Page 37 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

“It doesn’t mean anything. Except that he deserves to be with someone who makes him happy.”

She nods. Turns toward the door. Pauses with her hand on the knob.

“Orion?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you. For…” She stops. Swallows. “For the bullet. And the honesty. And the cat.”

“You’re welcome. For all of it.”

She goes inside. I wait until I hear the lock click. Then click again. Then a third time.

Three locks. She checks them in threes, like I do. Her brain needs the same kind of order mine does, just arranged differently.

I should leave. Go home. Report to Theo. Deal with the aftermath of the break-in. There are protocols to follow, responsibilities to attend to, a territory to maintain.

Instead, I pull the car into the alley behind her building, cut the engine, and shift.

The transformation is easier in the dark, when no one’s watching. Bones reshape, muscles reorganize, and then I’m on four legs, padding through the shadows to take up my position behind Fable Tales.

I’ve done this every night since the crash. Watching her window. Listening to her heartbeat. Making sure nothing and no one gets close enough to hurt her.

Symptom, I remind myself. Not devotion. Just the obsession of a creature who waited three centuries for something and now can’t let it out of his sight.

I settle into the shadows, nose pointed toward her window, ears pricked for any sound of distress.

And that’s when I realize I’m not alone.

There, on the ridge above her building, barely visible, downwind so I didn’t catch the scent until now, another shape in the darkness. Pack. One of mine. Watching the same window I’m watching. Following the same woman I’ve been following.

My contentment curdles, going cold.

Someone is watching me watch her.

And I need to find out why.

8

— • —

Fable

Three days of obsessive googling. Three days of asking careful questions around town. Three days of lying awake at night, replaying the moment when the man I’d been having dinner with turned into a massive wolf and took a bullet meant for me.

Lycan. He keeps correcting me. Lycan, not wolf. Lycan, not werewolf. Apparently there’s a difference, and apparently I should care about the distinction, but it’s hard to care about terminology when you’re still processing the fact that any of this is real.

I’ve filled an entire notebook with bullet points.

Not organized bullet points, because I don’t have the mental capacity for organization right now. Just thoughts as they come, scribbled in whatever color pen I grab first, sprawling across pages in a way that would probably alarm a therapist.

Lycan ≠ werewolf (he was VERY specific about this, like there’s going to be a test)

King = leader of “his people” = other lycans??? Living on the mountain??? HOW MANY???

Has lived in that house for ??? years (he said “inherited” the candelabra but did he inherit it from himself?? Is that possible???)

Mario hates him because he’s a GIANT DOG and Mario is a cat of TASTE and DISCERNMENT