“I’ll be right out.”
Her scent was erratic, swelling and falling like a storm-tossed wave, reaching out to Ezra. She was scared, yes, but more than that she was crushed. What her father had done this time—her scent signaled the final blow to her bond with her parents. Ezra’s insides caught fire, and he had to press a hand to his gut even as he sprang to his feet with a growl.
“I have to go to her.”
“After they leave,” Malachi said from the porch.
“She’s in pain, Mal. I have to be with her.”
“You will. When the police have left the Lane.”
As Willow stepped out onto the front porch, Ezra’s senses caught even more of her grief-stricken scent, and the scalding inside him grew unbearable. He took off running across the field toward his mate.
Within less than a second, Malachi’s body blocked his path.
Ezra didn’t slow down. He plowed into Malachi with all his strength and weight. Didn’t move Malachi an inch, instead knocked his own momentum backward and landed flat on his back in the dirt.
“Enough,” Malachi growled down at him.
Ezra bounded to his feet with the ease and grace of the wolf. He must stand down before his alpha. But he couldn’t control the scalding need in his body, in his wolf heart; and then, from nowhere, came an eruption of absolute uncontrollable rage. He drew his fists back and snarled in his alpha’s face, a rending threatening sound he’d never made before, never in his life.
With one hand flat against Ezra’s chest, Malachi propelled him backward. Ezra dug his heels in, but Malachi continued pushing him back, back, back. Ezra’s hikers plowed two ruts in the ground until his back bumped into the closest tree trunk.
He gave a hard lurch, and Malachi’s arm grew taut with the strain. Ezra’s body and Mal’s arm arced together as Ezra stared straight into his friend’s amber eyes and leaned his full weight toward escape. He was doing it. He was winning. He summoned all his strength and burst away from the tree.
Then the alpha’s free arm came up. With both hands he pinned Ezra’s shoulders. Ezra thrashed once, but Malachi’s strength was too much. Ezra had to give up. Had to stand there while his mate answered questions, while her scent throbbed in his senses, while the strange fury roiled as though it would burn him from the inside out and leave nothing but wisps of ash.
He drank long gulps of air for a few minutes. Slowly the fury in his blood began to cool. He closed his eyes. He opened his fists and set one hand on Malachi’s arm.
“I’m okay,” he said quietly.
Malachi let him go with a quiet growl of warning.
Ezra bowed his head, instinctive deference after his surge of defiance. “I’ve never…I’ve never felt anything like…what I just felt.”
“I know.”
“I guess we were wrong about…about me never coming at you. I don’t know what happened, Mal.”
“I do.”
Ezra looked up and met the alpha’s eyes, which held a current of Malachi’s own fury; but it wasn’t aimed at Ezra, despite what he’d just done.
“They put restraints on you, Ezra. You’re a wolf.”
“And?” That was no excuse…was it?
“And your rage wasn’t really directed at me. It was a delayed reaction to being bound against your will, magnified by Willow’s distress and the extreme nature of your protective drive toward her.”
“That…that’s a good description. But how did you know?”
“Wolves don’t tolerate close confinement well. Most of us respond as you did, either in the moment or shortly thereafter.”
He’d had no idea he could be so angry, but…well, he couldn’t have known. On the Lane, wolves weren’t confined or restrained. Even at the full moon, they ran free within the paddock, acres of room to hunt and roam. He was suddenly so tired. He slid down the trunk of the tree Malachi had pinned him to and sat with his knees up. Mal sat beside him.
“I wouldn’t have hurt anybody,” Ezra said. “I just needed to be over there. And…I probably would’ve roared some.”
“Which wouldn’t be received well, especially by Officer West.”
