BRATT.
About an hour later, Travis was fully briefed, my son was fed and snugly buckled into his car seat in the back of the Jeep, and we were on our way to Polar Shift Academy. Smiling, I watched Noah wiggling to The Beatles in the rearview mirror as I drove.
I couldn’t believe how fast time had flown. It felt like only yesterday that I was cradling him, worried I’d break him because he was so fragile and tiny. Now he was starting his first day of kindergarten, learning to have his own interests and dreams.
He truly had become a little person before my eyes.
I fought back the lump in my throat as we made our way through town and pulled up to the state-of-the-art academy. The place was a source of pride for me, seeing as I’d had a hand in some of the plans and hiring to build such a progressive and advanced school.
My business, Fur Sure Solutions, specialized in shifter-friendly construction projects. We’d done everything from shifter parks and clubs to houses, apartment complexes, and Polar Shift Academy. I hoped that the school would be helpful in setting a precedent of fully integrated schools all across the country, but even five years after its conception, a lot of places were still fighting that idea tooth and nail—no pun intended.
It was rewarding to finally be in the position to place my son in school here, and I reflected on that as I helped get him out of his car seat.
I took his hand as we walked in the steel-and-glass front door. Parents were allowed to come in early on this particular day, what with a bunch of children starting school for the very first time. And besides wanting to give Noah a solid start to his first day, I had friends I wanted to see.
The foyer was one of the rooms I designed and sourced materials for. It was all stainless steel, reinforced glass, and warm wood with an open floor plan. A moving model of the solar system, nestled in a dome-shaped skylight, rotated slowly above our heads. I pointed it out to Noah.
“Kiddo, take a look at that. Do you know what that is?”
“The planets!” he said, delighted to know the answer to the question.
“That’s right! Look at how the world is spinning around that big yellow one. That’s the sun. Did you know it was that big?”
“Whoa!”
“I thought I heard a familiar pup,” a friendly voice said behind us.
I turned to see Lana Gold, assistant vice principal of the school and a long-time friend since before we started the POSHA project together. I swore the woman didn’t age—she still looked the same as when I met her years ago: cornsilk hair cut into a classy bob, pencil skirt, ironed blouse, and tasteful blazer.
“Hey, Lana,” I said, pulling her into a one-armed hug. Noah glanced between us, face pulled into a frown.
“I haven’t seen you since you were just about to turn three!” Lana said, backing from me to ruffle Noah’s hair. “I bet you don’t remember me, huh?”
Noah shook his head.
“Well, not to worry, we’ll become good friends in no time,” she promised. She looked at me. “Did you want to come and meet our new kindergarten teacher before you head out?”
“Yeah, that’d be great,” I said, nodding toward the door that led out to the playground. “Lead the way.”
Noah and I followed Lana out the side door. A young woman stood in the middle of a sea of five-year-olds who were all running, playing, and screaming. Her hair hung in loose curls to about the center of her back. She was dressed in a nice floral blouse and a pair of fitted black capris, her small feet contained in tasteful, practical flats.
Noah was practically vibrating at my side; I could tell he wanted to join the chaos. Indulging him, I released his hand to let him join in on the fun with the other kids.
Just as I was about to ask Lana about the new teacher, she got hailed on a walkie she had holstered to her hip.
“Copy, Miss Gold, do you copy?”
“I’m here,” she said into the walkie. “What’s up.”
“We have a vomit situation in classroom ten. Can you come and help?”
Lana looked at me, pressing her lips together and sighing. “Duty calls,” she said. “If I call you at the end of the day half-drunk, remind me that I love my job.”
Laughing, I gave her another quick hug. “You got it,” I promised. “Best of luck. I’ll see you later if you’re around when I come to get Noah.”
“Yeah, see you later.”
As Lana went back into the building, I stepped off to stand next to another parent. I stood next to the only other man there, a slight human fellow who looked up at me a little nervously. I gave him a closed-mouth smile, doing my best not to come off threatening. One thing I’d learned to do since lycans came out of the clawset was to be as unimposing as possible.
We all learned not to show our teeth, not to let our tempers get the best of us, and to be as close to human as we could manage. Even here at a progressive school, I needed to keep that in mind. It was one thing to see lycan pups play with human kids and support the unity in that idea—it was another thing entirely to stand next to a man who was genetically coded to be stronger, faster, and more ferocious.
Amused, I watched the poor new teacher checking her watch and trying to wrangle all the children together—class was set to start soon. I caught her scent on the wind. Human. She would definitely have her hands full at this school. There was something familiar about her scent, but I couldn’t put a finger on it.
At least I couldn’t until she turned to greet my son as he rammed head-first right into her legs.
My heart stuttered, and an animalistic hunger—fleeting but there—zipped through me from head to toe. It was the perfect girl from earlier that morning, the one who’d careened into me like a freight train and threw my whole morning for a loop.
She’s my son’s teacher?
Sometimes the world was just too damned small.
I watched as the poor girl looked around the rest of the playground, seeing her face fall as she realized most of the other teachers were getting their kids under control. A moment later, she put her thumb and finger in her mouth and whistled.
Every single shifter kid in a ten-foot radius whipped their head to look at her, but the human children kept doing whatever they were doing.
“Did you hear that?” I asked the father standing next to me.
“Hear what?” he said nervously, pushing up his glasses.
I shook my head in answer and crossed my arms over my chest.
Maybe she was a bit of a klutz, but she knew shifter kids, that was for sure. Something warmed in my chest at that.
Olivia could never quite keep up with Noah, even when he was a baby. I couldn’t even count the number of times I had to take over caring for him because she had a meltdown. I could tell that the woman—Miss Cage, if I remembered the paperwork right—was overwhelmed but generally patient and understanding. It seemed like she just knew how to handle shifters, even though she wasn’t one herself.
I decided to throw her a bit of a bone and stuck my fingers in my mouth the same way she had just a few moments ago, then gave a much louder whistle.
That one caught the attention of the human children and made the shifter kids wince and cover their ears. At the same time, Miss Cage’s head whipped to look in my direction. Recognition bloomed on her face, and I was surprised at my satisfaction when I saw her face light up.
That look stoked a fire deep in my belly, a desire I hadn’t felt in a long time.
She gathered all the children and talked to another adult—a brunette in a simple sundress of pale blue. The brunette nodded and started to lead the children toward the classroom. Many of the children looked somewhat confused but followed her anyway. The only exception was Noah, who suddenly seemed to realize that he would be separated from me and, in a panic, ran back to my side, hiding behind my leg.
Miss Cage looked at Noah and then at me.
I gave her an apologetic smile as I patted Noah’s head.
“Go on, buddy. It’s time for you to start your first day of school,” I said, patting his back to encourage him toward her.
His fingers curled into my jeans, and he pressed his face into my leg.
“No more school. School’s over,” he said, his voice muffled against my jeans.
“Kiddo,” I said, trying to kneel to his level.
He interpreted it as me trying to break away and upped his game. He wrapped his arms and legs around me. I tried to pry him off, tried to move, but somehow, I’d been rendered entirely immobile by a five-year-old.
“Buddy. Noah. Come on.”
His teacher hesitated for a moment, then looked over her shoulder to watch the assistant taking the children inside. Once satisfied that it was going well, she walked toward me.
I couldn’t decide if I was grateful or embarrassed.
I couldn’t believe it.The hot lumberjack I’d plowed into earlier that morning was standing right there.And he’d just whistled loud enough to bring a speeding freeway to a screeching stop.Rounding up the kids, I made my way over to Paulette and discreetly asked if she could take them inside. I wanted to say hello to the handsome stranger and at least get a name.All throughout the morning, I’d struggled to get that crooked smile and the smell of him off my mind. I’d done just about a million other things that morning to get ready for my first day. I got that chamomile tea and took a Lyft home, where I took a scalding shower, got dressed, and prepared goodie bags for the kids before finally hopping in my car to drive to work.All that time, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I regretted not getting a name or at least buying him another coffee to make up for the one I ruined.If he was here, that meant he was a parent. That was confirmed when one of the kids broke off from the group
The morning went smoothly enough.Paulette handed out the goodie bags that were filled with some healthy, allergy-friendly snacks along with some toys that would help us with one of our first lessons: colors.I’d had the idea to pick up a bunch of small squishy toys, each of them in a color of the rainbow. The nice thing about squishy toys was that they were popular among the kids, couldn’t hurt anyone if they got thrown, and had the added benefit of being a great source of sensory input when kids got antsy or upset.We taught them a fun song about the colors in the rainbow, and I had the children lift the right colored toy as we sang through the colors. Then, we moved on to secondary colors by having the kids mix different colors together with wads of play dough.Finally, we started learning the alphabet, the foundation for learning basic sentence structure, nouns, prepositions, basic capitalization, and punctuation.The day already felt incredibly full by the time the bell rang for
BRATT. It was strange to walk up the stairs and into the office without Noah clinging to me like a little koala bear. Sylvia, my administrative assistant, was at her desk and gave me a knowing look when she saw me. “How’s our boy doing?” she asked. “There was a moment where he latched onto my leg—first-day nerves and all that. His teacher is really great with him, though. Got him to go in willingly. No tears at all.” “I’m glad Noah’s doing well, Bratt, but I was asking about you.” I blinked, momentarily confused, then laughed. I sat on the edge of her desk, bending one knee. “Is it that obvious?” “I’ve known you since before Noah was born, so I do like to think I have an eye for your moods.” Sylvia’s eyes crinkled. “Plus, I’ve raised a litter of my own. I remember the first day of school very well.” I nodded and exhaled heavily. “I feel like I’m missing a limb. It’s taking just about everything in me not to turn around and take him out of school.” “You’ll get used to it in no
BRATT. Taking Noah to my folks’ place was always a treat for everyone involved. I usually got to eat an amazing homecooked meal with my parents, Noah got to be spoiled by his grandparents, and Mom and Dad got a chance to spend time with their only grandson. My mother, while identifying primarily as a shifter, had a lot of Italian heritage in her bloodline. In fact, she was the first generation born in the States to my late grandparents after they immigrated. Because of that, food had always been equated with love in my household, and we ate a lot of amazing food. Now that my parents were retired, my mother spent most of her time improving old recipes. Buying her a pasta press for Christmas a couple of years prior was the best and worst decision I ever made. When we pulled up outside of the house, even Travis could smell the fresh garlic and butter from outside their beachfront bungalow. “Holy shit,” he said as we climbed out of the car. “Uncle Travis! Bad word!” “I know, I know,
We really had to stop bumping into each other. Every single time I ran into Bratt Lucas, it got harder and harder to say no to him—to myself. I wondered if he was aware of the way the world around me had gone quiet when I saw him looking at me from the bar. I wondered if he could hear the way my heart had pounded against my sternum when he slid off of his barstool and walked over to our table. “We have to stop running into each other like this,” he said, looking right. My heart throttled as alarm bells went off in my mind. This man was a shifter, the very thing I’d sworn myself off of after Wyatt. More than that, he was the father of one of my students. I’d only just got my life back. I couldn’t risk losing it again. But the power and confidence about him… The perfect body and flawlessly groomed facial hair… The smell of him. It felt as if I was wandering through a desert, starving and parched, and he was a spread of the most decadent foods and the promise of a cold drink of water.
BRATT. Embarrassment blazed through me as I sprinted through the reserve. I suddenly dreaded seeing Marley when I went to pick up my son. Maybe I could just send Travis in to get him? No, that was even more cowardly. I groaned internally and forced my legs to go faster and faster as if I could outrun my own humiliation. Why did I even care what a kindergarten teacher thought of me? Because it wasn’t just any kindergarten teacher, was it? There had been another teacher looking out the window, too, I realized. The shifter teacher. But my embarrassment didn’t extend to her. No, just to the perfect sandy blonde who smelled like honey and roses. Fuck. I didn’t have time for this, and the last thing I needed to do was complicate Noah’s school experience by becoming interested in his teacher. Yet, more and more, I found that my interest in Marley was more than just cursory. It was hardwired into me biologically. Something about her just turned my wolf into a puppy who wanted nothing
BRATT. Taking Noah to my folks’ place was always a treat for everyone involved. I usually got to eat an amazing homecooked meal with my parents, Noah got to be spoiled by his grandparents, and Mom and Dad got a chance to spend time with their only grandson. My mother, while identifying primarily as a shifter, had a lot of Italian heritage in her bloodline. In fact, she was the first generation born in the States to my late grandparents after they immigrated. Because of that, food had always been equated with love in my household, and we ate a lot of amazing food. Now that my parents were retired, my mother spent most of her time improving old recipes. Buying her a pasta press for Christmas a couple of years prior was the best and worst decision I ever made. When we pulled up outside of the house, even Travis could smell the fresh garlic and butter from outside their beachfront bungalow. “Holy shit,” he said as we climbed out of the car. “Uncle Travis! Bad word!” “I know, I know
BRATT. “I don’t know, Mom. I’ll think about it. Let’s just drop it for now. I don’t want things to get…” I looked at Noah again, still blissfully unaware for now. “I just don’t want to talk about confusing stuff.” “Fine,” she said, lifting her brows in concern. “We’ll drop it for now.” The rest of dinner went easily enough, and by the time Noah’s food was almost finished, he was already starting to get a little drowsy. Since it was still early for him to be going to bed, my dad took him to play with knick-knacks in his workroom. The sun was beginning to set when Travis and I hugged and kissed my mother goodbye. “You guys have fun tonight and drive safely. If you need to run home, just do that.” “Mom, I’m a grown man. You don’t have to remind me not to drink and drive,” I teased. “I don’t have to, that’s true, but I will anyway,” she said with a wink. “Don’t worry about Noah. We’ll take him to school in the morning. We want to see the place anyway. We haven’t seen it since the