Thrown to the Wolves (Big Bad Wolf)

by Adhara, Charlie

  Cooper was, in fact, sure he wasn’t. He felt heartsore thinking about how lonely Park had been all these years. How lonely he still got sometimes. “But if he also joined the Trust...”

  “I see no reason why you should not continue to work together as partners in the field.”

  Cooper stared at her. “Partners?” He could do a job he was genuinely excited about for the first time in...years and continue to work with Oliver? “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Take some time. Think it over. Talk to Park.” She stood, brushing invisible lint off her pants. “But don’t take too long. Your first case will be to track down Dr. Freeman. Otherwise there might not be much of a community left to protect and serve.”

  * * *

  When Park found him, Cooper was sitting on a bench outside the hospital, facing out across the snow. Even here he could smell the sea.

  “I can understand wanting to do anything to save a place like this. It really is beautiful,” Cooper said with his eyes closed.

  He sensed rather than heard Park sit next to him. “Yes, it is. Beautiful.”

  Cooper cracked his eyes open to find Park watching him. “Helena?”

  “Conscious and nearly stable enough to be transferred to a larger hospital on the mainland.”

  “And you? Are you okay?”

  Park shrugged. “No, not really. But I will be.”

  Cooper took his hand and held it in his lap. His fingers were practically hot against Cooper’s frigid ones. “What about Daisy?”

  “Gone. The nurses say the woman who checked Helena in disappeared within minutes. I don’t anticipate hearing from her soon.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cooper whispered.

  Park shook his head; he looked totally unbothered. More at peace than he had been for days. “Don’t be. Not for my sake, anyway. She already did more for me today than the rest of my life combined.”

  Cooper frowned, confused.

  “She saved your life. For that I’ll always be grateful.”

  Cooper huffed. “I don’t want you feeling obligated to her on my account.” He looked at Park slyly. “Besides, Boogie helped, too, you know. Are you going to reconcile with her?”

  “‘Don’t let’s ask for the moon,’ Cooper. ‘We have the stars.’”

  “You know what quoting Bette does to me.”

  Park waggled his eyebrows and squeezed Cooper’s hand.

  “You’re in a mood.”

  “I spoke to Cola.”

  “Ah.”

  Park studied him. “I thought you’d be happier about it.”

  “I am,” Cooper said quickly. “But...before you say anything, you should know Helena wants you back in the pack and she...she offered me a, uh, place there as well.”

  Park looked out across the snowy plain. An ambulance was silently pulling into the parking lot and a couple of medics hopped out carrying wrapped deli sandwiches and teasing each other loudly.

  Cooper lowered his voice. “I’ve seen how you missed your family. How they’ve missed you. If you want to move back here, well.” He gestured at the parking lot. “Like I said, it’s a beautiful place and I could learn to live here.”

  “You’d give up a job in the Trust practically tailor-made for you so I could move back in with my grandmother?” Park asked, frowning.

  “Yes, I would. Your happiness is more important to me than the job. Whatever the job is.” Cooper brought the back of Park’s hand to his mouth for a kiss. “You obviously need a pack and I obviously need you. So if this is our best opportunity to be in a pack together, I don’t want to hold you back.”

  Park surprised him by laughing.

  “Hey, I was making a serious overture of affection here. Do you mind?”

  “Cooper,” Park said, still laughing. “I don’t need to rejoin them to be part of a pack. I’m already part of a pack.”

  “What...?”

  “Yours, you dope.”

  Cooper blinked at him. “Mine? You’re—What?”

  Park tilted his head and a slight crease of worry appeared between his eyes. “As long as you still want me.”

  “Of course I do,” Cooper said hastily. “I just thought—I mean, that thing you said before, in the dining room, to Marcus, about...you know...”

  “That you’re my alpha?” Park said, voice amused, though the concerned wrinkle was still there.

  Cooper realized he was freaking out a little and took a deep breath. “Yes, that. I thought that was just something you said to piss Marcus off.”

  “Nope.” Park popped the p.

  “But how is that possible? You’re so...and I’m...”

  “Well, granted, you’re not shining your brightest right now,” Park said wryly. “But normally you have one of the highest Alpha Quotients I’ve ever seen. You’re so fiercely independent you fight anyone who’s ever tried to control you, you go rushing into danger headfirst with no apparent concern for your life and you have zero hesitation in bossing me around. Why is this surprising to you?”

  “Wow. Save some of that sweet talk for the Valentine’s card. So, okay. Um, what does this mean, though? Like, what do we do now?”

  “Well, we’ll have to take you to the DMV to register you as my alpha, and there’s a written and a practical exam,” Park said sarcastically. “What do you mean what do we do now? You just keep doing you and I...get to relax. It’s—” he blushed “—ah, unexpectedly soothing to follow your lead.”

  “Hmm.” Cooper absorbed that for a moment, fascinated by the blush. There was something there that deserved exploring one day. “Okay. And without making fun of me, what does it mean as far as our relationship goes?”

  “For you? It means nothing more than what we’ve been building together for a while. You are my partner. My love. My family.”

  “And for you?” he asked, his voice gruff.

  “With you I’m finally home.” Park said it as if it was that simple. Maybe for once it could be. Hadn’t they had enough complicated in their lives?

  Cooper leaned forward and pressed a gentle, lingering kiss to his lips. When he pulled back and opened his eyes, Park’s face was entirely open and glowing with tender, almost shy happiness and love.

  Cooper couldn’t help but smile back. Yes, he could get very used to something simple. With Oliver at his side, in his pack, what could possibly go wrong?

  * * *

  Now available from Carina Press

  and Charlie Adhara.

  Solve the crime or fix the relationship—Cooper Dayton can’t seem to do both in this

  stunning follow-up to The Wolf at the Door.

  Read on for an excerpt from

  The Wolf at Bay.

  “Don’t go in without me,” Park had said before they’d separated.

  “Then how am I supposed to intimidate and threaten innocent wolves into confessing while you’re not looking?” Cooper had replied. “I’m joking.” He’d put his hands up at Park’s grimace. If by joking he meant repeating verbatim the things his BSI colleagues said snidely about him behind his back. And to his face.

  Park’s sense of humor was apparently too refined for that. “I just don’t appreciate my partner confronting a dangerous suspect on his own. So wait for me outside, okay?”

  I can take care of myself. I was doing this job just fine before you. You should trust me. None of that true. Not now. But they didn’t talk about that, either. “Fine. Understood.”

  Park had hesitated, looking uncharacteristically unsure, and began to say something else, but Cooper cut him off, gently grabbing his arm and rubbing his thumb over the crook of Park’s elbow, his sensitive spot. “I won’t go in without you. Ollie,” he added playfully, using Park’s childhood nickname.

  Park had snapped his mouth closed and blushed. Still, his expression was...troubled? D
isbelieving? But thankfully he hadn’t pushed it.

  And now? Cooper walked into the flower shop and a cluster of bells announced his arrival, unnecessarily, as Simpson was standing right at the front window display, unplugging the neon open sign.

  “Hi there!” Cooper said brightly, and continued into the store without pause, scanning the bouquets. Park didn’t want him confronting a dangerous suspect, fine. Cooper didn’t relish the idea, either. He just needed to stop Simpson from closing in order to buy Park some time. What kind of small business owner would kick out a potential paying customer?

  He perused the store and made his way toward the back, letting himself imagine, just for a moment, that he really was here buying his boyfriend some just-because flowers. What would he get Park? No, what would he get Oliver? Ollie?

  He smiled slowly, remembering the night they’d spent together watching movies at his place right before getting called out to Michigan for this case.

  Fetch me that flower; the herb I showed thee once. The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid, will make man or woman madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees.

  Cooper had frowned at the TV, trying to follow the loopy language. “So basically he’s telling that naked kid to go get him a roofie?”

  Park had punched him lightly and readjusted on the couch so that his head was in Cooper’s lap facing the TV. “It’s not a roofie, it’s Cupid’s flower. Love-in-idleness.”

  “A flower that drugs you into thinking you’re in love. Uh-huh, right. So are there Athenian police in this forest or what?”

  “Shh, you’re going to miss the best part.”

  Cooper had shut up and run his fingers absently through Park’s hair, too relaxed to make another teasing comment. Usually a fairly hard-core movie fan—or obsessed according to a certain wolf—that night he couldn’t stop his attention from drifting away from the screen to watching Park instead, who was mouthing the occasional line along with the actors. He wondered if Park ever missed being a professor and teaching Lit classes. He was always bringing over books for Cooper to read and wanting to talk about them. Cooper hadn’t really been much of an English student, but watching Park explain them excitedly afterward and then having him listen so intently when Cooper ventured his own tentative opinion had recently given him a new appreciation for the subject.

  When Park had shown up with a literal tome of Shakespeare’s plays, though, Cooper had drawn the line and suggested a compromise.

  Park could pick a film adaptation of a Shakespeare play as long as he then sat through a real classic movie of Cooper’s choosing.

  Cooper had to admit some of them weren’t too bad. Unfortunately, the most interesting part of this 1930s A Midsummer’s Night Dream so far was a totally wild, full-body sparkle suit. “King of the fairies is right,” Cooper had crowed. That got him another punch, but it was weak and shaking with laughter.

  When the credits had finally rolled, though, Cooper was troubled. He tucked Park’s hair behind his ear, thinking. “If you knew the person you loved had fallen in love with you because of some psychedelic magic herb—” he asked hesitantly.

  “Cupid’s—”

  “Yeah, yeah, Cupid’s flower, oxlips, wild thyme, brier rose and eglantine, I got it. But if you knew they loved you ’cause of magic, would you stay with them anyway? Keeping in mind you’re not the one who squirted Love Potion Number Nine in their eyes to begin with and curing them is not an option.”

  Park had gone very still in his lap and Cooper couldn’t see his expression at this angle. Not that it would have mattered. Park had a skill for keeping secrets behind that mask of his.

  “I don’t know,” Park said eventually. “I’d like to think I wouldn’t. But people are stupid in love.” Cooper snorted an agreement. “Lucky for me, magic doesn’t exist, so I don’t need to find out.”

  Cooper made a noncommittal noise. But to him, the existence of magic was in the eye of the beholder. And according to his own eye, looking down at an honest-to-god werewolf drooling on his jeans, magic was a lot closer to being real than it had been a mere year ago.

  Park twisted his head in Cooper’s lap so that he was looking up and wiggled his eyebrows. “Not that I need supernatural help to really appreciate a good ass.”

  “Idiot.” Cooper had spanked him playfully and the evening might have gotten interesting if Santiago hadn’t called moments later about a vicious werewolf attack in Michigan.

  In Simpson’s, Cooper ran his fingers gently over a bouquet of yellow roses. He wished he remembered what Cupid’s flower was actually supposed to be. Pansies, maybe? He could get some for Park. As a joke, of course. And obviously not in the middle of a brutal homicide investigation. Maybe when they got home. His home, not Park’s. Though more and more his DC apartment felt unbalanced without Park’s big body sprawled across the furniture...

  Stop that. Dangerous. Don’t go there.

  He let his fingers drop. He had to pay attention to the case or there was a real possibility he didn’t make it out of here at all, never mind home.

  It wasn’t a sound, but a familiar prickling low on the back of his neck that told him Simpson had finally followed him back into the store. Cooper threw his hands to his heart dramatically anyway when Simpson cleared his throat right behind him.

  “Oh, yikes. You startled me.”

  Simpson peered unapologetically at Cooper. His faded blue eyes shifting to gray as he stepped even closer, into a shaft of late-afternoon sunlight filtering in through the flowers. “We were just about to close,” Simpson said, but even he seemed unsure.

  “Oh, please,” Cooper said loudly, injecting some whine into his voice. “I won’t be long—I’m on my way to my boyfriend’s house and I can’t show up without flowers. I fucked up big-time, you see, and I have it on good authority that apology flowers have to be big, and my baby deserves the biggest.” He winked at Simpson.

  Simpson stared back at him, no flicker of humor or even recognition in those blank eyes. Like social interactions were something he’d learned to wait out but did not care to participate in himself, which for a shop owner couldn’t have been too lucrative. No wonder the guy had gotten mixed up with money laundering. Allegedly.

  “So, uh, what kind of flowers do you recommend?”

  Without looking away from Cooper, Simpson reached to his right and grabbed a small bouquet of daisies dyed—or perhaps genetically modified—bright, unnatural fall colors. The thought of giving them to Park made Cooper snort.

  Don’t be a daisy man, friend.

  “Uh, actually I was thinking something a bit bigger and, uh, flashier. I want it to look expensive, you know what I mean?”

  Simpson studied him for a moment, then put the daisies back and walked past him toward the back of the store. Cooper trailed behind. Most of the overhead lights back here had already been shut off, and heavy plastic curtains had been rolled down, covering the coolers where the more delicate flowers were kept. Cooper noted an unmarked door tucked behind a display of ferns.

  He quickly checked that his Taser, modified to take down wolves, and his gun were available and hidden at his shoulder and hip. It would be bad enough when Park found out he’d broken his promise to not approach the suspect alone. To do so unprepared...well, maybe buying some big flashy flowers wouldn’t go amiss after all. Not that Park seemed like a flowers kind of guy, all jokes aside. Nor was he technically Cooper’s boyfriend. Possibly. That, too, was on the list of things they did not talk about. It was a long list.

  “Lilies are very popular amongst fighting couples,” Simpson said, pulling back a rubbery plastic sheet to show a couple dozen beautiful lilies.

  “I have a cat.” Cooper shrugged apologetically and couldn’t help himself from glancing over Simpson’s shoulder toward the front door. Park, where the hell are you?

  “I thought these were for your boyfriend.”<
br />
  “Yeah, he, uh, lives with me. And my cat.”

  Simpson blinked once, slowly, looking almost like a cat himself. No, not a cat. But a predator was waking up behind his eyes. His face, however, remained eerily blank as he stepped directly into Cooper’s space, forcing him to back up against the plastic curtain. The hum of the flower cooler drowned out the noise from the street, and the delicate fragrance of lilies became choking this close, like perfume in an elevator.

  “I thought you said you were on your way to your boyfriend’s place,” Simpson murmured. His hands quickly closed around Cooper’s wrists.

  Fuck, Cooper thought. He should have drawn his weapon before this. He shouldn’t have let Simpson get this close. Really, truly, he should have just gone with the fucking lilies.

  The four deep scars on Cooper’s belly pulled unpleasantly as his skin tightened to gooseflesh, a primitive awareness of danger kicking in too late, the memory of claws slicing flesh forever carved into his skin. He hunched in on his belly slightly as it cramped.

  “Who are you?” Simpson said.

  “Let go of me, man. What’s your problem?” Cooper tugged but Simpson’s grip on his wrists tightened. It wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t unnaturally strong yet, either. Simpson was still trying to hide what he was, which meant he didn’t suspect who Cooper was. Cooper could still fix this.

  “You lied to me. Why did you come here really?” Simpson said.

  “Look...” Cooper affected an embarrassed look. “I, uh, wasn’t lying about living with my boyfriend, but I’m on my way to see this, uh, other guy. And I was just being cheap and going to split the bouquet between them, get it?”

  Cooper was surprised to see a flicker of disapproval escape Simpson’s blank mask, but the grip on his wrists slowly loosened and then dropped away altogether.

  “Someone’s going to get hurt,” Simpson said finally.

  Cooper huffed. “Yeah, me.” He held up his wrists and tried to grin.