Chapter 5

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 recess. I was happy to have a little bit of unstructured time myself, so I could only imagine how the children felt. Paulette and I led them back out to the playground in a line, emphasizing the importance of listening to directions, then we let the adorable little monsters loose.

Picking a spot on the playground where I would have ample view of all the kids, I sighed and rolled back my shoulders. Paulette came to join me, and we watched the kids in silence as we both came down from the busy morning.

Paulette was a shifter. Specifically, she was the shifter assigned to me just in case any of the kiddos got out of hand or shifted and started causing problems for the rest of the children. As an adult shifter, she could make up for some of the authority I lacked as a human.

It wasn’t necessarily that shifter children were barbaric or even wildcards. Some of these things were just biological. There had been studies in the past few years that showed when shifters were too far gone in their animal side, they could no longer understand human speech or even social cues. Studies also showed that lycans had to be pushed past their limit pretty far to get to that point, but with children at this age, every emotion was so large that it was important to have a shifter on hand who could calm them down when I couldn’t.

We stepped in every now and then when kids fought over whose turn it was to use the swings or to stop kids from wrestling in their lycan forms on the blacktop. When the playground had become less chaotic, Paulette turned to me.

“Okay, I’ve stayed quiet about it as long as I possibly can. I saw you talking to Bratt Lucas this morning—like really, really talking to him,” she gushed. “Are you guys good friends or something?”

“What?” I blurted, surprised by the sudden question. “No, not at all. I only met him today. I kind of careened into him on my run this morning and destroyed his coffee.”

Paulette brought her hand up to her mouth in surprise, leaning in like a gossip. “You didn’t,” she said conspiratorially. “What did he do? Was he mad?”

“As far as I can tell, no.” I shrugged. “I tried to buy him a new one to apologize for the mistake, but before I knew it, he was on his way. I didn’t even get his name until earlier when he dropped Noah off.”

“No way. Girl, you are so lucky. It’s like some cheesy romance meet-cute.”

“Meet-what?” I asked.

“You know, a meet-cute, like when the two love interests meet for the first time because their dog’s leashes get tangled, or they reach for the same book in the library—”

“I’d hardly call splashing an unsuspecting man with scalding coffee while I’m drenched in sweat a meet-cute,Paulette. Besides, you know we’re not allowed to have relationships with any of the parents.”

“But the chemistry,” she squealed. “I could see it on his face! He was into you.”

I snorted, smiling at my assistant and friend. “Paulette, he was just a concerned father making sure his son was set up for success on his first day of school in his life, okay?” I said. “He’s not flirting with me. We didn’t have a meet-cute. I just rammed into him and embarrassed the heck out of myself.”

Paulette pouted. “You didn’t even let me list his qualifications.”

“Qualifications for what?”

“For hooking up with you, obviously!”

I looked quickly around us to make sure there were no children in earshot—then I realized that half of the kids on the playground had supersonic hearing. My face warmed as I elbowed Paulette in the ribs.

“Watch what you say around the kids. I don’t want anyone going home and asking their parents what ‘hooking up’ means.”

“I’m just saying that just because you can’t uh… Hmm… Buy a coffee machine doesn’t mean you can’t get a nice latte once in a while.”

The euphemism flustered me more than I liked to admit. I shook my head and looked out at the kids on the playground, trying to find something to do that would get me off the hook from this conversation—no pun intended.

When I did, however, my eyes didn’t land on any of the children on the swings or the jungle gym. Instead, my gaze stopped on a shadowy figure loitering near the farthest corner of the brick and stainless steel gate around the property.

He was far enough away that I couldn’t really make out his features, aside from the fact that he was rail thin and seemed kind of young, like he was a first-year college student or something. His long, dark coat made him stand out like a sore thumb against the vibrant colors of the children and their school uniforms. Even from that distance, though, I had the sense that he was staring directly at me.

In fact, it was eerily similar to what I’d felt that morning—a set of heavy eyes boring into me from somewhere I couldn’t see.

“Who is that guy?” Paulette asked. “Isn’t it a little weird for him to be hanging around a school like that?”

And then, as if cued by Paulette’s question, the shadowy figure turned and strode away, not sparing us or anyone else a glance. His pace was casual, unhurried, and almost made me feel like I was being paranoid…almost.

I’d learned from my relationship with Wyatt that paranoia was often justified. I’d gaslit myself for so long, even after leaving Pennsylvania. This time, I wasn’t letting it go.

“I’ll talk to Lana after school and see if there have been any reports of creeps in the area and make sure she knows someone was lurking near the playground,” I said. “He seems gone for now, but let’s make sure the kids are staying away from the gates.”

Paulette’s brow bunched as she watched the man vanish down the street. She nodded once. “Yeah, let’s start herding them closer to the classroom. You never know what kind of psychos are out here these days.”

I nodded but found myself unable to move as Paulette started to corral the children toward our classroom door, enticing them with the promise of playing with glittery slime for the rest of recess.

I wasn’t sure what was going on.

But I knew something was wrong.