"Having something forbidden is exciting, don't you agree?"
~Allan Dare Pearce

Caleb

When my sisters got home, Elsa immediately darted to her room. Frowning, I flicked my eyes over to Anna, who gave me an equally confused look and said, "She's been in a weird mood ever since she came out of English. She won't tell me what's up."

"Let me go talk to her. Maybe she needs a brother's advice," I suggested. I jogged upstairs, heading to my sister's room; I knocked softly, but Elsa still demanded rather gruffly, "What?"

"May I come in?" I asked through the door.

"Yeah," she replied, sounding slightly calmer. I opened the door to find her unpacking her school bag, tossing stuff onto the bed. She'd put her bouquet from Hunter and me in her window along with another one. I cocked my head at the sight of it. As if reading my mind, she said, "I don't know who sent them to me. There was no note."

"There any wolves in your high school other than the Starks?"

"Besides us? No. Probably just some human that knows it's stupid to approach me but still wanted to flatter me. Anyway, what's up?"

"You doing okay? You look like you've had a bad day," I said, sitting on the sofa bench at the foot of her bed.

"I'm fine. Just a lot of work to do that I don't have enough time to do. Thea is getting on my nerves, Barry and Oliver were being annoying..."

"Anything to do with Anna?"

"No. She never gets on my nerves. I'm going to go back to town in a few minutes to work at the Library because I need to see if they have some books that I need for a report for AP Lit."

"I can make sure the others stay quiet so you can work."

She smiled at me. "Thank you, but if Noah comes over, he and Ember are never quiet. Hunter likes his music too much, and I don't want to infringe on that. Besides, I have Guardian hearing, so even when you guys are all quiet, no offense, you're still kind of loud."

At that, I chuckled. "Yeah, I know the feeling. Do you need a ride down there?"

"No. I don't know how long I'll be, and I don't want you having to come at nine or ten at night to pick me up. You always go to bed early."

"I'd do anything for you; you know that."

"I do. I'll be fine. Seriously. I mean, what could happen at a library?"

"A lot of things. I've seen those teenage movies."

"Caleb, you're twenty. It wasn't that long ago you were one of us teenagers. Plus, you know my love life. It's non-existent, so you don't need to worry about me rendezvousing with some secret lover. Really, with the way my love life is going, I'm going to die an old maid, and I've accepted that. I'll just be the crazy aunt to the rest of the pack."

"You're not going to die an old maid."

"Do you have evidence to prove that?"

"No, but I'll figure out a way to get some."

Elsa hugged me. "Thanks. Tell Anna not to worry about me. I'm just stressed about school work and need some peace and quiet. I'll see you later."

The two of us walked downstairs, where Elsa said goodbye to everyone and exited the house.

"Where's Elsa going?" Mom asked, padding softly out of the kitchen.

"Library. She's stressed about school work and needed some peace and quiet," I explained.

"Which is definitely hard to come by here. Did she say when she'd be back?"

"Sometime later tonight. She has a lot of research for AP Lit to do, and I guess everyone else checked out the book she needed at school."

"Okay. I'll have Ren check in on her before he comes home."

"Everything okay at work?"

"Oh, yeah. Ren has a lot of work that needs to get finished. I'll be in his position next week. Would you mind helping me with dinner?"

"Not at all. What do you need me to do?"

"First thing, go get Hunter because he's helping too."

"What am I doing?" my brother inquired, sliding into the kitchen on his socks.

"Helping Caleb and me with dinner. Both of you wash your hands. We may be family but-"

"We know, we're still dirty from patrol earlier," Hunter finished.

"I've taught you two well. Now chop-chop!" Mom exclaimed, clapping her hands at us. "I want dinner on the table by six."

Elsa

I felt terrible lying to my family about why I was actually going to the Library, although the 'being stressed' part was genuinely sincere.

Spencer had given me time to think about dating him and said if I wanted to go through with it, to meet him at the library sometime between four and eight. It was a tough decision, but our packs needed to get over this feud with each other. Spencer had a point- maybe we could be the ones to begin mending the relationship. Of course, we were going to keep it a secret for a while because we'd have to break it to our packs in an extremely delicate manner to avoid banishment, and even worse, death.

Shaking the gruesome thoughts of my pack killing Spencer, and his pack killing me, I sat down at an empty table, pulling out papers from my bag. Most of what I brought consisted of my immensely complicated AP Calc homework. I dreaded doing it, staring at the endless numbers and symbols.

At six-thirty, there was still no sign of Spencer, which made me wonder if I'd convinced him not to pursue a relationship. Oh, how the tables will have turned if that was the case.

"Working hard, I see," my dad's voice piped up.

I whirled around. "Dad, hey! I thought you were still at work?"

"I finally finished up there, and your mom asked me to drop in here and check on you."

"Tell her I'm fine. Just a bunch of work. Mostly AP Calc stuff."

"If I were smart enough for that, I'd help you. I never took that in high school."

"Neither did mom."

"What about Anna?"

"It's not that I don't know it, it's just tedious. I'm probably going to grab something from the café here for dinner and then head upstairs because it's starting to get noisy down here. Tell mom I'm fine, please?"

"Will do. Call us if you need anything. Love you, sweetie."

"Love you, too, dad." My dad kissed me on the head before leaving. I sighed, becoming more impatient by the minute. At seven, unable to stop fidgeting, I got up to get dinner. The line was pathetically short, though, so it didn't kill near enough time. I brought my sandwich and drink back with me to my table, where I packed up to head upstairs. I went to the fourth floor where it was much quieter. Hardly anyone ever went up here since it had thousands of old books people seldom read anymore. But they were here in case someone did, one of those people being me. My AP Lit teacher finally moved on from our winter assignment onto a new book, which was in old English. It was somewhere around here, and once I finished my math homework, I'd go searching for it.

I took a study in the back of the room, one that had a door. It was a cozy little nook I quickly decided I would claim as my own. There was even a bean bag in the corner which I would inevitably end up in when the chair started hurting my butt.

At seven-thirty, I finally finished my AP Calc homework, and there was still no sign of Spencer. I shut my book and placed it on the desk, heading over to the old English classics section. After searching for five minutes on the bottom half of the shelf and realizing my book was on the upper half, I climbed the ladder to reach it. Naturally, I was a few inches too far from it. I attempted to move the ladder closer, but it hadn't been used in so long, the wheels and trolley system it was rigged to weren't working with all my weight at the top. Too lazy to climb back down, I stubbornly continued to try and get it to work, but all the ladder did was creak and groan in protest. It had to give at some point, right?

Suddenly the ladder shifted to the left, causing me to grip the sides of it. The movement was from nothing I'd done, but something- or someone- had moved it. On that hunch, I glanced down to find Spencer grinning up at me.

"I'm not a cat. If you made me fall, I wouldn't have landed on all fours, you know," I remarked, grabbing my book and jumping to the ground, landing lightly on my feet in front of him.

"You seem to be landing just fine," he said, his eyes glittering with amusement.

"Because I was expecting it."

"If you'd have fallen, I would've caught you. How long have you been here?"

"Since four-ish. I just finished my AP Calc stuff, and now I'm working on English."

Spencer's cheeky demeanor shifted to one of hesitant curiosity as he inquired, "Can I safely assume that since you showed up, you want to try us out?"

"You can," I replied blushing. In the blink of an eye, Spencer put his lips to mine, giving me a long, slow kiss. I went rigid at the contact, but not because I didn't like it.

When he pulled away, he said, "I'm sorry, I wanted to do that for a while. I should' ve-"

When my shock disappeared, I cut him off with a kiss because I'd enjoyed the first one too much, and it'd stopped too soon. Surprisingly the alpha froze as if shocked by what I was doing, but it didn't take long for him to regain his wits as his hands went to my waist. I couldn't think, couldn't breathe. Kissing him was pure bliss, and I never wanted it to end.

.