantly he reached down toward the place Vanessa had latched on and felt five little scabs that stung at the faintest touch.
Cooper shivered again, this time only partially from cold, remembering the feeling of her teeth breaking skin. The look in Symer’s eyes...
He pushed the thought away and burrowed deeper into the bed, starting to notice the heaviness of his head and a sore tickle in the back of his throat. It was possible his disorientation wasn’t all from being sleepy. Cooper cursed silently. The last thing he needed was Park’s half-worried, half-smug told-you-so if he really did come down with pneumonia or some kind of goddamn river disease.
Cooper pulled the blanket up over his nose, trying to direct his own hot breaths downward, to build a small pocket of warm air. His heart was beating a little faster than normal. He could practically feel it fluttering in his throat. ’Cause he was sick or...?
He looked around the small cabin on high alert, wondering what had woken him up. But the room was still and quiet. Outside, summer crickets played their moonlight sonata. Beside him, Park was zonked out. Cooper studied him. It was dark in the cabin, but the dim light from the cloud-spotted moon was enough for his eyes to adjust.
He rarely got to see Park, who was an early riser, asleep. It was one of his favorite treats. The few times he caught him unconscious, Park’s face was soft and almost childish. Vulnerable in a way that appealed to some deep, unexamined part of Cooper.
Tonight was different. Park’s lips were turned down and there was a little furrow between his brows, like he was annoyed by something or someone. Cooper got to see this look plenty.
Another spasm of cold seized his muscles, and he felt the first twinges of a cramp in his back. Cooper scooted closer to Park incrementally, trying not to wake him, but desperate for the inhuman heat he’d pooh-poohed just yesterday. Pressing gently against Park’s body and burying his face against his chest, the oppressive heat of the apartment seemed like a wonderful dream now. He wanted desp
erately to get back to sleep.
Suddenly a wolf’s sonorous howl split the air. Cooper jumped, looking quickly over his shoulder at the cabin door. He half-expected to see that one had let themself inside, the howl was so loud.
“It’s okay,” Park’s sleep-rough voice said, and his hand smoothed over Cooper’s waist.
“It must be late. What are they doing out there?”
Park shrugged, yawning. “Not so late. Just feels like that because you passed out as soon as we got back to the cabin,” he added, sounding amused.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Were you hoping Kyle and Andrew would get back here and practice some intimacy through touch exercises?” Cooper teased, snuggling up even closer.
Park cursed and ran his hands all over Cooper’s body in a decidedly non-erotic way, which was pretty much the opposite of what Cooper was hoping for. “You’re shaking. And feverish,” Park said, angrily and far more awake. “I knew we should have gotten you off the mountain and straight into bed—”
Cooper groaned loudly, cutting him off and faked a pitiful cough. “Please, every time you say ‘I told you so’ I get sicker. I read it on WebMD so you know it’s true. And fatal.”
Park grumbled but pulled Cooper tighter into an embrace. The heat of his body was wonderful. Cooper soaked it up like a starving man, but it wasn’t quite enough. He continued to shake, sensing Park’s unhappiness hovering as clearly as if there were an animated raincloud above them.
Out in the darkness he heard the wolf howl again, and this time another one joined in the distance. Again and again, the two wolves repeated this pattern as the sounds moved farther away.
“They’re playing our song,” Cooper whispered into Park’s chest. Park snorted but didn’t say anything. Cooper got the impression that he was listening carefully. Decoding nuances in the duet of voices that were hidden from human ears. “Are they...saying something?”
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