“I’m not sure I can properly explain without giving you a coveted peek into my origin story.” Eli hesitated, then settled delicately into Park’s spot, over the covers and sitting up against the headboard. It was awkward for Cooper to look at him like that, being side by side, but from the way Eli turned his head slightly away and avoided eye contact, Cooper guessed that was intentional. “You see, I was not always the sophisticated wolf-about-town you know and love so well.”

Cooper raised an eyebrow but let that go.

“I believe I once told you that before the Park family took me in, I was involved with a rebel pack out west. Has Ollie told you anything else about my past?”

“No,” Cooper replied honestly. “He’s said rebel packs are unpredictable and cruel with an obsession for submission. But that your story is yours to tell.”

Eli rolled his eyes. “How endlessly morally superior of him.”

He tapped restlessly at his own thighs, and Cooper noticed his nails looked slightly longer and pointier than one would expect, then shrank, then grew again, never quite fully becoming claws. Of course, Cooper was plenty familiar with shifts by now. But he had never seen a wolf play so delicately with their own transformation before. The degree of control necessary to keep the changes infinitesimal, never becoming fully nails or fully claws... It was almost mesmerizing.

Cooper got so lost in watching, he jumped a little when Eli finally spoke. “I became involved with the rebels as a very young man. Still a child, really. For reasons best left in the past, I was a terribly vulnerable and naïve creature. Not that any child should be expected to be savvy. But I was...very new, to everything, and desperate for connection to my own kind. The alpha of the pack was a man named James. He found—found me.” Eli stuttered slightly. “I thought he was the cleverest, worldliest person I’d ever met. I practically begged him to let me join.”

Eli’s eyes flickered, and he pulled his cell out of his pocket, swiped through it and then showed Cooper a photo of a man, clearly taken covertly at a distance. The image was zoomed in, blurry, and the man was wearing sunglasses and speaking into a phone, face half hidden. Beyond being an older white guy with a pretty tattoo of leaves and flowers covering his bare forearm, it was hard to determine anything about him.