“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “The humans didn’t know what they were doing. It took me a while, a long while, to stop being angry with them. They were being attacked by a huge, angry wolf. You’ve seen what I can do. Can you blame them?” When I didn’t answer, he seemed annoyed by my silence but continued. “Samson’s dad took off a while after that. He couldn’t stand seeing us every day, feeling like it was his fault that we didn’t have my father anymore. Samson’s mom died when he was a baby, so he moved in with us. He was always more brother than cousin, anyway.”
“Don’t you miss that? Would you ever go back, do you think, to be part of the pack again?”
He shook his head. “My mom comes to visit. I see Samson every once in a while. And our cousin Caleb helps me with hunting parties whenever he’s in town, which isn’t often. My sister . . . it’s pretty complicated with her. I haven’t been home in a couple of years. Every time I tried to visit, it just ended in an ugly scene.”
“Why?”
Cooper looked as if he was on the verge of telling me something important, then switched mental lanes before it could come out of his mouth. “She feels betrayed, like I left just to spite her or something. And she’s always been so damn pigheaded. Once she makes up her mind that you’ve screwed her over, you’re on her shit list for life.”
“And I assume that she doesn’t settle for the time-honored Southern tradition of passive-aggressive comments and insulting your cooking?”
“The last time I was home, I lost part of an ear and three fingertips.”
“Jesus!” I exclaimed, tilting his head so I could inspect both of his perfectly normal ears.
He butted his head against my hand playfully, pushing it away. “They grew back. It stung like hell, but they grew back. Maggie’s always been pretty hard-core. She had to run the fastest, fight the hardest, kill the biggest game. As much as I loved Samson, she was the one I wanted at my side and covering my back. Being in the pack, that’s her whole existence. There aren’t a lot of places in the world where a girl like Maggie can feel normal, accepted. I mean, there are lots of women in the pack but no one like her. And instead of feeling like she has to apologize for it, she’s admired. She knows how rare that is, so she puts what’s best for the pack above anything else. I left the pack, so I’m no good to her.”
“But that’s crazy.”
He shrugged. “That’s life in the pack. Maggie serves as second to a guy named Eli. He’s running things now.”
“I’m sorry.”
He pulled me close, tucking his chin on top of my head. “There’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
“Industrial-grade sedatives for your sister sound like a good place to start.”
He snorted. I pressed my face into his throat. I didn’t want to look up at him for what I was going to ask next.
“So, on to more recent history. I get why you pretended not to know me when we were introduced at the saloon. I mean, what were you supposed to say, ‘Hey, I remember you from bringing down an elk right outside your door’? But after the . . . after I was attacked, why did you act like you didn’t know what happened? You were there. You saw. And you still acted like . . .”
“A complete ass,” he said, cupping my face so I met his gaze. “The first time I saw you, I thought I’d dreamed you up. I couldn’t tell whether it was a real dream or something I’d seen as a wolf. I used to do sweeps by your house at night. At first, I think it was just because you had all those animals tromping through your yard and the hunting was good. I remembered little things, like picking up your scent near the house and feeling warm, calm. I wanted to flop down on the porch and sleep. I couldn’t seem to stop myself from coming back over and over. I’m used to the compulsive, instinctual side of my nature, but it was still confusing, that primal part of my brain leading me here every night, just to be near you. It was stronger even than my instinct to return home to my pack. It was such a relief to have one trump the other, like my ears had been ringing for years and suddenly stopped. I was able to sleep, really sleep, for the first time since I left home. As I saw you more and more in my wolf form, I realized I always remembered you the next morning. Your face, your scent, the sound of your voice—they follow me back into my human form. You’re my constant. You don’t fade away.”
“But why were you so horrible to me, even after the alley?”
“Because I hadn’t figured it out yet. I couldn’t tell the difference between real dreams and wolf dreams yet. And when you . . . when you were attacked, the look on your face, the pain and the fear, that stuck with me. Every time I closed my eyes, your face was hovering there. It was torture. I resented you for it and for the pull you had over me.”
“That’s it? That’s the reason you’ve been a jerk ever since I moved up here? Because I confused your wolf brain?”
“No. For the last couple of years, I’ve been a miserable bastard to everybody, except for Evie and Buzz. It made things easier for me, not having friends, not having connections that could drag me down, make me responsible to anyone. You’re just the first person to call me on it. Repeatedly.”
“So, you’re saying that if Walt or Leonard called you an asshole to your face, you’d be eating post-coital pasta with one of them right now?”
“Let’s not even joke about that,” he said, shuddering. “The funny thing was, even after I wanted to stop being so rude to you all the time, I couldn’t. I would want to be friendly, but then I’d open my mouth, and all hell would break loose.”
“And the fact that Alan happened to be talking to me during those moments—provoking your territorial, alpha-male tendencies—would have nothing to do with your inability to be civil?”
“I thought you were sleepy,” he grumbled.
“I have my lucid moments.”
13
The Ties That Are Binding
I DREAMED OF HOME, of the hammock in my parents’ yard, strung between two peach trees. I felt the warm sun saturating my skin, heard the droning of the bees. My father strung little bits of “sculpture” in the branches when I was a kid—mirrors, little metal bits that Dad seemed to think would help the birds nest. In reality, it just confused the heck out of the birds, but the shiny pieces were pretty to look at when you were stretched out under that fragrant green canopy.