sensibilities by dragging this woman back into the house to do things to her that I shouldn’t even think of on the way to holy ground.
As if she can read my thoughts—or maybe she’s having the same ones, judging by the scent of arousal I’d swear I’m picking up from her, she agrees lightly, “We’d better hurry.”
I one hundred percent agree with her on this. Thankfully, as soon as we start walking, my focus starts moving where it should—to work. To teaching. And by the time I head downstairs for the Sunday school room, with Donal taking over the scripture study for the rest of the congregation, I’m thoroughly on track and caught up in working with all the innocent little minds our pack boasts.
Today, we’re learning about Solomon’s prayer for wisdom, and his judgement over the case with the two children. It’s a tightrope walk for some chapters of the Bible—for example, two out of the three Tamars don’t get mentioned down here, Samson’s addiction to women and his use of foxes is glossed over, and David and Bathsheba isn’t a story this group is ready for. In a few years, they will be. And privately, their parents might choose to share and supplement further details they feel their children can handle, since we do keep these classes carefully edited. But for now, lessons are studies on the broadest concepts, containing simple morals they can follow. Listen, obey, treat others as they wish to be treated. Things every werewolf and shifter needs to get a handle on in order to be a properly socialized member of our society—dominant or submissive, it doesn’t matter. We also do a lot of activities: learning and writing the names of pertinent people through history, tracing shapes on felt and cutting out characters to act out scenes, and sometimes we put on little plays. I’ve never herded cats, but I imagine this is actually easier. I love these little clowns, because at this age very few of them care about hierarchy or status; they just want to absorb the world and play.
And I can help with that.
“Everybody goes to sleep,” I prompt the class, and all of them drop to the carpet, looking like inchworms that got sprayed with knockout gas. “Samuel?” I call in my most authoritative voice.
Sam, a yakan shifter (Japan’s native werewolf), leaps to his feet, his four-piece suit a little wrinkled, but nothing his parents will growl over. Everyone who’s ever dressed a child in their Sunday best expects a little horseplay in them—at least we’re inside yet and not out on the grass where he’s more likely to get stained. “Here am I!” he shouts proudly, acting out 1 Samuel 3, where God calls the little boy, who in turn obeys faithfully. It isn’t a book we’re studying today, but these guys love this game (Sam most of all, since the study figure is his namesake), so we play it often.
“Very good,” I praise, and hold out the reward box. Colorful stickers, erasers, rulers, you name it, there are little prizes in here and not a piece of candy in sight.
Sam frowns, looking crestfallen. He looks up, not meeting my eyes because he’s a submissive. But he’s not afraid to ask for what he wants, and that’s great. “Can I have jerky instead?”
I growl deep, making him duck and grin. But I had the tray ready, a fact he—and nearly every child in this room—can definitely smell.
With a playfully begrudging air, I snatch up a length of jerky—a flat square of the most delicious dried meat you’ll ever be lucky enough to try, and homemade, not the sad store-bought kind that’s either pulpy and soft or harder to gnaw on than a shoe with a human foot still in it—and point it at him like it’s a sword. “Just this once,” I insist in an aggressively petulant tone that has him giggling.
He reaches out for it tentatively, as if I might bite off his arm, but he’s laughing, not really worried in the least. “Thank you, Pastor Deek.”
“You’re welcome, Sam. It was good of you to answer right away. Go have a seat.”
He does, taking the pint-size chair that Chessa, my werewolf helper and fellow child-wrangler of the day, offers him, and I call the next nipper. “Maggie?”
Maggie, one of the few humans in the group, looked like she was going to burst her skin if she didn’t get called on soon. And since she’s not a shifter, that’d