Ariana went home to visit her cousins and meet her goddaughter for the first time. She didn’t expect to find out her childhood friend was marrying the town’s mean girl. On her way to show him proof that his fiancée isn’t who he thinks, she is stopped by the sexiest and most stubborn man on the planet. The groom’s best man. If only she could focus on her mission instead of how handsome and strong the guy is.

Fierce, wolf shifter entrepreneur, takes his friendships seriously. So when his college buddy asks him to be the best man at his wedding, Fierce refuses to let anyone mess up the big day. Especially not a beautiful woman intent on stopping the wedding. She’s in for a surprise. Fierce isn’t one to back off. Keeping the beautiful Ari from ruining the nuptials isn’t as hard as keeping his hands off her. After all, it’s nearly impossible when she’s his mate.

It appears that someone else in the town wants the wedding to go on after a failed attempt on Ari’s life. The culprit seems obvious. But assumptions, they will find out, can get you hurt. If Fierce doesn’t wise up quickly, not even his wolf will be able to save their mate from the force plotting to kill her.

Chapter 1

Ari’s kindergarten classroom looked less like a schoolroom and more like an imitation of brightly colored chaos corralled just this side of total anarchy. Anyone watching would assume the children weren’t learning anything at all.

For example, two children giggled in the Sensory Play center as they poured sand on top of a Buzz Lightyear action figure that was missing one arm. They were supposed to be tracing their names in the sand, at least according to her lesson plan. Ari had known them actually following suit was unlikely, but the head of her department liked seeing things like that in the lesson plan, however impractical they were.

On a rectangular yellow table, she had a sequencing game set up. The children were supposed to look at the pictures on the cards and put them in the right order. One of them featured a boy blowing up a balloon, tying it, and then throwing it in the air. It was the only one done correctly. The kids at that center had decided that mixing things up and putting them in the wrong order was way more fun.

In the home living center, the children were supposed to be dressing themselves for a fancy dinner party. That was on the lesson plan because Ari’s department head believed in meaningless structure. In reality, the children did what they always did … put on whatever they wanted and dumped toys out onto the floor. 

Ari didn’t mind the toy dumps. They were inevitable, and getting angry about them was pointless. Besides, she’d trained her children to be both eager and effective at clean-up time. The stickers were a great reward. Kids would do anything for stickers.

The only thing that most adults would have considered learning that morning went on at Ari’s own crescent-shaped blue table. She sat in the curved portion on one of the two adult-sized chairs in the room. The six children at her table were finger-painting their names, along with the picture of an animal who shared the first letter of its name with them.

Oliver painted an octopus, Penny painted a penguin, and so forth. And then there was Willie, the class serial killer in training, who had opted to draw a white walrus with blood dripping from its fangs.

She risked a glance up at the clock. It was still fifteen minutes till clean-up time, and she had one more group to put at her table for the finger-painting assignment.

“Okay, good work, Oliver, Penny, and … Willie. Go put your paintings on the drying rack, wash your hands, and go to one of the other centers.”

The three children got up and scurried away, grins on their faces. She turned to the remaining three children who still worked on their paintings and realized they would be a while. Ari hated to rush them, so she only called half of her remaining group over.

“Nina, Satoshi, Gru, come on over to the painting center.”

Satoshi and Gru came over right away. She gave them their paper and the paints, then stood to look for Nina.

“Nina?” She looked at the bathroom doors inside her classroom. Both the boy’s and the girl’s room doors stood open.

She spotted the child’s strawberry-red hair near the fish tank. Ari went to her side and put her hands on the girl’s shoulders.

“Miss Ari,” she said, turning to look up with sad green eyes. “Mr. Fishy Moe is dead.”

“What? Are you sure?”

Ari looked intently at the tank, and she spotted an orange goldfish floating belly up, his eyes wide but unseeing.

Oh crap, she thought. This is all I need right before spring break.

“Maybe he’s not dead,” Ari said quickly. “I think he’s just doing the backstroke. Now come on, Nina, let’s get you to the painting center …”

“Miss Ari, he’s not doing the backstroke,” Nina said, giving her an incredulous look. “He’s dead.”

“Who’s dead?”

Ari cringed inside. It was blabbermouth Lonny, who tended to overreact dramatically under the best of circumstances.

“No one, Lonny, go back to the sandbox.”

“Oh, man!” Bart, the tallest child in the class, peered over from the blocks center to see the dead fish. “Mr. Fishy Moe is dead, y’all!”

Ari sighed as the inevitable stampede of five-year-olds followed. Soon the entire class had clustered around the fish tank to stare at the piscine corpse.

Some of them were upset, on the verge of tears. Others were strangely fascinated. Still, others thought they could do CPR or revive the fish somehow.

“Okay, children, listen up. It’s time to clean up the room for lunch.”

“But what about Mr. Fishy Moe?” Nina demanded.

Ari patted the girl on her head.

“Well, here’s the way fish work. They’re what we call … um … disposable pets, you see? You get them, and they swim around for a while, and they’re nice, and then they die … and um, you get a new fish.”

“Can we get a shark?”

“I want piranha. My cousin has piranha.”

“No, I don’t want a new fish. I want Mr. Fishy Moe back.”

Ari thrust her fingers in her mouth and split the air with a shrill whistle.

“Hey, we’ll take a class vote on what our next fish should be, all right? But only if we do an extra-good job cleaning up today.”

Ari arched her brows as she gathered them with her gaze.

“I may have gone to Big Lots last night …”

They all gasped and made excited noises, as was their wont.

“… and I have some Scratch-N-Sniff stickers for the best cleaners today.”

The children rushed off, picking up their toys from the various centers and putting them on the shelf. Rather than berate the few children who attempted to hide under tables or just stood there watching the others instead of cleaning, she praised the ones who were working.

“Look at Scarlett, picking up all of the food she dumped on the floor earlier. Great job, Scarlett. Don’t forget that the yellow saucer goes in the dish basket, not the food basket. And look at Willie. He’s already picked up all of the Legos. I know he wants that scratch and sniff sticker.”

Gradually, the hiding children and those reluctant to help started cleaning too. With twenty-five eager beavers helping, the schoolroom was cleaned fast.

Ari got them to sit in their places on the circle rug. Then she used a dry erase board and markers to write the names of six fish with a horizontal line beneath them.

The children then came up and wrote their names under the fish they preferred. Ari had fully expected Piranha to win. Instead, it looked like her unoriginal children wanted yet another goldfish.

She told them she would look for a goldfish on her break and then read them a story until lunchtime. Soon she had her children lined up at the door. The lunch attendant came and picked up the kids, taking them to the cafeteria.

Ari settled gratefully into her seat and sighed, rubbing her temples. She loved her kids, she reminded herself. She loved her job. But moments like this, where silence reigned, were a blessed boon.

Ari took her lunch … chicken salad on rye with coconut water for her drink … to the staff break room. A dark-haired woman with a thick build and a smarmy smile glanced her way.

“Oh, don’t look now, but it’s the queen of Play-Doh. You look tired, Ari, such big bags under your eyes. Did you have a rough morning? Or a late night? Can’t soar with the eagles if you’re too busy hooting with the night owls.”

“Hey, Gloria. How’d the brain implant go, good?”

Gloria gave her a sneering smile while the other teachers laughed. No one had much sympathy for Gloria, who was famous for her cattiness. Gloria taught sixth grade and was the longest-tenured teacher at the elementary school.

Gloria would have to go to ludicrous lengths to get herself fired at that point, and she knew it. Ari put up with her as much as she could, but she still felt the need to fight back from time to time.

“Hey,” said a rail-thin woman with graying hair and thick glasses. “Does anyone still have that list for professional development seminars? I need thirteen more credit hours this year, or I won’t get my raise in September.”

“You still don’t have your hours done?” Gloria said snidely. “I got all of my hours done in the first month of the semester. You just need more discipline, Nancy.”

“It’s hard to do that when you have three kids along with a husband recovering from back surgery,” Nancy said stiffly.

“Oh, is that supposed to be a jab at me because I don’t have any children and have never been married? Are you calling me a spinster or something?”

Ari heaved a sigh.

“Calm down, Gloria. She didn’t say anything like that. And why do you care if someone else has their hours done or not?”

Gloria gave Ari a sneer.

“And have you got your hours in yet?”

“Yes, I do, but like you, I don’t have a family to take care of.”

“Yes, but unlike the two of you, I’m a real teacher. You babysit, and she, well, Nancy wrangles more than teaches, now doesn’t she?”

“That was uncalled for,” Ari said, her eyes narrowed.

“It’s fine.” Nancy stood up. “I’d rather take my lunch outside. It’s a nice day.”

Ari glared at Gloria and then stood as well.

“Yeah, she’s got a point.”

It was sixty degrees and spitting rain, but Ari enjoyed her lunch with the special education teacher far more than she would have in the break room.

After lunch and recess, her children came back. As usual, she had them go to the centers while she worked to catch up with those kids who had been sick or fallen behind.

The hands on the clock inched slowly toward three-thirty when school ended for the day. Ari normally wasn't a clock watcher, but between the imminent spring break and Gloria’s nastiness, she was ready for the day to end.

At last, the bell rang. She had the foresight to organize her children on the carpet after they’d cleaned the room fifteen minutes ahead of time. This meant they could just walk out the door and wait on the playground for their parents to pick them up and take them home.

Ari sighed and went to her desk to finish up the last of her paperwork before she could head home herself. A slight rap at the door drew her eyes up.

“Oh, hello,” she said to Melissa Kruger, Nina’s mother. “Did Nina leave her inhaler in her locker again?”

“Nothing like that, no.” Melissa came over to Ari’s desk, her lips stretched in a cunning smile. Ari’s defenses went up. Melissa wanted something from her, for sure.

“Then what can I help you with?”

“I need a favor, actually. You see, my cousin Dan is coming over this weekend, and my husband and I are going to this dinner party that’s sort of informally couples only. He doesn’t know anybody in town, and he needs a date.”

Ari smiled, but it was a struggle. It seemed like one of the parents’ great pastimes was to try to hook her up with male relatives and associates.

“I’m sorry, but I’m actually about to go out of town. I’m heading back to my hometown. My cousin Isaline has recently had a child, and I’m the godmother, so I kind of have to go.”

“Oh, I see.” Melissa looked so disappointed. “Well, maybe some other time?”

“I don’t know, Melissa. I just don’t know.”

She took the hint and left. Ari sighed, finished her work, and headed home at last.

Only to realize how empty and alone it all felt, sitting in her house by herself. It would be good to see her cousins and enjoy the quieter, wooded bliss of Full Moon Bay.

The last thing she needed was some man getting in the way of all of that..