Willow grimaced. “Did the last part actually help?”
A laugh rumbled from his chest. “Less than the first part. I was pretty sure growing up to be a vanilla guy had to be fate’s punishment for something.”
From across the yard Trevor and Aaron’s voices reached him.
“We owe it to his mate. She deserves to know what she’s getting into.”
“Right, because Ezra’s quite the shady wolf.”
“Whatever, Aaron.”
“Trevor,” Ezra said, and Willow gave a little jump. “Finish your darts game and leave us alone.”
“You know I’m incapable of not harassing my brother,” Trevor said as he loped toward them.
Malachi’s lips twitched. “Does this make me extraneous?”
“You’re needed for verification when he tries to protest. Aaron, come on.”
Willow was looking from Ezra to Malachi to the two wolves approaching, still too distant for her to pick up their words. “This is so frustrating. What are they saying?”
Ezra made an exaggerated face-palm. “They’re joining our story session.”
“Ooh. More sources.”
The two wolves pulled chairs around and settled in. Soon Willow was indeed treating all three of them like journalistic sources for an expose on Ezra’s years as a pup.
“I don’t know why you’re growly about it,” she said. “It sounds like you didn’t do anything embarrassing your entire childhood. You were too careful for that.”
“And too independent,” Aaron said. “Trevor knew all he had to do was dare me, and I’d try anything. Daring Ezra was pointless. He’d just look at you like, ‘no way, that sounds dumb.’”
Willow laughed. “Good for little Ezra.”
But he hadn’t been stodgy about it. He cleared his throat to set the record straight. “If I said no it was because y’all jumped headlong into things without any plan. Once I had a plan, I’d do it, whatever it was.”
“That’s true,” Trevor said, then turned to Willow. “He would calculate distances and angles and stuff any time we wanted to rappel down a rockface or whatever. Hey, you guys remember the zip line?”
Malachi growled. “That was stupid.”
“You don’t seem like the type to do something stupid, even as a pup,” Willow told him.
“I wasn’t.”
She laughed.
Trevor carried on, casting an eye roll in Malachi’s direction. “It was brilliant, and it worked.” Back to Willow, “Because Ezra calculated the weight and distance and angles and everything. Somebody might’ve broken a few bones if we’d done it Jeremy’s way.”
“When was this?” she said.
“Well, I was a confirmed wolf by then, so thirteen. So these two and Jeremy were fifteen—” He pointed at Ezra and Aaron “—and Mal was sixteen.”
“And did you participate once Ezra calculated the weight?” she asked Malachi.
“I wasn’t interested in adrenaline,” he said.
“Old before his time,” Trevor said with a grin. “But he did other stuff with us, so it was okay. Like the hunting game, remember? We had to try to sneak up on each other and take each other down,” he clarified for Willow.
“I remember you moaning that you couldn’t get the better of anyone,” Aaron said. “And I remember you coating yourself head to toe in creek mud to confuse your scent.”
