Chapter 72

Part 4: Sporting Wood

Coop trotted along in wolf form through the wooded grove. To a human, this area deep in the heart of the Olympic Peninsula's temperate rain forest would seem impenetrably dark, but to his senses it was awash in the silvery light of the full moon. He'd never ventured this far into the forest before, but he knew he'd be back. There was something elementally soothing about this grove - as if it had never been touched by the hand of man. All the tension of his day slipped away, even more so than it always did when he was able to shift and run through the moonlight. Here in the forest, he wasn't Professor Marceski, constantly worried about maintaining his grant funding or getting that next paper published, and he wasn't even Cooper, the werewolf. He just was.

He paused beside a particularly stunning red alder tree and lifted his leg.

"Don't even think about it, Fido."

That gave Cooper pause. He stood there, leg cocked, and studied the tree. Had it actually spoken