“Sure,” Cassius said.
“Sure,” Aaron said, but he grinned.
“Well, that’s all I have to say about it,” Ezra said. “I’ll see you guys later.”
They stood looking at him a long moment. Then, with a glance at one another, they got into their trucks and left. Aaron waved out his window as he pulled away.
Perfect. Because Ezra had to test something, and he couldn’t do it with any of his pack in the vicinity. He strode back into the café and stopped a few feet from the door. Willow was serving a customer, a woman with a toddler balanced on her hip. Behind her stood a young couple, and behind them a middle-aged guy in a suit.
Ezra strode up to the counter but kept to one side. No less than twelve feet between him and the customers, yet all of them shifted away from him, an unconscious reflex as their bodies warned of his presence.
The first woman received her credit card back and moved to the end of the counter, and Willow turned to him. “Hey, everything okay?”
When her eyes met his, it happened again. Every line and curve of her body lit up like neon in his brain, and the scent of her—sweet and tang, vanilla and lime—nearly buckled his knees. A single word filled him, an overwhelming shout.Mine.
“Did I leave my keys in here?” Ezra said.
“Oh, I don’t think so.” She stepped away from the register. “Molly, there weren’t any keys at our table, right?”
“No keys,” Molly said.
“I don’t know where else you could’ve left them.”
“I bet they’re on the ground or something,” he said. “No worries. I’ll find them.”
“If you don’t, let us know.”
“Will do.”
He stepped back from the counter, made a show of peering under a couple tables, then walked out. His legs shook as he climbed into his truck. The single word ignited his bloodstream, grew to a sentence that pulsed with an intensity like pain.She is mine. She is mine. She is mine.
A growl filled his chest, but he choked on it. Something was wrong with him. This couldn’t be how it happened for a wolf. He wished he’d been able to ask Aaron and Cassius, both of them bonded wolves and Cassius his brother-in-law. He needed to talk this out—now, while the shock still made his hands quake and the sentence still burned in his blood.
She is mine.
He flinched. It wasn’t easing up. He had to focus hard on driving as his mind tried to shove images in front of him. Images of Willow. Her curly black hair, cut at her shoulders, swaying when she turned her head. The open vulnerability in her brown eyes as she mustered courage to ask her favor. Her creamy skin and tempting curves. Willow’s body was a work of beauty, and she had no idea.
He blinked. Focus. Driving. Road.
Somehow he made it to his brother’s cabin. He parked his truck beside Trevor’s—unspoken etiquette that a wolf never blocked in another’s vehicle, something in them instinctively interpreting it as an aggressive act. Trevor waited on the porch, leaning against a post with his arms folded.
“What’s got you so worked up?”
Ezra opened his mouth to answer, but his voice had dried up. His fingers twitched with the need to build. To select his bricks, colors and shapes and surface textures. To press them together one after the other, to create what he saw in his head.
“Hmm,” Trevor said. “Wait here.”
He disappeared inside, came out with a block of smooth sanded wood and a whittling knife. He handed both to Ezra.
“Not your medium of choice,” Trevor said, “but better than empty hands, right?”
It was. Ezra weighed the wood in his hand, then tried the balance of the knife. He nodded. “Thanks, bro.”
“Kelsey’s not here, by the way. The mates are all having some female social time at Patrick and Nicole’s place.”
Privacy. Good. Kind of Trevor to let him know. Ezra drew a deep breath and let it out. He stared at the block of wood, a rectangle about four inches by six inches, maybe three inches deep. The first subject that sprang out of the wood was Willow: her curls, her full lips, her chin and jaw and cheekbones. But he was no master whittler, not like Trevor. He’d botch her, and he didn’t need one more provocation right now. He blinked her away, saw again the plain block, stared at it until a new subject took shape. A wild daisy, face turned toward him. He sank the blade into the soft wood, and his heartbeat calmed.
“Thanks,” he said again.
