“Yes.” Braun shrugged as his body filled the doorway of my room. “I didn’t start this mess and the pack doesn’t care one way or the other about the actual language, but…”
He still looked too guilty about this.
“But?”
What had he left out?
“Um, the only thing they asked of me when I took over as Alpha was to not make them stop fucking with the cats.” He winced when I groaned. “I couldn’t say no. They were having too much fun.”
Ancestors above.
Ugh.
His ancestors were the ones who’d gotten us into this ridiculousness.
“What am I supposed to do?”
When Braun looked like he was just going to shrug again, Emeric’s head popped around him in the doorway. “I know. You just frown and say you’re not getting involved in the debate because you’re just human.”
Oh.
“I like that.” I could make that work. “I’ll just do my best to look serious and ask what word they want me to use.”
Braun rolled his eyes but didn’t argue about the solution.
“Do you think that was why Mr. Stein and Alpha Braun looked so weird standing in the parking lot?” Emeric’s smile got wider when my question made Braun groan again.
“Cats are just too easy to rile up.” Braun ignored my frown and looked down at Emeric. “You can’t fuck with them at school, though. That’s the rules. Not at school or places like the council meetings.”
They had the weirdest social rules and I was starting to think we’d just touched on the tip of the iceberg.
****
We’d barely stepped foot in the front office and it was already getting weird.
“Hello, Mrs. Pierce. I have a new student I need to talk to Principal Reed about.” As the admin for the school, she was usually completely unflappable but the minute she saw Braun her eyes went wide. Too wide. “Is he free?”
Ignoring anything out of the ordinary was ingrained, so I just waited while her mouth opened and closed a few times.
“It’s a special situation.” Giving her a bright smile that I knew made me look slightly stupid, I ignored the way Braun cleared his throat to hide that he wanted to laugh. “I’m hoping he’s not already busy.”
We weren’t scheduled to start meetings until almost lunch, so I thought it would still be a good time as long as he wasn’t under his desk.
I wasn’t sure what he was but he needed a lot of time in small dark spaces to be happy. It meant meetings were sometimes delayed for vague reasons and I’d been in a few one-on-one meetings with the man where he was under a table and I sat on the floor taking notes.
Figuring out what he was would be nice…I was hoping that would help explain how to make him more relaxed in the long run.
His stress levels had to be unhealthily high.
“I see you know Braun, but let’s not surprise Principal Reed with his visit.” I wasn’t sure if he was neurodivergentandsome kind of prey-based shifter, or something else entirely, but startling him with an Alpha wolf shifter didn’t seem like a good idea. “He’s Emeric’s caretaker at the moment.”
The principal was wonderful with the kids, though, and even the ones I thought had to be something more aggressive were polite to him.
“I’ll…” She tried to get a response out but her voice trailed off before anything helpful escaped.
We were all waiting politely and even Emeric hadn’t charged right in on chattering with her, but the silence was dragging out until she just reached over and pushed a button on their phone system. I knew that one because I’d startled her into pushing it my first day.
She’d called the principal…without any warning.
