“What is the address?”
“180 Southwest Circle, Harmony Ridge, Tennessee,” she said, her brain taking over the automatic recitation while the lightheadedness, the tingling in her hands, refused to let up. Homeless. Cast out, locked out. By her mom and dad and sister. “I d-don’t know where to go.”
“Willow, listen to me. Don’t go anywhere. You’re too upset to drive right now. Understand?”
Oh…he might be right. She tried to take stock of her emotional state, of her body. Was this hyperventilating? It had never happened to her before. Did it happen to Ezra when his anxiety was bad?
“Breathe easy,” Ezra said, and she tried to follow his calm instruction. “There. Easy breaths. Are you safe in your car?”
“Y-yes.”
“Did they kick you out because of me?”
“Yes.”
His deep growl seemed to rumble all the way through her. “Have they ever been physically aggressive with you?”
“No, never.” Dad had never hit her, only the walls, and he hadn’t even dented those.
“Okay, just to be safe, I want you to lock your doors until I get there.”
“They locked me out,” she said.
“I know, Wil, but I want you to lock them out too. Will you please do that?” She hit the auto-lock button, and Ezra gave a strained sigh. “Thank you. I’ll be there in less than twenty minutes.”
“But what can you—what can I—where can I go?”
At her own question, the dizziness rushed back. She rested her forehead on the steering wheel and shut her eyes. She’d never passed out before. She refused to now. She took slow deep breaths as, in Ezra’s long pause, another male voice came farther from the phone, low and deep, words indecipherable.
Ezra said, “Aaron’s going to drop me off so I can drive your car. Okay?”
“But I have nowhere.” He didn’t seem to get it.
“As long as you have me, you have the pack.”
“You mean…Lunar Lane?”
“That’s right.”
The wolf community’s property, sacred to them. The couple thousand acres where Ezra had grown up, the land that meant so much to him. To go there for more than a Saturday cookout…to be welcomed there… She couldn’t process it. She couldn’t process anything right now.
“But where…a wolf pack doesn’t have…some kind of guest house?”
“Guestroom,” he said. “You’ll stay with my folks.”
“But…but how…?”
“They’ll want to help us. Trust me.”
She whispered, “Okay.”
Us, he’d said. As though her outcast state was his burden too.
Ezra made a couple calls with his friend’s phone while he kept Willow on his own phone. She’d volunteered to hang up, but he wouldn’t hear of it. For a few minutes his voice became too distant for her to overhear the other conversations. Then he came back to the phone and said Aaron had dropped him at the end of the street, five houses from hers.
He approached from down the sidewalk under the waxing moonlight, his bulk unmistakable, his gait agile though more restrained than the supple way he moved when no strangers might see him. Willow unlocked her door, jumped out and ran to him. All panic disappeared when he drew her into his arms. She inhaled the wild-game-and-cedar scent of him, and calm spread through her. She leaned into his strength. But he held her for only a few seconds before stepping back and gently cupping the back of her head.
“You’re all right?”
