Perhaps drawn by the sound of Alice’s laughter, Hirano extricated herself from Cola, and Cooper couldn’t help but feel a bit relieved as she joined them. “Everything all right?” she asked, shooting him a wary look. Alice just buried her face in Hirano’s shoulder and made a purring sort of rumble while Hirano’s arm wrapped around her waist.

“We’re fine,” Cooper said hastily, just in case Alice was thinking of making any more astronomical observations. “Are you okay?”

“I’m—” Hirano’s voice wobbled, and her gaze moved quickly to where rays of pure sunlight had crested the horizon and pierced the red-leafed trees, as if she needed the excuse of staring into the light for the tears suddenly streaming down her face.

“It’s like waking up from a nightmare,” she whispered finally. “If I’d known who he was that first day he started working here, I’d have killed him, too.” Her voice broke for all its ferocious words.

Cooper felt his eyebrows shoot up. “Who?”

“That bastard James Finnigan,” Hirano said.

“So you really had no idea who he was before? He didn’t blackmail you to get the job?” Cooper asked, feeling Alice’s intense, curious gaze fall on him.

Hirano shook her head. “The blackmail started later. He was recommended to me by an old colleague. I wish I’d never listened. Then he would never have found you again. Never have blackmailed you, dragged you into this fucking mess. None of you. I brought all this into our lives and almost lost my reason for living.”

“Enough now,” Alice said. “You’re being very egotistical and it’s embarrassing.”

Hirano laughed wetly and pressed a kiss to the top of Alice’s head. The way their bodies relaxed into each other sent a wave of longing through Cooper for his own favorite person.

“Excuse me. I should go check on—” He waved in the general direction of Park and Eli. “It was, um, interesting meeting you.”

“Wait.” Alice plucked a business card, seemingly from the air, and handed it to him. “In case you ever want to leave the dark.”

Cooper took it, noting there was no name, just a phone number, and tucked it into his pocket. “Right. Thanks.”

As he walked away, he thought about what Alice had said. Not the completely off-the-wall parts about him actually being the Moon and calling up their wolves with his will alone—he scratched idly at the cut on the back of his hand—but about Daisy and how wolves had watched to see what path the Shepherd would choose. Watching and waiting. How Park had known this and chosen him anyway, along with all the limitations of acceptance, community and pack that choice might bring.