Chapter One
Three months later
There were more werewolves here than he’d expected. More vampires, too. Even a simply sheeted ghost or two among the more contemporary or clever costumes. Apparently, there was still an appreciation for the classics at Halloween.
Cooper Dayton leaned back against the outdoor café table as another mob of screeching, giggling children swarmed past. The National Zoo in DC was hosting its annual holiday event, inviting guests to stay past regular hours, don costumes, sing spooky songs and roam the decorated paths between animal exhibits and treat stations. Off the top of his head, Cooper could not imagine a place he’d less like to be.
Fortunately, his own costumed niece, eleven-year-old Cayla, seemed similarly skeptical of the proceedings. They’d managed to avoid the carousel and—Cooper shuddered—kid karaoke station in favor of the quieter areas where Cayla could point out various animals to Cooper and tell him everything she knew about them. What she knew turned out to be a lot. She’d known the exhibits like the back of her hand ever since her mother, Sophie, an expert in all things reptilian, had been asked on as a temporary consultant for some kind of conservation video series the zoo was developing.
Meanwhile, Cooper’s brother Dean had left his old job and started working from home, so he and the animal-enthusiastic Cayla would drive to DC with Sophie once a week to spend the day at the zoo together. They’d tried to convince Cooper to come along many times, but it was Cooper’s father, Ed Dayton, who had shown up at the house this morning insisting that the whole family was going in costume and if Cooper didn’t pin this sunflower to his head and join them for Boo at the Zoo he would “break Cayla’s heart.”
More like coup at the zoo, Cooper thought, pulling off the too-tight headband with the big plastic flower hot-glued to the top as his father waded through a particularly contentious pileup of children with ease. Ed sat on the bench next to Cooper, sighing heavily in the way of old, tired men and people who had just stood in line for a cup of zoo ice cream so small it was finished by the time you made it back to your table. Ed was both, and Cooper felt the brief, alarmed pang of recognizing your parent as mortal and unfamiliar.
Ed had changed a lot while Cooper wasn’t looking. To be fair, Cooper had purposefully and determinedly spent many years not looking. He didn’t know the soft, slow-moving man with a hint of ice cream in his gray mustache and half a dozen Ping-Pong balls glued to his T-shirt to represent butterfly eggs—the stage of the metamorphosis cycle Cayla had assigned him for their themed family costume. It was an unheard of display of playfulness. When Cooper was a kid, his mother already dying, Ed had sent him and his brother out in whatever they could find in the house and use without destroying. More than one year Dean had thrown a sheet they weren’t allowed to cut holes in over Cooper and left him to stumble around the neighborhood alone while Dean hung out with friends.
Now, Ed handed him a small cup of melting ice cream. “They didn’t have your favorite.”
Cooper blinked at the unexpected offering and tried to remember ever having a favorite flavor. He supposed he must have as a little boy. It was strange what you remembered and what you didn’t. Stranger still the things your parents held on to as critically important information, and what they let fall away as bygones, ghosts of the past.
“Too bad your Oliver couldn’t make it,” Ed said for possibly the eleventh time that hour.
“Dad,” Cooper sighed. “I told you he’s out of town. Maybe if you’d called ahead like a normal person instead of banging down the—”
Ed held up his hands in the universal I don’t want to fight but I’m also about to say something that’s going to piss you off gesture. “Did I say that? I just think it’d be nice for your family to get to know him before the big day.”
“Oh my god,” Cooper muttered under his breath, and shoved a spoon of melty vanilla ice cream into his mouth. Truthfully, he was grateful Park was currently visiting his own family’s estate. He should not have to be subjected to this forced bonding experience that Cooper was beginning to suspect hadn’t been Cayla’s idea at all.
Ed’s attitude toward Park was difficult to figure out. When they’d first met in the midst of a murder case last year, Ed had liked Park a lot. The revelation that he and Cooper were dating was equally positive and honestly went a long way toward soothing some age-old tensions between Cooper and his father.
The revelation that Park was a werewolf, that werewolves were indeed a thing at all, had been...a bit more challenging.
Maybe Cooper was a little to blame for that. He’d done his best to keep Park and Ed’s interactions to a minimum ever since the big revelation, running interference at Dean and Sophie’s wedding so that they could only interact at the most superficial level and only agreeing to a handful of short dinners in the last year. At all of them, he’d enlisted the help of Dean and Sophie as buffers. The two got along fine with Park and seemed to have just rolled with the existence of a supposedly mythical being.
But Ed had struggled. He wasn’t antagonistic at all. Rather, he was too interested, wanted to be too involved, wanted to show he cared too much.
It had gotten worse when Cooper told him he and Park were engaged. Now Ed typically brought Park up seven to eight times during a phone call. Was Park fully recovered from his gunshot wound? Had he bought the scar ointment Ed had suggested? Did he like the smell? Were they going to have a catered wedding? What kind of food did Park like? Did he have any allergies?
Basically, asking everything about Park except the things he most wanted to know. What was being a werewolf like? What did it mean for the son whose life was dedicated to them, one way or another?
In an effort to dissuade the questions, Cooper had started teasing rather than answering seriously.
Yes, Oliver’s very happy with the new house. Plus, once he’s done digging out the hibernation tunnels we’ll finally be able to shift the last of these pods out of the foyer, just in time for hatching season.
No, we can’t drive down tonight for dinner. Do you think Blood Moon rituals can just be rescheduled willy-nilly?
That didn’t seem to be working at all if this sudden, almost desperate trip to the zoo was any indication. The only flaw in Ed’s plan? Park wasn’t getting back to DC until tomorrow. Lucky bastard.
“There they are.” Ed waved at the rest of their crew. Dean was wrapped in translucent green cloth to represent some kind of larvae or something. Sophie looked like she’d just walked off a runway in a black-and-neon-green turtleneck jumpsuit striped like a caterpillar, curls styled into two large buns. And Cayla, the main event of their little cycle, had her face painted in monarch colors, white beads popping against her braids, orange butterfly wings streaming out from under her arms.
Cooper and his dad stood to join them. “Don’t forget your costume,” Ed said, grabbing the sunflower headband.