He didn’t. He turned his head to meet Ezra’s gaze, didn’t look away.
“Is it heavy sometimes? Yes, of course. Has the weight ever been too much? No. I was born with strength, and from a pup I knew why.”
“Well, William stepped in with you when you were, what, sixteen?”
“No,” Malachi said, and his amber eyes flashed as if with their own light. “From a small pup, Ezra. Eleven years and two months old. The full moon came, my body changed, and the next morning I knew.”
“You knew you’d be the alpha of a pack?”
“Yes.”
Eleven. The age Malachi had arrived alone and abandoned on Lunar Lane. His life before his arrival was a locked door to his pack as far as Ezra knew, but he’d grown up strong and proved himself a thoughtful, humble leader. No one, not even the elder wolves, had disputed his role as the future alpha, though everyone assumed he would take on the role at a typical older age. Instead the pack had lost William to a horrible accident when he was only sixty-three years old, Malachi only twenty-six. Ezra wasn’t sure, but his friend might be the youngest alpha in recorded wolf lore. For four years now, Malachi had been serving and leading as an alpha should.
And he’d known he would serve and lead from the time he was eleven? Shoot. Ezra cast back in his mind to himself at the same age, most thoughts consumed with running and building, with avoiding his brother, with eating the last cookie before Trevor could get to it. His deepest concern had been whether he would prove to have his dad’s genes…or turn out human.
He said, “You never told us. I mean, when we were all pups.”
“You might’ve thought I expected deference, and that wouldn’t have been right.”
“Moral Malachi.” Ezra grinned at the nickname Trevor had bestowed on Mal sometime in their teen years. “I think being alpha would be exhausting.”
Malachi’s eyebrow cocked. “As I said, sometimes.”
“Just because youcanhandle it…” Ezra shook his head. He thought of how often he ran out of words, ran out of energy, a battery whose juice hadn’t lasted the day. How often he simply needed to sit alone in silence. “Do you ever wish you didn’t have to? Do you ever wish—even just temporarily—you could hand the responsibility over to Aaron and be just a wolf instead of the alpha wolf?”
“No.” The word was a deep, final growl. Authority, affection, protectiveness—all of it rolled together into Malachi’s scent and grew pungent with the depth of his feeling for the pack.
“Well, I couldn’t do it,” Ezra said. “But I wasn’t born to, I guess.”
“If you had been, you’d have the strength for it.”
Maybe so. But fate hadn’t brought him the burden of the alpha. Fate had brought him Willow, a mate to cherish. Maybe someday the mother of his pups. Strange how quickly he’d been able to let go of the panic, to grasp instead the rightness of Willow at his side. Now he could howl with the victory of discovering her.
Maybe fate would bring a mate to Malachi soon. Satisfied though he was, he deserved this victory too.
Eleven
“Whataboutthatstumpover there? Can you lift that?”
With an adorable grin, Ezra jogged across their secluded park clearing toward the indicated stump. He clearly didn’t mind showing off, but Willow was asking for increased feats of wolfishness only out of a quest for information. She certainly wasn’t asking because Ezra looked hot as Hades when he lifted heavy objects, when he darted a few hundred feet faster than her eye could follow.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” she said, trying to hold back a grin of her own. She’d figured out quickly that while Ezra had to call to her when he dashed out of her earshot, she never had to raise her voice for him to hear.
The stump lay on its side and measured about four feet wide. Ezra gripped it in both hands and hoisted it over his head. Dirt from the roots rained around him. He pitched it across the clearing, and it fell with a crash into the brush thirty feet away. Then he loped back to her. His gait out here, away from the eyes of strangers, was languid and athletic in a way no human could move. Willow couldn’t take her eyes off him when he moved that way. Was she slightly cold, sitting on the ground outdoors in January, on a day that wasn’t nearly as warm as they’d luckily had for the art fair? Well, yes. Was a little chill worth her current view? Went without saying.
“Wow,” she said when Ezra halted at the edge of their picnic blanket.
“I feel like a silly pup.”
“How so?”
He planted his feet apart and posed in the classic macho stance, flexing biceps fit to rip his sleeves. “I’m a wolf. Look what I can do. Let’s test each other and see who can win.”
She laughed. “Did you win?”
He dropped to his knees, then sat with his knees drawn up. “Trevor was always faster than me, but he’s built leaner than I am.”
“What about strength?”
