“He’s eighty-two? He looks younger than my dad,” I muttered to Cooper as we approached the bed.
“Men in my family tend to age well,” Cooper said quietly. I felt the tension ebb from his body as he saw that his grandfather was alive, if not completely well. “It’s all part of the wolf thing. Our bodies are resilient because of the constant phasing, lots of collagen. Pops is still considered quite the catch around here.”
“I’m old, not deaf, my Cooper,” Noah said, his voice a deep baritone that rumbled from his chest.
When he lifted his lids, I could see that Noah shared his grandson’s blue-green eyes, which twinkled as he sat up to embrace Cooper. A small, compact blonde in blue scrubs and hiking boots laid a gentle hand on his shoulder to keep him reclined.
“How’s he doing?” Cooper asked.
Dr. Moder opened her mouth to answer, but Noah waved her away as politely as possible. “I’m fine,” Noah insisted, his hands firm on Cooper’s shoulders. “There’s been a lot of fuss for nothing. But I’d go through it again, if that’s what brought you back to your home. It’s been too long, Cooper. The pack, your family, have missed you.” Noah cast a glance in my direction and lifted his ruler-straight gray brows. “And who have you brought with you?”
“This is Maureen Duvall-Wenstein, Pops. We call her Mo,” Cooper said, a note of pride in his voice as Noah pulled my hands into his.
“Very nice to meet you, young lady,” he said.
“It’s very nice to meet you, too,” I said. “Cooper has told me so much about you.”
“Well, he hasn’t done the same for me,” Noah said, giving Cooper a reproachful look without any heat in it. “You and I will have to sit and talk, Maureen.”
“What’s this I hear about you not wanting to go to the hospital?” Cooper asked, apparently sensing that introduction time was over.
Noah lowered his voice and offered his grandson a level gaze. “We must protect the secret. That is far more important than prolonging the life of any one of us.”
“Pack members have gone to the hospital before with no problems,” Cooper said in a voice that was both loving and stern. I looked over my shoulder to see that several of Cooper’s relatives had gathered at the door, listening to him. I didn’t understand why Cooper had been so resistant to coming home. While I certainly didn’t want to test their fondness for strange humans who knew their family secret, I didn’t sense any hostility from the crowd huddling at the door. They were smiling, practically smug in seeing Cooper work on his stubborn grandfather.
I carefully scanned each face in the family. Could any of these people be capable of attacking unarmed humans? They certainly didn’t look it at the moment, but they were sort of on their best behavior, being indoors, clothed, and in the presence of an outsider. I tried to picture the plump little auntie in the purple Red Hat Society sweatshirt wolfing out and devouring teenage hikers.
It was a stretch.
“Dr. Moder says she’ll be able to cover up any discrepancies that might come up while they’re treating you,” Cooper said. “And when you’re done, she can remove all of your records from the system. There’s no reason to stay here when you could be at the hospital having all those important tests and flirting with the nurses.”
“I do not like hospitals.”
Cooper countered, “You’ve never been to a hospital.”
“And it’s worked well for me so far.”
Sensing that the conversation would continue to circle if I didn’t give them some space, I stepped away. The crowd parted for me as I approached the door. I crossed the waiting room to an ancient-looking Mr. Coffee and poured myself a cup. Even with healthy doses of cream and sugar, I gagged a little as it hit my throat. This was not coffee. This was the stuff you’d scrape from under Satan’s toenails.
“Someone should have warned you,” said the tall, whippet-lean stranger who was suddenly standing at my side. “Aunt Glenda made the coffee. She seems to think that if you can stir it, it’s not strong enough. I’m Eli,” he said, reaching out to take my hand.
“Mo,” I choked out. “I’m a friend of Cooper’s.”
“Must be more than a friend if you’re here,” Eli observed, his cool lakewater-green eyes scanning me from head to toe. “I don’t think it would be too far off to thank you for bringing Cooper here tonight. None of us could convince Pops to budge, but Cooper will. They’ve always been close. It doesn’t hurt that Cooper’s still technically the alpha, though he would never force his will on someone like that—much less Pops.”
“Are you a cousin of Cooper’s?”
“Second or third, we can’t really keep track. I tried making a chart once, but . . .” Eli’s smile was congenial as he shrugged. “I sort of handle things in Cooper’s absence. But we’re all glad to see him again. It’s been too long. We’ve worried about him. We may be upset that he didn’t want to be alpha, but we still love him. We want him to be happy.”
I asked, “Would you mind telling him that?”
“I don’t think he would believe me,” he said.
Pops was giving Cooper and Dr. Moder a run for their money in the hospital debate. Noah had crossed his arms over his chest and set his face in defiant lines, which I’m sure at one point in his life would have shut his grandson down without argument. The arguments circled around and around the room until Cooper finally said, “Pops, for my sake, would you go to the hospital?”
Noah stared at Cooper for a long moment and cleared his throat. “If it will make you feel better, I will go.”
Dr. Moder winked at Cooper. “I’ll call the cardiac department at St. Martin’s, let them know we’re coming.”
“I’ll pull my truck around,” Eli told them.
“Now, that’s settled. Let an old man rest,” Noah muttered, closing his eyes. He snapped them back open and smirked at Cooper. “How many nurses will there be, do you think?”
Cooper snorted and patted Noah’s hand. “Get some rest, you old hound.”
I returned to Cooper’s side. He wrapped his arm protectively around me as the relatives converged on us. Cooper’s cheeks were kissed, pinched, patted, and thoroughly lipsticked. I was generally ignored, which was fine. I think they were waiting for some sort of signal. At this point, surrounded by the crush of bodies, I was just grateful that everyone seemed to be fully clothed.
“Yeah, we need to talk about that Maureen thing,” I whispered as we made it out the other side of the gauntlet, into the waiting room. “You were out of town when my real name got spread around by Susie Q. And, uh, it isn’t Maureen.”
He stopped in his tracks, a mixture of guilt and apology flashing across his features. “It’s not? I just assumed . . .”
“We’ll talk later.”
“How bad could it be?” he asked as we approached a round, smiling woman with an unlined face.
“Later,” I whispered.
“That bad?”
I stopped and murmured in his ear, “Moonflower Freedom Refreshing Breeze Joplin Duvall-Wenstein. OK?”
Cooper stared at me. “Wow.”
“Do you have any idea how long it takes me to fill out income-tax forms?”
Cooper’s response was cut short when the clinic door burst open. A slim, short woman stomped through the door, followed by an older woman with a worried expression. The younger one scanned the crowd until her obsidian eyes landed on Cooper. Her lip curled up in disgust.
Wait a minute, I recognized that scowl. That was Cooper’s scowl.
That was Cooper’s sister.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” she demanded.
Maggie Graham was hard, lean, and built for speed. Her black hair was cut in sharp layers around her face. She was beautiful in a fierce, alien way, like the old Greek mythical monsters that consumed heroes the minute their backs were turned.
Eli stepped through the door, an apologetic grimace wreathing his face. “Sorry, Coop, she saw your truck. I
