Chapter Thirteen
Cooper
The Night Before
When Patrick dropped me home, I crawled into my nest and sobbed. With shaking fingers, I called the only person I could think of.
“Can you come over?” I cried down the phone.
“On my way,” Axel whispered, presumably trying not to wake my brother.
I stumbled to the door when Axel knocked ten minutes later.
“What happened?” he asked as he wrapped his big arms around me. Axel rocked me from side to side as I fell apart, unable to answer.
Eventually, he guided me back into my living room, and I was too upset to even care that he could see the nest I’d made.
“Come on, let’s get inside. It looks cosy,” Axel said, and even that made me cry. “Maybe I should start making nests, this is so much roomier than Dylan’s. It’s like he forgets I’m twice his size and we don’t even fit side by side. Don’t tell him I said that, though.”
I let out a wet chuckle. “If I know my brother, he does that on purpose to use you as a mattress.”
“Oh. Actually, yeah that makes a lot of sense.” Axel hummed thoughtfully. “Coop?”
“Yeah?”
“Not that I don’t love an impromptu cuddle fest with my best mate, but are you gonna tell me why we’re crying in a nest in the middle of the night?”
I sighed. “The Dom I’ve been seeing is Patrick Morgan,” I mumbled.
“That is so shocking. I would never have guessed that,” Axel deadpanned, and I shoved him in the chest until he burst out laughing.
“How did you know?”
“You look at him like I look at Dyl,” he said.
“Well, that’s disgusting.” I winced. I did not like that comparison one bit.
“Did you break up?”
“I guess. Maybe? Can you even break up if you were never really together?”
“Explain,” Axel said, nudging me with his elbow.
So I did. I left out most of the sex-related details, but everything else poured out of me like water from a broken dam. By the end, I felt like a deflated balloon.
“What a fucking dick,” Axel said, and I bristled.
“What do you mean? It wasn’t his fault his ex showed up.”
“I don’t give a fuck who showed up. I might not know a tonne about this kink stuff, but I know you don’t ever leave someone in subspace to come down alone.
He asked you to do the demo. He got you in that headspace.
His personal drama interrupted it and you get abandoned.
It’s fucking bullshit, Coop. I’ll punch him. ”
I snorted. “You aren’t gonna punch him.”
“I know. But still. I want to. You’re lucky it’s me and not Dyl. He’d claw his eyes right out.”
“There’s more I haven’t told you, and it’s been eating me alive and I have to come clean to Patrick about it.” I squeezed my eyes shut as shame pooled in my gut.
Axel reached out and tucked my hand between his. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. Remember when we were sixteen and you got drunk and pissed on Charley Burrow’s carpet? I never told a soul and I barely ever bring it up.”
I groaned at that memory, but this was worse. I’d been deceitful, and that wasn’t who I was.
“You know how most people just sort of don’t use their fox form very often as they get older?”
Axel hummed his agreement.
“Well… I always have. Like I just feel better as a fox. I like running around as a fox and I like playing in the woods as a fox and I don’t know why I didn’t grow out of it like everyone else.”
“We are foxes, Coop. We’d probably all be a lot happier if we let ourselves be in that form more often. That’s nothing to be ashamed about.”
I nodded. “A few years ago, I was in my fox form and I was running about in the woods behind the stone cottages and I got caught in some brambles. Patrick must have recently moved into one of the cottages. He spotted me and helped me out, but I didn’t know him then, and I just ran off after.”
Axel squeezed my hand like he knew it was about to get worse.
“He was so nice to me and took care of me and I just went back sometimes to say hello. He started… telling me things. Personal things. Really personal things about his ex and stuff and it seemed like he needed someone to talk to, so I listened and I kept going back. I didn’t think it mattered since I only ever interacted with him as the guy who owned the cafe, you know? ”
“He still doesn’t know it’s you?” Axel asked.
I gulped. “No,” I whispered.
“You gonna tell him?”
“I think I have to. Don’t I? But then it will definitely be over.”
“Look, should you have probably come clean about this sooner? Yes. But there also isn’t really a guidebook on ‘When to tell your Dom that you’re also the little fox he’s been using as a therapist for several years.
’ Come clean and give him some time to process that, and then see where you both stand.
He’d be a fucking idiot to let you go, Coop.
You’re tied for first place as the greatest person I know. ”
I huffed a laugh. “I’ll take it.”
“You love him, don’t you?”
I released a deep exhale. “I’m pretty sure I started falling for him three years ago when he pulled a thorn out of my paw.”
“Maybe it’s time to come clean about that, too?”
“Remember six months ago when you were all jaded about love? I miss those times,” I grumbled.
We must have dozed off at some point because, when I next checked my phone, it was half five in the morning. My stomach was churning with anxiety, but I knew it would only get worse the longer I waited.
Patrick would be up already for work, so if I got a move on, I could catch him before he left.
Axel was still snoring away in my nest, so I untangled myself.
Low on time, I shifted into my fox form and held a T-shirt and shorts in my mouth to put on later.
I ran as fast as I could, desperately needing to get this whole thing over with either way.
I’d spent too long letting this secret eat me up inside, and if there was even a shred of hope that me and Patrick could be more, then it had to be with this out in the open.
By the time I reached the woods at the back of his cottage, I was a little out of breath. In the silence of the early morning, voices nearby were amplified. Voices plural.
Instead of shifting back and putting on clothes, I approached Patrick’s garden gate slowly.
There, by his back door, was Patrick and Max. Enjoying a morning coffee like they’d spent the night together. Had Patrick dropped me off just so he could have his ex come over for the night?
He’d let me drop all on my own, abandoned me when I’d needed him. All because the man he really loved who’d broken his heart had reappeared all of a sudden?
When Patrick stood from the step and Max leaned in to hug him, I saw red.
Dropping the shorts and T-shirt from my mouth, I leaped over the wall and landed with a thud, which got their attention. I sprinted down the path and barked and yapped at Max as loud as I could.
He didn’t deserve Patrick. He’d cheated on him. Lied to him. Made him feel worthless and broken, and he needed to go!
I bit into the bottom of his jeans and tugged as hard as I could, pulling him away from Daddy. Determined to get his cheating, lying mitts away from him.
“Hey, hey! What’s wrong, little fox? Hey, shhh.” Patrick tried to pull me off Max, but I growled. How was I not enough for him but Max was? This wasn’t fair. Why was I never enough?
“What the fuck? Is it feral?” Max shrieked.
“Hey!” Patrick snapped.
I dropped Max’s jeans from my mouth at the sound of Patrick’s Dom voice and lowered my head.
I dared to glance up, and Patrick was glaring at me.
He knows.
“Shift,” he said, seething.
Dread pooled in my stomach, and I squeezed my eyes shut, but there was no going back now.
Russet-coloured fur was replaced by skin. My limbs expanded and my muzzle shrank back to reveal my face. I knelt at Patrick’s feet, completely naked and afraid. The only noise was a brief gasp of shock from Max. Nothing but icy tension radiated from Patrick.
I couldn’t even look at him. I curled in on myself like he might kick me or hurt me even though I knew he didn’t have a violent bone in his body.
The sound of a zipper was followed by the feel of Patrick’s big winter coat landing on my back.
“It’s time for you to leave, Max. Goodbye.” Patrick dismissed his ex, who mumbled a farewell and left through the back gate.
Silence followed.
“Has this been a fucking game to you?” Patrick spat.
I shook my head vigorously and looked up at him.
“No. I promise. It was an accident—”
“You’re a fucking liar, Cooper. So, what, you waited until I’d spilled every fucking secret I had to you so you could use it against me and weasel your way into my life?”
What? No. How could he think that?
“Of course not! I could never do that. You know I would never do that.”
“Clearly, I don’t know a fucking thing. I must have a sign on my head that says ‘lying little subs gather around’!” Patrick was practically vibrating out of his skin, hands shaking.
“I wanted to tell you! I promise, I really did. I didn’t know how without you thinking it was anything other than an honest mistake.
I fucked up, okay? I know I fucked up. I liked being someone you could talk to.
I th-thought maybe you didn’t have many of those, and if that had been the only way I’d known you, I’d made peace with that but then…
then you gave me a lifeline in Foxholes and I made excuses.
Told myself it was okay because it was a one-time thing and everything would go back to normal but then it didn’t. ”
My chest tightened, and it got increasingly harder to breathe as I panicked because I knew this looked bad, and I didn’t know how I could possibly show him that I hadn’t meant any harm.
“I lo—”
“Don’t fucking say it,” Patrick snarled.
“I know exactly what you did. First you tricked me into telling you the most personal shit I haven’t told anyone.
Then you wormed your way into my life, lying to my face, all the while convincing me you were someone I might actually be able to trust. I hope you and your friends had a great laugh about what a fucking idiot I am.
You think you’re better than Max, but you’re just like him. ”
The grenades landed, but I could tell he hadn’t even pulled the pins yet. It was like watching a terrified, cornered animal, knowing it was going to strike out and hurt you any moment.
“Go take out your mommy issues on someone else. I’m fucking done.”
There it was.
His harsh, brutal words exploded around me, and the shrapnel dug its way into my skin, slicing every vulnerable part of myself I’d ever exposed to him. My heart was in my throat, and it burned as it bled.
I didn’t even think about shifting, but in seconds, I was sprinting on all fours back down his garden path, my brain chanting at me to get away and hide.
My thoughts spiralled as I ran through the woods.
You’re just like him.
Wormed your way in.
Liar.
It didn’t even matter that he wasn’t right, because he didn’t believe me. He truly thought I was all of those things, and it didn’t matter that I’d never meant to cause any harm. I’d hurt the only man I’d ever loved, and I couldn’t take it back and I couldn’t fix it.
Until now, Patrick had made me feel safe and protected. He’d been Daddy, been my shelter. But he couldn’t shelter me from himself, and I didn’t know if either of us could forgive him for using what I’d shared about my mom against me.
I ran until I’d reached the only place I could think of that was safe.
The little abandoned den that Dylan and I had found as kids in the woods near Mom’s house.
I dove down into the hole and found an old musty blanket that Dylan must have brought here at some point.
At least it was soft. I curled up into a ball and decided I’d just remain a fox forever.
Patrick had seemed to like me better as a fox anyway.