“The adjustment must be so difficult for you,” I said, wiping pretend tears of pity from my cheeks. Cooper got quiet, playing with my hands, lacing our fingers together. “You wanted to talk. Let’s talk.”
Cooper cleared his throat and dropped my hands. I obstinately grabbed his and lifted his chin so he had to look me in the eye. He took a deep breath and said, “About a year after I became alpha, this other pack showed up one night. They dragged Maggie out of our house, and their alpha threatened to snap Maggie’s neck in front of me if I didn’t relinquish control of the valley to them. The pack had come up from outside Vancouver. They’d bled their own packlands dry. Their alpha, Jonas, had no choice but to move on to better hunting grounds. He heard that the valley was a pretty good range. They’d done a pretty good job of scouting us out, because they knew about the vulnerabilities of the packlands, the layout of the village, how many able fighters were in the pack, and that I wasn’t all that strong of an alpha.”
He sighed, plucking at my sleeves with nervous fingers. “I’m standing there in the woods surrounded by my whole family. All I could think to do was offer them a place in the valley. To share it with them. He declined. This fucker has my baby sister by the neck, shaking her so hard I can still hear her teeth rattle, and everybody’s looking at me like I’m supposed to know what to do. And the worst part was Maggie—she wasn’t even scared. Because she knew her big brother was going to fix it. I was scared out of my fucking mind, and Maggie was sort of smirking at me, like, ‘Come on, Cooper, just kick this guy’s ass, already.’”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I just froze. And the look on Maggie’s face when she realized that I had no clue what to do . . . I still have nightmares about that look.” He shuddered. “You want to know how we got out of it? My baby sister sank her teeth into Jonas’s arm, kicked all six foot four inches of him in the balls, and called him a jerkoff.”
“Wow. That sounds nothing like her.”
He gave a little smile. “She always was tougher than me. But I was faster. And when Jonas went for her throat, I was able to change before Maggie. I held him off, but both packs phased, and nothing could prevent blood from being shed. Maggie just wouldn’t stay away from Jonas. She kept lunging at him, no matter what I did to keep her away. I got distracted when another male jumped on my back. Jonas got Maggie down on the ground. His teeth were at her neck, and I just lost it. It’s one of those rare clear memories I have as a wolf, killing that male without a second thought, knocking Jonas off Maggie, holding him to the ground, and ripping his throat out.”
Cooper looked a little green just remembering it. I squeezed his hands, trying to bring him back to the present. “What about the rest of their pack?”
“Maggie took down one. But I killed the rest, one by one. Some of my own pack members tried to help me, and I snapped at them. There were twelve wolves in the other pack, and when I phased back to human, they were all dead.” Cooper buried his face in his hands, as if he couldn’t look up to see my face.
I was at a loss to understand why. I shook his shoulder. “But isn’t that a good thing?”
“No, it’s not a good thing!” he yelled.
“You saved your sister. You defended your home and your pack. I’m failing to see the bad here.”
“I killed people, Mo! Yeah, they had fangs and fur at the time, but they were people, just like every member of my own pack is a person. Men and women alike. I killed them all. Something in me was able to do that. I couldn’t stomach what I’d done. Everybody tried to tell me how proud my father would have been, how I’d shown myself to be a great leader. And every night, I woke up screaming from the nightmares. Nothing helped. I couldn’t be around my family anymore. I couldn’t trust myself with them. I didn’t deserve them.”
Cooper stared into the fire, his lips barely moving as he spoke. “Maggie could forgive my hesitation. She could forget that I’d killed people in front of her. But when I couldn’t just go back to being her goofy big brother, she started to hate me. She hated me for not being able to accept a position that she was obviously more suited for, for betraying the pack. When I left, it was like she was relieved, because she had a reason.”
I crawled into his lap, part of me expecting him to shy away from me, to shove me away. “What do you want me to do? Yell at you? Hit you? Scream ‘Get away from me, you monster’? Because if that’s what you’re looking for, you’re going to be disappointed.”
Cooper sighed deeply, the tension easing out of his body. He nuzzled his face into my neck. “You’re not angry with me?”
“I haven’t processed it all yet. Mostly, I’m really irritated that you didn’t think I would understand. You hurt someone to help me,” I said. “Do you think I hold that against you? That I love you any less for it? How could I judge you for doing the same for your family?”
I tilted his head up and gave him my best stern expression. He sighed, pressed his ear to my chest, and listened to my heartbeat, rubbing his cheek against my shirt and inhaling deeply.
“Besides, this still doesn’t make you the scariest guy I’ve ever dated,” I said, my mouth twisted into a pert moue.
He frowned. “Mo, I killed eleven people. How many does it take to be the scariest guy you’ve ever dated?”
“Twelve,” I said, shrugging. “That’s my boyfriend body-count threshold. I have to have some standards.”
“You’re a little sick.”
“I’m living with a werewolf. I have to be a little sick.”
18
On the Next Dr. Phil
UNBURDENED, COOPER FELL ASLEEP long before I did.
I drifted off, staring at the stars, mulling over Cooper’s tale. Was it disturbing, knowing that my werewolf lover was capable of killing? Definitely. Had I glossed over that a little to help him feel better about telling me? Damn skippy. And while I knew I hadn’t quite processed my feelings about it, it’s not as if he was murdering fluffy bunnies or even—really—human beings. He’d killed fully grown, capable werewolves who were staging a hostile takeover and would have murdered his family to accomplish it. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have helped him, given the chance.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I became with Maggie. Yes, she was young, but how could she come down so hard on Cooper for having what were likely normal posttraumatic reactions to a mass killing? How dare she make her hurt feelings his problem? Who knew how Cooper might have adjusted and accepted what happened if she’d just kept her mouth shut?
Cooper’s sister needed to know how much she’d hurt him. She needed to grow the hell up. But short of pinning her with a Howitzer and having a forced intervention with Dr. Phil, I didn’t think I would emerge from such an encounter with all of my digits.
However, the image of Dr. Phil yelling Texasisms at Maggie was relaxing enough to put me to sleep.
When I woke the next morning, I could tell something was bothering Cooper. He sniffed the cold, smoke-smeared air, worry furrowing his forehead. He tried to play it off, tried to pretend that he wasn’t rushing us off the campsite, that he wanted to get me back to our bed so he could love me properly. He claimed this was the advantage of camping without a fancy RV or tent. “At the end of the weekend, all you want to do is get home, not spend an hour packing up your gear.”
“You’re just trying to get out of bringing a tent next time.” He once again lifted his face to inhale the breeze. “Cooper, what’s wrong? You keep doing that. You’re not having regrets about talking to me last night, are you?”
“No. Definitely not,” he assured me. “Something smells funny. Has since I woke up this morning.”
“I told you not to eat all that jerky,” I muttered.
“Let’s just get going,” he said, wrapping an arm around me as we headed through the trees.
We hiked for more than a mile, Cooper growing more tense by the step. We hopped over a dip in the trail, and he suddenly stopped, sniffed, and bolted into the trees.
“Cooper?”
“Stay there!” he yelled.
“Oh, yeah, that’s likely,” I huffed, following him as closely as I could. I found a trail of clothes in his wake, so it didn’t surprise me to find him wolfed out when I hit the clearing. He was hunched over something. As I got closer, I saw the thin legs encased in worn hiking boots. Cooper whined and nudged the fallen form with his nose. “What the . . .”
I gently pushed him out of the way and cried out, “Cooper, it’s Abner!”
Abner was flat on his back, his pack still strapped around his chest. His rifle was loaded and unused at his side. There were deep gashes clawed across his chest, dangerously close to his neck. There were dark, slashing stains on his trousers, which I realized were wounds, caked over with blackened, dried blood.
The hair on Cooper’s neck was bristled high as he scanned the trees. His back was turned to me as he paced a circle around us.
“Abner?” I whispered, my voice shaking as I gently pressed my fingers to his neck. His skin was cool and dry. His pulse was weak and erratic. I sucked breath through my teeth to fight back the hot tears that threatened to fall. My numbed fingers reached for the hem of Abner’s work shirt, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at the damage underneath. I was almost knocked over by the wave of shame at my own squeamishness. I can do this. I have to hold it together, I told myself. One task at a time. One step at a time. I rummaged through my bag for the first-aid kit and my water bottle.
Cooper turned toward me and whined again, a hollow, defeated sound. He seemed to be trying to tell me something as he stared at the first-aid kit.
“Too late?” I asked him, wiping my eyes. “Bullshit. He’s not dead. That’s bullshit.”
Ignoring Cooper’s canine murmurings, I took the bottle and ever so carefully propped Abner’s head in my lap. I poured just a little bit of water between his dry, cracked lips. His papery eyelids fluttered open. A rattling breath wheezed out from his throat.
“Shh,” I told him, giving him a weak smile as I offered him more water. “Don’t try to talk. It’s going to be OK. We’re going to get some help for you, Abner.” Abner stared at me with the empty delirium of someone who couldn’t tell if he was awake. I smiled at him, pretending that my nose wasn’t running, that the effort wasn’t making my face hurt. “You can’t go anywhere, Abner. I was about to take you up on your offer. What kind of girl could resist warm feet and cable TV?”
Abner smiled, and the effort split his lip. He raised a feeble hand and patted my arm. A low whimper sounded from Cooper’s throat, even as he kept an eye on the woods around us. Abner’s attention followed the sound. His whole body twitched as his eyes fell on the black wolf. I could hear the scream building from the bottom of Abner’s abused lungs long before it came out, a plaintive, panic-stricken wail. His eyes were wide, unfocused in raw terror. His fingers clutched at my arms as his legs frantically pushed away from the wolf.
“Abner, it’s OK, calm down!” I cried. “Please!”
Abner let loose one last bleating gasp and fell still against my legs. I felt warm trails of tears streaming down my face to land on Abner’s forehead. I pushed his frazzled gray hair back from his battered face. I kept my fingers cupped around his throat, waiting for some sign of a heartbeat, but his body was completely still. No breath. No pulse. No Abner.
Cooper huffed at me and started toward the trees. When I didn’t move, he gave a sharp bark.
“We’re not leaving him here.”
He growled and jerked his head toward the trail.
“We can’t just leave him.” Cooper carefully grabbed my sleeve between his teeth and dragged me through the tree line. “Damn it, Cooper, cut it out.”