Zander lightly kissed her temple again, then her cheekbone, absorbing her warmth. Her eyelids fluttered, lashes brushing his lips. The sensation made his entire body go hard.
“Hey,” Piotr said suddenly, and Rae jumped, scooting back a few inches.
Piotr wasn’t looking at them. He had his hand on the wheel but gazed past them to the stern. “Your wolf looks as though he wishes to leap overboard.”
Sure enough, Ezra crouched on the gunwale near the fishing poles, peering down into the water as though looking for the best place to dive in.
“Damn it,” Zander said. He rose abruptly, the gauze dropping away, and strode out into the cool dimness of the midnight sun.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Rae sensed Ezra’s distress before she reached the deck. His grief and despair came to her in waves—she knew Zander felt them too, because Zander visibly flinched.
Zander put big hands on Ezra’s wolf scruff to drag him from the edge. Ezra came alert at his touch, whirling to lunge at Zander with a vicious snarl.
“Stop!” Rae shouted at him.
Ezra paid no attention. He leapt onto Zander, pushing him off balance and landing on top of him, claws raking Zander’s chest. Rae dashed to them and locked her arms around Ezra’s middle.
Several hundred pounds of squirming wolf easily broke her hold but Rae went after him again. She pulled Ezra off Zander¸ who rolled out of the way to lay panting and bleeding on the deck.
Ezra then turned on Rae.
He was in fighting frenzy, not knowing or caring who he attacked. When Shifters grieved, they went to a dark place deep inside themselves and sometimes never came out. Rae had nearly gone there as a little cub and only the combined effort of Eoin, Daragh, and her brothers had dragged her back to sanity.
Zander was coming to his feet, the alpha bear in him ready to grab Ezra and slam him to the deck until he calmed down. In the wild, if an alpha couldn’t subdue a Shifter endangering another, then the alpha went for the kill. Zander and Ezra weren’t Collared—they were as close to wild as Rae had seen in twenty years.
Rae opened her arms to take Ezra’s attack. When the wolf leapt on her, she closed herself around him and held on tight.
Ezra’s leap sent both of them to the deck. Zander reached down to drag Ezra off Rae but Rae frantically shook her head.
“No. Leave him alone. Let me.”
She had to gasp the words, barely able to breathe with a massive wolf crushing her. Zander’s growls escalated but he took a step back. He understood what she was trying to do.
Rae warmed despite the situation. No one in her life had read her intentions and understood them as quickly as Zander had just now.
She held tightly to Ezra, keeping her face from his snarling muzzle while she smoothed his fur. Rae stroked firmly, making him feel her touch, attempting with her hands to mimic how a mother or father wolf might lick a frightened cub. At the same time, Rae relaxed her body under him, letting Ezra know she wasn’t trying to trap him.
Ezra snarled, his claws digging into the deck, but he shuddered, his frenzy easing. Zander stood by, his strong bare feet next to Rae somehow comforting.
Rae continued to stroke Ezra’s fur, feeling him shiver. The man had lost his only family today, the highest member of his pack. Ezra would now have to be alpha; leader, but leader of no one. He was alone, which was a horrible state for a wolf Shifter. Bears had a little easier time in solitude but wolves and Felines needed the presence of others to survive. Even being bottom of the pack, as Rae was considered in her foster family, was better than being alone. Hence Ezra had stared into the waves and decided a watery grave might be a better fate.
“You’re not alone, you know,” Rae said to him. The engine, wind, and water made plenty of noise, but Rae could murmur right into his sensitive wolf ears. “Not packless. You have us. We’re your pack. We fought together, didn’t we? Now we’re on the run. Together.”
Ezra gave another growl at Rae’s announcement that she, Zander, and Piotr were now Ezra’s pack, but it was a growl of annoyance. His despair had ebbed.
He wriggled, trying to loosen Rae’s hold but Rae, even then, refused to let Ezra go. She ran both hands down his back, continuing to emulate mama wolf. She jerked her chin at Zander, indicating that he should get down here and pet Ezra too.
Zander sent her a look of irritation but he took the hint. He folded down next to Rae, his sweatpants tightening over his thighs as he put his large hand on Ezra’s shoulder.
“There, there,” Zander rumbled. “Good dog.”
Ezra’s ears flattened. He turned his head and put his teeth on Zander’s arm.
“Not helping,” Rae said. “Ignore him, Ezra. He’s a shit.”
Zander chuckled. “Easy, wolf. I’m teasing you. Rae is right. You’re in our pack now. A weird pack, but a pack all the same.”
Piotr, who had slowed the boat to let it drift, leaned on the doorframe of the wheelhouse. “We do drinking game together,” he said to Ezra. “That means we are family.”
Ezra growled again. He’d relaxed a long way though and didn’t bite down on Zander. Finally, he withdrew his mouth from Zander’s arm and climbed stiffly to his feet.
Rae let him go. Ezra shook himself, moved about six inches away from Rae, and then lay down again, still wolf, right against Rae’s side.
Zander’s hand on Rae’s shoulder was comforting. “You all right?” he asked her.
“Perfectly fine.” Rae let him help her sit up. Zander’s fingers held strength that warmed Rae all the way through. “He wasn’t going to hurt me.”
“Didn’t look like it from where I was standing.” Zander’s frown was fierce, made more so by the scratches all over his torso. “Don’t ever do that again.”
Rae opened her mouth to argue with him, then she closed it. The look in Zander’s eyes was odd, a mixture of fear and anger, of possessiveness and self-deprecation. He looked away when Rae caught his gaze, as though he didn’t want her to read him.
Ezra was gazing out to sea again, his wolf face wearing a resigned expression. Sure he needed a pack, the expression said, but look at the one he’d been stuck with.
Rae stroked Ezra’s head, resisting scratching behind his ears. There was only so much a wolf would put up with. “Anyway, Ezra, if you’d jumped into the sea, I might not have been able to find you to dust you.”