“I haven’t given him what I gave the others.”
“By others do you mean Nielsen and Beck? Or all the other people you’ve been treating like lab rats without their consent?”
Joyce shook his head quickly. “No, no, you’ve got it wrong. Please understand. I’m not some mad scientist destroying lives. Every single wolf I tested understood it was experimental, a work in process. And still it was worth it to them. They were willing to try anything to break the bond they felt to their old packs. To become stronger. Better. I helped them, just a little. But they left here safer. Less vulnerable.”
“Even Kreuger?”
Joyce frowned. “I never wanted this to happen. I begged Kreuger to stop taking the shots as soon as he started showing negative effects, but he wouldn’t listen. He was too angry at Llcaj for humiliating him. At Vanessa for saving him. At Reggie for rejecting him. At everyone for making him feel small.”
“Kreuger killed Llcaj, didn’t he?” Cooper said, and Joyce winced.
“Yes. He came to me, begging to help hide the body. He said it was all my fault, me and my special medicines. If anyone found out, he’d take me down with him. He said he’d already called the BSI! He would have ruined me. I can’t get legal protection for werewolf medical testing. I was complicit. I could have gotten manslaughter. He kept threatening me for more and more.”
“So you killed him. A loose end.”
Joyce exhaled with a shudder. “You must see I didn’t want to. But what other choice did I have? I thought that would be the last of it. With Kreuger missing, I knew I could pin the blame on him for Llcaj. He deserved it—he was guilty. And then there’d be no more reason to look more deeply.”
“You planted the shirt in Kreuger’s office when you knew Beck would be there.”
“But I didn’t count on you and your mate snooping around beforehand.” He sighed. “Or Monty catching me on those goddamn cameras. Just because she could never recognize me doesn’t mean any other wolf wouldn’t.”
“Any other wolf or Nielsen,” Cooper said. “He was in cahoots with Monty—of course she’d show that security footage to him.”
“He just thought I was trying to steal that stupid contract, until the ranger died and he heard about the missing journals. Then he suspected me. He threatened to tell unless I reopened his father’s research on activating recessive wolf genes. As if I would be a part of something so barbaric,” Joyce said with disdain. It was obvious that to him the thought of changing humans into wolves was a thousand times more repugnant than the four murders he had on his conscience. “I was only ever just trying to help my kind. Wolves like Vanessa who were hurt over and over because they just needed to belong with someone.”
“That’s not Vanessa’s fault, though. It’s the wolves who hurt her.”
“I’ve been doing this job thirty years,” Joyce said. “It’s a lot easier to fix the wolf who wants to be better than the one who doesn’t care if they’re a monster or not. But it got out of hand. I know that, I do.”
Cooper nodded. “Of course you do. If it was anyone’s fault, it was Kreuger’s. We can tell them that. People will understand—”
Joyce was shaking his head sadly. “Please don’t lie to me. I know it’s over. I knew as soon as the Shepherd revealed his true identity this afternoon. I’ll never make it out of these mountains. I’ll be lucky if I even make it into custody. The royal packs don’t like people like me falling into the hands of the humans with information like this.” He gestured around himself with the autoinjector. “I’ve accepted my fate.”
“Then why take Oliver?” Cooper demanded. “You couldn’t resist another experiment when you realized the infamous Shepherd was here within your reach?”
Joyce tilted his head. “You’re half right. I do have one last experiment in mind. But he was just the bait.” He smiled, a soft, greedy and eager look in his eyes. “The AQ I really want to see in action is yours.”
Cooper’s grip on the shovel tightened. “No... I’m not...”
“But you are. An impossible one hundred.”
“You said yourself, there was a mistake.”
“Dr. Nielsen only theorized its impossibility. But the test doesn’t lie.”
“Then why have me take it twice?” Cooper snapped.
“To see what effect my treatment might have had, of course. I’m sorry it gave you that little fever. But all things considered, you took it remarkably well.”
“No,” Cooper whispered. “No treatment. I wasn’t injected.”
“Goodness, no. Humans can’t take the injection. Sends their little hearts right into arrhythmia. But I developed a lighter, oral dose some time ago. It was easier than I feared, slipping it to you at the river. Particularly with all the mayhem after your little accident. I just had to hand you the right bottle and a few sips was more than enough.”
Cooper shook his head, speechless, and touched his own belly, resisting the urge to vomit. To get it out of him. It was much too late now. “No...”
“And yet you remain unaffected,” Joyce said. Cooper wouldn’t say he was unaffected. But Joyce was still talking, excitement in his voice now. You could tell he was talking about something he loved. Something he almost expected Cooper to love, too. “I was never able to make much of a difference. One or two points, before. And the side effects were too risky. But something you said changed my entire way of looking at it. You said, ‘What should I aim for?’”
Joyce gave a shout of laughter, leaning forward in his seat. “I couldn’t believe it. The highest AQ I’d ever seen and you didn’t care at all about being that way. I could see it in the way you asked about perfect ratios. You wanted to score in a way that benefited your relationship with your mate. Even if that meant getting a lower AQ. You were adaptable. Nature’s greatest force and I, who claim to be a scientist, ignored it.”
Joyce shook his head and reached behind himself, opening the laptop without fully turning around. The screen was split into four views. Two different angles of the lumber mill warehouse interior, apparently empty. One on the outside entrance, and one of the lumber mill office, where Monty sat slumped in her chair, sleeping.
“The road was blocked and she wasn’t able to make it out of the mountains. She came back here to wait out the storm,” Joyce said, watching him. “Mr. Park is in there somewhere, too. But fair warning, he’s not quite himself. I’ve given him...” He paused. “An earlier iteration of the serum.” He held up his hands as Cooper began to gasp. “It’s far too much epinephrine for a human system, but in wolves it just forces a shift.”
“Just a shift?” Cooper said, heart pounding.
“Well, no. The side effects have...varied. Kreuger experienced confusion, dissociation, emotional dysregulation. But most importantly the deference he feels to you should be broken.” Joyce said the word with such distaste he practically spat it out.
“You said this was an earlier version.”
“Ah, yes. A strange but quite fruitful path I went down with Dr. Nielsen’s notes in the beginning. I think you’ll find Park quite...primitive. Animal-like, if you will.” He looked Cooper up and down. “But when confronted with an AQ such as yours...well, I guess we’ll see.”
Cooper wanted to run to the warehouse with every fiber of his soul, but resisted. “You just expect me to leave you here?”
Joyce sighed. “Where do you think I’ll go? I told you, I know it’s over. I just want to see that I was right. That I was getting close. They’ll see it was worth it. Someone will be able to take over where I left off.”
Cooper hesitated. But what could he do? Park needed him.
“Feel free to use the front door this time,” Joyce said, seeing the decision in Cooper’s face before he knew it himself. “You might want to hurry. I’d hate to think what would happen if poor Monty wakes up to a raging wolf. Or what would happen to your mate
if she doesn’t get the chance to wake up at all.”
Cooper ran. Out the door and through the small old building. Only four rooms large, it was easy enough to find the exit. He tore through the woods back to the warehouse barely able to think past the immediate here and now. Surely Park would recognize him. Even in an altered state. Surely he wouldn’t hurt anyone.
Because if he did... Park would never forgive himself. Cooper knew that. Deep in his soul.
When he got to the warehouse, he yanked open the door without sparing a glance for the camera above. He didn’t care about Joyce anymore. It was true, he had nowhere to go. Besides, Cooper doubted Joyce would be able to tear himself from the screen.
It was only when he stumbled inside, shaking the rain out of his face, did Cooper wonder if perhaps he should have made a little bit of a plan. What was he supposed to tell Monty? Don’t mind me, just looking for an enormous wolf acting abnormally and possibly violent.
“Oliver,” Cooper hissed, looking around. The still machines, saws and hanging trunk looked ominous and strange in the dark space, lit only by the spillover from the office above and harshly white emergency bulb by the door. “Where are you?”
Cooper took a few more hesitant steps deeper into the room. “Oliver, please,” he murmured. “Be okay, be okay.”
Somewhere in the shadows behind the ceiling-high shelves, he heard a click, click, click, click.
“Oliver!” Cooper ran toward the sound and the clicking sped up. Around the corner Park in fur skidded across the concrete floor and into a hunched stance. He snarled furiously.
Cooper stopped, stumbling a bit over his own feet at the abruptness of it. He stared at Park and Park stared back, eyes enormous, pupils blown, fur standing on end making him look larger than ever. His lips were completely curled back, revealing his teeth, and his shoulders were up and trembling with poised tension.
He looked so different than any way Cooper had ever seen him—different even from this morning when he’d fought Jimmy—that for a moment Cooper even wondered if he’d gotten it wrong. This wasn’t Park. Not his Park.
“Oliv—”
The wolf, Park, started running again, directly at him. Cooper didn’t have time to do anything—what would he even do?—before he was flying to the hard floor, the little breath left in his lungs knocked out with such force it felt like every individual cell in his body gasped at once. The shovel had gone clattering loudly out of his hands across the concrete and Cooper’s hands were pinned against his own chest by Park’s furry, brutally heavy body on top of him.
He couldn’t speak, couldn’t inhale, couldn’t think. Park’s breath was hot across his skin, teeth still bared and a constant furious snarl ripping through him on loop.
Cooper gave in to instinct, moving with rather than pushing up against the force of Park’s weight. He sank into the fear and doubt and closed his eyes. It was a relief, just smelling and feeling Park. It reminded him of the way he had tucked himself around Cooper a couple nights ago to keep him warm. He let himself go limp.
Without anything to fight against, the tension in Park’s body was easing, too. Snarls becoming intermittent, unsure, and then finally silent.
Am I...dead?
Unlikely. For one thing, he was way too uncomfortable for that. Bewildered, Cooper waited. He barely dared to breathe, but forced himself to anyway, continuing to stick with his instincts. In one two, out one two, in, out. Slowly, Park began to breathe with him.
That’s it, Cooper thought. I’m not here to hurt you. I don’t ever want to hurt you.
After a long moment Cooper felt Park’s wet, cold nose bump his chin and sigh. Cooper sighed, too, and opened his eyes, suddenly desperate to see the man he loved.
His heart skipped then sank. Park still wasn’t himself. There was none of the familiarity, recognition, awareness, in his expression. But at least he was much more calm. Almost sleepy-eyed. Cooper slowly wiggled his hands out from under Park, watching him the whole time.
But the danger was passed. Cooper had let himself be the vulnerable one, for once. Not a fighter. Not a threat. And whether he was animal or man, Park would never attack someone who wasn’t a threat. Very carefully, he ran his fingers across Park’s cheeks until he was gently holding the sides of his head.
“I’m going to get you out of this,” he said softly.
It was disconcerting how little recognition was in Park’s eyes. The absence of it made Cooper realize he’d been wrong before in thinking he couldn’t possibly understand what Park wanted when in fur. He had. He had just needed to believe it.
Suddenly Park’s ears swiveled to the right, then his whole head followed. Cooper twisted in time to catch Monty pointing a rifle at them.
“No!” Cooper shouted, and the sudden panic in his voice set Park off growling again, protectively this time.
Without thinking, Cooper flung his arms around Park and twisted them over, covering his body with his own. Park rolled, so easily and obediently that Cooper was stunned by it for a moment, staring down at him. Anyone alive could read the complete faith there.
You trusted me, so I trust you. It was that simple.
A loud crack sound rang through the building. “Don’t shoot!” Cooper shouted. “He’s not hurting me. Don’t shoot!”
But Park was already scrambling out from under him to get at the attacker. Cooper lunged, trying to grab him back, but it was no use. “No! Stop!”
Shockingly, Park did. He paused one foot in the air and looked back at Cooper, tilting his head. He stared intently, questioning. Yes? What do you want? And his tail twitched back and forth just once in a tentative sort of happiness.
Behind him, Monty lowered the gun slightly, fully taking in the scene in front of her...
And then purposefully aimed to shoot.
“No!” Cooper yelled, jumping up. He grabbed the shovel off the ground and swung at the rifle, but it was too late. A shot rang out and a horrible yelp split the air. Park stumbled just before Cooper’s shovel hit Monty’s hand with satisfying force. She roared with rage and dropped the gun to the concrete floor with a clatter.
Cooper quickly pulled it out of Monty’s reach, who was screaming, bent over and clutching her hand. He knelt by Park, lying on his side, breathing shakily and looking up at Cooper with wide, confused eyes.
“Oliver,” Cooper murmured, running his hands over his body, searching for the wound. His hands touched blood and sticky, matted fur at Park’s throat.
“No, no, no, no,” he whispered. The bullet had torn through the thick fleshy skin on the side of his neck. Cooper didn’t know what that meant. Where were his major arteries like this? Why the hell didn’t he know anything about wolf anatomy?
He pressed down on it carefully, staunching the steady bleeding. Park twitched with discomfort and then tried to lick at Cooper’s hands—almost apologetically, almost like he thought Cooper was the one hurting him and he was politely asking him to please stop. When he realized he was unable to pick his head up very far from the floor, Park just made a wet, gurgling sort of whining sound that abruptly peeled off in pain and then closed his eyes.
“Stop it,” Cooper whispered. “Don’t you dare. I mean it, Oliver. I can’t—I won’t let you. You’re not allowed.”
He could still feel Park’s steady, rapid breathing under his hands, but his eyes stayed shut. “Are you listening? Please just—We have to go home now. We have to buy a house, remember? Whatever one you want, and no one’s ever going to make us leave. I promise. Not ever. I just want to be home with you. Please, let’s go home...”
Behind him the door to the warehouse opened and a small crowd of wolves, upright and in skin, spilled inside with a blast of rain and wind: Mutya, Vanessa, Paul and Reggie.
“He’s insane!” Monty yelled, pointing with her uninjured hand at Cooper.
“Oliver’s shot,” Co
oper said directly to Mutya, who hurried over and knelt beside him, gently moving his hands to the side to see. Behind them, the others were corralling a protesting Monty farther and farther away. “Throat. I—”
“Shh, shh, shh. It’s just a flesh wound. Right through the scruff. He’s going to be okay.” She efficiently pulled off her cardigan and held it against the bleeding. “We can move him back to the lodge. Christopher’s waiting in the truck.”
Cooper exhaled with almost overwhelming relief and began to wipe at his tears before realizing his hands were covered in blood.
“God,” he said, the sight of it sending a pulse of rage through his veins. He let it course through him. Let it fade. Park was going to be okay. That’s what mattered.
He frowned in realization. “How are you all here? What about De Luca and Terradas? What if they don’t let us back?”
Mutya smiled. “It’s perfectly safe. Yvette, Angela and Lisa have taken over on that end. You might say there was a bit of a coup after you left.”
“What?”
“De Luca went too far.” She looked at him shrewdly for a moment. “Following an alpha is a gift. It can be taken back whenever we want and given to someone else. Remember that.”
Cooper absorbed that. “Thank you,” he said. “For both of us.”
He cupped his hand over Park’s head, stroking his thumb over his cheek. He couldn’t resist looking up. Finding the small steady red light of the watching security camera.
He hoped Joyce was still watching. Hoped he could see and understand he had thrown away his whole life trying to fix people who were never broken to begin with.
Chapter Fourteen
The world seemed different and strange without the rain. Cooper almost missed it. He’d gotten so used to the sound, it seemed curiously quiet now.
He stared out the window of the small inn and could see the quiet streets of Maudit Falls town proper. Canals of water still lined the street. The flowers, plants and trees that peppered the sidewalks and small park area across the way lay drooped and twisted so dramatically it was hard to imagine they’d ever stand straight again.
Wolf in Sheep's Clothing (Big Bad Wolf) Page 27
