“You mean it’s because I’m your mate.”
He nodded, drew her closer with an arm around her shoulders. “You’ve never spent time with wolves before. For humans the unshielded gaze of a wolf is terrifying at first. Your body reacts like we’re predators and you’re the prey.”
“I’m willing to tough it out.” She patted his back.
“It usually doesn’t last long. A minute or so. We call the processacclimation.”
“How big is the pack? How many people altogether?”
“Including the pups, there’s like…um, twenty of us? Around twenty, I guess.”
She shuddered. Too many people.
“I know it’ll be a lot for you,” he said. “Thanks for coming anyway.”
“I want to meet them. I can crash later.”
“Crash?” he said. “Like…needing silence?”
“Got it in one.”
“Because I need it too. What else do you do, to recharge?”
On impulse she tugged his hand, then let go and lay down on the blanket. He cocked an eyebrow, and Willow pointed up at the sky. “You ever look for pictures in the clouds?”
Ezra rumbled thoughtfully as he lay on his back next to her, a careful foot of space between them. In that space he rested his hand, palm up, an invitation. Willow nestled her palm into his, and he rumbled again, this time with gladness.
“Haven’t done this since I was a pup.”
“This is one of my recharge things. I lie out on a quilt on the porch and just watch the sky for a while. Or I go through my family documents and find stuff that needs sorting. Something more or less mindless, alphabetical or whatever. Organization is calming.”
“You know, my bricks are organized by type and size.”
“Not color?”
“Nah, color’s obvious enough without sorting.”
She gave a huff. “Mine would be by color. That would be a nice recharging exercise.”
“You’ll have to get your own bricks for that.” He bumped her shoulder with his own.
“I hope the pack likes me.” The words blurted from her mouth before she could swallow them.
“Nothing not to like.”
“Oh, sure there is. I’m as flawed as the next person.” Yikes, what had happened to her filter? She pointed at a cloud that may or may not resemble anything whatsoever. “Look, a guitar.”
Ezra rumbled a chuckle. “What? It looks like a strawberry.”
“And here I thought you had super-keen eyesight.”
Silence settled. The cloud drifted and dissipated. Now it looked like pull-apart taffy.
“I overthink to the point of paralysis sometimes,” Ezra said. “I get so up in my head, sometimes I miss important things right in front of my face. I run out of social energy before I want to. I lose sleep wondering about the universe and my genetic code.”
Willow squeezed his hand.
“I hide,” she whispered, and he squeezed her hand back. “Because I’m awkward. Because I don’t know what to say, who to be, how to look. I babble, I say the wrong thing, I obsess, and I hide.”
