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forehead. Whatever she’d been about to say wasn’t important. Being with him like this, in his arms, in her bed, together…that was everything.
    “Relax, sweetheart,” he whispered into her damp hair.
    Her throat closed up on her. Something big was going on here. Great sex did not mean commitment, but he kept saying she was his and she was starting to believe it. How could that be? She wasn’t a shifter. Heck she wasn’t even from a normal family. His words from the truck had been twirling around her brain for days.
    But dammit all to hell she was scared. She came from a broken home. Nobody even acknowledged the word love in her family. And here was this tall, dark, and gorgeous man telling her he wanted her long-term. It was unreal.
    Other than Ellie, this was the first time something good was happening to her in a long time. It wasn’t a situation she had ever found herself in before. Though she wanted to dissect it, she wasn’t going to question it or go against it. That is, unless things got weird. Life was too short for that crap. Her heart constricted at the emotions she had been fighting for Aric. She wouldn’t be able to fight them much longer. She sighed into his hold.
    “Alright.” She yawned.
    “Alright?”
    “I’m yours…for now,” she whispered.
    “No. Forever.”
    For as long as things lasted. She drifted to sleep in his arms.
    * * *
    “I have an idea.” Excitement lit Emma’s hazel eyes.
    “Uh-oh.” Nicole dropped on to a wooden desk chair in Jordan’s classroom. She ran a hand over her drooping ponytail. Her usually pretty curly brown hair was frizzing on the sides. Nic’s first grade class was one of the most active. It was clear she was exhausted and it was only the middle of the day.
    “The last time you said I have an idea, we almost got kicked out of the school.” Jordan shuffled graded papers together and put them in a manila envelope.
    Emma rolled her eyes. “Stop being such wusses.”
    “Wusses?” Jordan turned wide eyes to Nic. “Did she just call us wusses?”
    Nic nodded with a grin and threw a board eraser at Emma. “I believe she did.”
    “Emma, we’re lucky to have jobs thanks to Karla’s brother being the dean at this school.” Jordan reminded her. “Your last idea was to take the kids to clean up the park in a bad neighborhood.”
    “Hey, it was a great idea. They got to do some community service.”
    True. “But we had no permission to go and paint a private park. You didn’t tell us the place belonged to a church. We’re lucky they didn’t press charges.”
    Emma pursed her lips and dodged the eraser Jordan threw her way. “They should be ashamed to have a park looking that way with so many volunteers. We should have gotten a thank you instead of the police called on us.”
    Jordan watched Emma search for something on her smart phone before glancing up at her. Emma’s hazel eyes had gone a deep green, which Jordan knew meant high emotion.
    “Okay, what’s the idea?”
    They were going to find out anyway, so it might as well be now.
    “I’ve been thinking of those two wolves you mentioned.”
    She’d told her friends the previous day about the white wolves at the clearing. Her new and strange relationship with Aric was not discussed much. It was still in the what-the-hell-is-this phase and really weird for her to think of being involved with him.
    “So what about it?”
    “Remember how you said the smaller white wolf had distinctive eyes you’d never forget?”
    She nodded. Of course she remembered. It was what kept her ass on that branch. The cold hate she’d seen fill the wolf’s eyes had made her reconsider coming down from the tree.
    “Mason owns a paranormal club we should check out. I heard that after the Wolfe’s asked everyone to leave, a bunch of them stayed near there and are now visiting his club at night.”
    “A paranormal club?” Nic perked up.
    Yeah. They were going to get in trouble.
    “Not all paranormals. From what I