When I woke, there was a large black wolf curled up on my rug. I shrieked, springing up from the couch. I scrambled over the back and landed with a thump.
Ow.
For the briefest second, I thought I was going insane. Or that my mom had slipped peyote into her honey-oat cookies. Really, either option was possible.
“It’s true,” I whispered. “Holy shit! It’s true?”
The wolf lifted his head and looked up at me. I tensed and wished I had thought to grab the fireplace poker. I wasn’t frequently confronted with fairy-tale stock characters. I didn’t know what to expect.
Cooper had told me, no matter what I saw, not to be afraid, that he wouldn’t hurt me. So I stood slowly. The wolf yawned and lowered his head to rest on his paws. He didn’t look vicious. He looked tired. His eyebrows quirked up with interest as I moved toward him. I tentatively held out my hand, fingers tucked in, so if he snapped at me, I could keep them. I stroked my knuckles behind his ears.
He closed his eyes and leaned into my hand. He opened his huge jaws, and a flash of panic zipped along my spine. I had miscalculated. He was going to kill me. I wondered if I would even have time to back away before he lunged for my throat. I waited for the strike. I opened my squinched eyes to find him watching me, as if to say, And why did you stop the scratching?
I froze, keeping absolutely still as the wolf leaned forward and ran his nose from just behind my ear to the hollow of my throat. I held my breath. Kara was right. No good can come of living with the wolves. The wolf gave me a sloppy, warm lick across my neck.
“Yech.” I shuddered, giggling despite myself. “Cooper spit.”
As he was not interested in mauling me, wolf-Cooper yawned again and went back to sleep. I sank to my knees and stared at the animal. How could this be possible? How could people not know about this? How, in this age of video phones and Facebook and blogging about your breakfast habits, could there be people out there in the world who could turn into wolves and not tell anyone about it?
Tentatively, I edged my hand toward his fur. I wasn’t familiar with wolves; I couldn’t even remember seeing one when my parents protested at the San Diego Zoo. I sank into a corner of the couch and spent the rest of the night just watching him sleep. I figured I wouldn’t have another opportunity to baby-sit a werewolf, so I should make the most of it.
Around sunrise, the wolf raised his head and yawned loudly. He shook his way to his feet and stretched. There was a shimmer of golden light along Cooper’s fur, a ripple of air, and there sat the surly, taciturn hunting guide I’d come to loathe. I preferred the giant wolf. Sure, canine Cooper might lunge for my throat, but at least he couldn’t talk. Cooper draped the quilt over his bare lap, trying and failing to maintain his dignity while surrounded by a pink chintz double-wedding-ring pattern. I used his moment of awkward silence to smirk and admire.
Cooper seemed a little startled when his eyes focused on me, as if he’d forgotten I was in the room. I would have said he looked sheepish, but that seemed like an inappropriate word to apply to a wolf.
I wanted to say something, but seriously, what do you say in a situation like this? Hey, nice tail? And even if I found something to say, would he understand me? Was there a wolf-to-human dictionary?
There was a flash of light, a warm golden glow that rippled along the wolf’s form. And just like that, the wolf was gone. Cooper was sitting there, wrapping the quilt around his waist, his lips pressed into a mortified line.
“There is no wolf. This was all just a dream,” he said in a deep, resonant, Obi-Wan Kenobi voice, and waved his hand in front of my face as if to project his Jedi mind trick. My eyes narrowed at him. He shrugged. “It was worth a shot.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and arched an eyebrow at him. “You showed up, seriously wounded, on my doorstep. Naked. I didn’t call doctors or the police, even after you turned into a wolf. I’d say you owe me an explanation.”
“Er, I’m a werewolf.”
I nodded, lips pursed. “That I gathered.”
“Trust me, I didn’t want—that is, I wouldn’t have come here if I could have helped it. I was, you know, a wolf, and I stepped in that damn trap, and yours was the closest house. I didn’t know what else to do.” He cleared his throat again. “So . . . I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell anybody about this.”
“Who would believe me?” I rolled my eyes.
“Good point.”
“But I want you to say it,” I said, pushing up from the couch. My limbs were sore from camping there all night. And I was wearing bloodstained flannel pajamas imprinted with little purple daisies. But nothing could have stopped me from crossing the room and poking my finger dangerously near Cooper’s bare chest.
“Say what?” he asked, the friendly tone thinning into a more familiar, hostile tenor.
“I want you to admit that I saved your ass. I didn’t faint at the sight of blood or run away screaming when you turned into a giant wolf in my living room. I stuck. I did what needed to be done. I. Saved. You.” I accentuated each of the last three words with a jab of my finger against Cooper’s sternum. I pulled my hand away fast, fingertip tingling from the contact with his warm, smooth skin.
“So?”
“So I think someone owes someone here an apology.”
He grimaced. “I thought I owed you an explanation.”
“The explanation was just a down payment. Say it. Say, ‘Mo, I was wrong. I’m sorry. You’re not a weak, pathetic outsider.’”
“You are not a weak, pathetic outsider,” he said without any enthusiasm.
That was probably the best I was going to get.
“Thank you.”
“This doesn’t make us friends, you know,” he said, peering up sulkily through the dark hair that had fallen over his brow.“I don’t want to be your friend,” I assured him. “You’re still pretty much a jerk as far as I’m concerned. Now I know that you’re a jerk who turns into a wolf. Not much has changed.”
“Good. I’ll just be on my way.” Cooper stood, dropping the quilt. He smirked when my eyes wandered south, even when I tried not to look.
Dang it.
Clearly, I had been alone in this cabin for too long. I needed male companionship in the worst way. But not from Cooper, I reminded my racing hormones. I’d done the revenge-sex thing and the strictly-due-to-great-chemistry sex thing with equally satisfying results. But Cooper and his Mighty Morphin Power Penis were absolutely off limits. I did not sleep with people who openly disliked me.
“I have questions for you,” I told him. “Lots of them.”
“About the wolf thing?”
“No, I was hoping you’d give me your opinions about global warming,” I retorted. “Yes, the wolf thing! How is this possible? Were you bitten by a werewolf? Does Evie know about this? What were you doing so close to my house—mmph!”
Cooper was across the room before I could blink. His hands tangled into my hair, yanking my lips toward his. It wasn’t so much a kiss as his attempt to stop my mouth from moving. I squealed in protest, shoving at his bare shoulders, but his hands held my face in place as he seemed to steal the air from my lungs. His thumbs ran along my jawline, and his mouth relaxed into a slow, dragging rhythm against mine. The hands that were supposed to be shoving him away slipped around his shoulders and pulled him closer. His teeth nipped at my bottom lip. He took advantage of my soft little gasp by sliding his tongue into my mouth. His hands slid down to my hips and pulled me tighter against him.
I didn’t care if he was surly. I didn’t care if he was supernaturally gifted. I wanted him. I could deal with the rest. I let loose a happy moan, and something in Cooper seemed to grind to a halt. By degrees, he pulled away, loosened his hold. The man who had just claimed my mouth was replaced by Cooper’s hardened, smirking face.
He stepped away. “Kissing shuts you up. I’ll have to remember that.”
Bastard. Furry werewolf bastard.
I gasped and reached for a handy blunt object to toss his way. Cooper sauntered over to the front door and jerked the handle. I could see that he was about to make one of his patented, oh-so-clever parting remarks, so I beat him to the punch.
“You’re still naked!” I called, smiling nastily. “It’s cold outside. Expect shrinkage.”
“Gah!” He grunted, phased back into his wolf form, and ran out of sight.
9
Bears: Not as Friendly as the Honey
Packaging Would Have You Believe
AFTER COOPER DID THE naked dash of shame, I went to work as if nothing had happened. I figured it was my best defense against an appointment in a rubber room.
Well, I didn’t pull total nonchalance. Every time the door opened, I looked up, expecting Cooper to walk in, which was stupid, because what on earth would I say to him? Could I possibly behave as if, one, I hadn’t seen him naked, and two, I hadn’t seen him covered in a black fur coat? I poured two cups’ worth of coffee into poor Alan’s lap because I was too distracted to aim for his mug. When I knocked a stack of dishes off the counter with a loud, crashing rattle, Evie made me take a break.
I leaned against the wall of the alley, calculating how much I should offer Evie to replace the broken dishes. She popped out of the kitchen entrance and offered me a bottle of water. “You OK, Mo? You seem kind of hyper.”
I took a deep breath and tried to compose a believable lie in my head. Hot date, too much caffeine, chain-store shopping withdrawal. But then I saw a flicker of recognition on Evie’s even features. Her face wasn’t in its natural warm state. It was a polite, detached mask.
Evie was in on it.
“You know, don’t you?” I said, my eyes narrowing.
“Know what?” she asked, her tone far too guileless to be genuine.
“You know what Cooper is, about his extracurricular nighttime activities.”
Evie started to shake her head, her lips parting to start her denials, but then she sighed. “Yes. How did you find out?”
“Figured it out a while ago. And then last night, there was a thing with a bear trap.”
“Bear trap!”
“Cooper’s fine now, I promise. Can you . . .” I lifted my brow as I let the question hang in the air between us.
“Wiggle my eyebrows?” she asked. I think at this point, she was still hedging against the possibility that we weren’t talking about the same thing.
“No! Can you turn into a wolf?” I asked.
Evie laughed, and her shoulders loosened, as if they had shrugged off some heavy weight. “No one in my branch of the family can. We’re what the pack calls a dead line.”
“Ouch. Wait. You knew about this, and you still tried to set me up with him?”
“Well, it’s not like he’s going to huff and puff and blow your house down,” Evie said, glaring at me. “Cooper was one of the first kids in his generation to become a wolf. Everybody in his line has been able to change. It’s sort of a big deal. Every generation produces a pack. Every pack has a leader. It’s the natural order of things. Cooper was supposed to be his generation’s alpha, the leader. Everyone could tell the minute he first phased. He was the fastest, the strongest. But he chose to leave the packlands, the valley where my family lives, and move a hundred miles away to Grundy. For a werewolf, that’s one of the most difficult things you can do. Even moving this far away was devastating for him.”
“Why? Why is leaving so hard?”
Evie took a pull off my bottle of water and shrugged. “Centuries of instinct. A wolf’s brain is hard-wired to protect a certain area of land, to hunt there, to live there. And that’s the way it’s been for the pack for almost a thousand years. Everything in Cooper’s body is telling him to return home. Imagine fighting against that kind of draw, every waking moment of every day. You’d be kind of cranky, too.”