“Thank you,” he whispered before letting unconsciousness claim him.
At those words, the trap slipped out of my hands and clanged loudly on the floor. I winced, my eyes flitting to his face, which was still lax and peaceful.
How on earth had he been able to get through the woods with this thing clamped on his leg? Was he a victim of some sort of weird Saw copycat? Or did he poach animals in the nude, some weird wolf thing? Was that why he didn’t want me to call for an ambulance? He didn’t want to answer rangers’ questions?
If my mother had been there, she’d have made a tincture of yarrow and applied a poultice to the wounds. She would have sprinkled cayenne over his abrasions and chanted to the western winds. I, on the other hand, put my faith in a higher power: Neosporin. I went to the kitchen for my first-aid kit. I grabbed the peroxide and ran back into the living room. Even when I poured the bubbling mixture over his ravaged skin, he didn’t wake up. The wounds didn’t seem as bad after I cleaned them. The edges seemed smoother, shinier. I turned my head to reach for bandages and saw that the wounds had shrunk. The surrounding skin was a healthy pink. I packed the punctures with antibiotic ointment and wound gauze around his leg.
I threw a quilt over Cooper and another two logs onto the fire. I sank to the couch and wondered what exactly you did in a situation like this. I was overwhelmed with the compulsion to boil water. For what I had no idea, but in the movies, when someone is injured in the wilderness, they’re always boiling water.
I tilted my head, watching the firelight play on Cooper’s skin. I don’t think I’d ever really grasped how huge he was—long, rangy arms and well-muscled legs that stretched well beyond the limits of the blanket. His feet were long, narrow, and highly arched; the pads were dirty and covered with shallow, healing scrapes.
In all of the injury hubbub, I hadn’t had the acuity to look at his . . . lower forty-eight. How wrong would it be for me to lift the quilt? I mean, technically, he did owe me his life. And if he had an incredibly small penis, it might explain why he was such an ass all the time. Watching his face, I lifted the blanket and snuck a peek.
Wow.
“There goes that theory,” I muttered.
Cooper shivered and stirred as the cooler air seeped under the blanket. He whimpered, curling his body protectively around his leg. Blushing, I tucked the quilt around his body.
If I were smart, I would call Evie or even Alan right now. But something about this Cooper, the vulnerable, honest Cooper, made me want to protect him. Or at least find out what the hell he was doing. There had to be a compelling reason for him to be running around outside my house naked with a bear trap on his leg. Even with the odd assortment of characters I’d met in Grundy, even when you factored in the werewolf issue, that was the sort of thing that merited attention.
I coiled in the corner of my couch and pulled the quilt up to my chin. I closed my eyes, enjoying the way the lights danced behind my eyelids. I dreamed of running. I was racing through the woods. My feet were bare, slapping against the blanket of pine needles on the ground. A living canopy laced over my head as my legs stretched in front of me. I expected the leaves, the low-hanging pine branches, to slap and sting, but they were caressing fingers, welcoming me to come deeper into the forest. I wasn’t afraid. There was something waiting for me deep within the dense gathering of trees. Something I needed.
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.”
