Page 36 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

“So you’re not going to die.”

“Not from this. From most things, actually, I don’t get to die.”

“What would kill you?”

I glance at her. She’s watching me closely, scientific curiosity, maybe, or the particular focus of someone cataloging survival information.

“Silver, if delivered to the heart,” I say. “Decapitation. Complete destruction of the body. Essentially the same things that would kill any living creature, just… more difficult to accomplish.”

“Because you heal fast.”

“And because I’m very hard to kill in general.”

“That’s reassuring.” Her voice is dry. “I feel so much safer knowing that my emergency contact is functionally immortal.”

“Not immortal. Just long-lived.”

“Three hundred years.”

“Give or take.”

“That’s a lot of takes.”

“Time moves differently when you’ve seen as much as I have.”

She’s quiet for a moment, processing. Then: “What have you seen? In three hundred years?”

Wars. Plagues. The rise and fall of nations. The invention of the telegraph and the telephone and the internet. The slow march of human progress, punctuated by periods of devastating regression. Love and loss and love again, though never the kind of love that meant anything. Never the kind that felt like this.

“A lot,” I say. “Ask me again sometime when we’re not in a car and you’re not recovering from shock.”

“That’s another evasion.”

“I contain layers.”

“You said that already.”

“It bears repeating.”

We pull onto Main Street, and I watch her posture change. Watch the tension drain from her shoulders as we approach solid ground, familiar territory, the bookstore that’s both her business and her home.

She’s out of the car before I’ve fully stopped, Mario clutched to her chest, feet hitting the sidewalk like she’s escaping a flooding room.

She only breathes normally once she’s standing on solid ground.

I will find out what hurt you. Someday. When you’re ready to tell me. And then I will do whatever I can to help you heal.

“Goodnight,” she says, and her voice is tight. Controlled. “I’m going inside now. To process. Alone. With the cat.”

“Keep him. He likes you better anyway.”

Her expression shifts. “You’re giving me your cat?”

“He was never really mine. I just provide food and shelter. You’re the one he chose.”

She looks down at Mario. Mario looks up at her with those copper-penny eyes and purrs like he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.

“Okay,” she says softly. “Okay. I’ll keep him. But this doesn’t mean…”