Page 6 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

The door is opening.

That’s not possible. That door was stuck. I saw it, it was…

“That’s exactly what a hallucination would say.” My voice sounds weird, thick and slow, like I’m talking through honey. “Are you here to take me somewhere? Is this the part where I see a tunnel with light at the end?”

“No tunnels.” He’s reaching for me now, hands sliding under my body with a care that makes my chest ache. “No light. Just me. Just you. And an ambulance about three minutes away.”

“That’s very specific.”

“I have good hearing.”

The seatbelt releases, he must have cut it, or undone it, I didn’t see, and then I’m being lifted out of the wreckage of my car like I weigh nothing at all, cradled against a chest with all the give of a wall.

He’s strong. He’s really, really strong. Too strong. Nobody’s this strong.

“I’ve got you.” His voice is right next to my ear, his heartbeat under my cheek, solid and steady, a metronome. “I’ve got you. Stay with me.”

Angels are probably strong, right? That tracks. Lifting people out of burning buildings is probably part of the job description.

“Pretty,” I manage, one more time, because if I’m dying I want my last word to be a compliment. That seems like good karma. That seems like the sort of act that gets you into heaven, telling an angel he’s pretty while you bleed on his very nice sweater.

“Stay with me,” he says again, and his voice sounds different now, strained in a way it wasn’t before. “Fable. Stay with me.”

But the dark is rushing up to meet me, warm and soft and welcoming, and the last thing I hear before it swallows me whole is his voice, somewhere above me, somewhere close:

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Stay with me.”

2

— • —

Fable

The ceiling is the wrong color.

That’s my first thought as I claw my way back to consciousness, and it takes me a slow, swimming moment to place it: not my apartment, not the store. Hartsgrove Memorial. Hospital ceiling, hospital light. I cling to the thought hard, because having thoughts means I’m not dead. Dead people don’t complain about interior design. Dead people don’t lie in uncomfortable beds noticing that the ceiling is industrial white instead of the friendly off-cream of their own apartment, that the lights are recessed and fluorescent instead of warm and yellow, that there’s a persistent beeping sound coming from somewhere to the left that’s either a heart monitor or the most annoying alarm clock in the world.

Hospital. You’re in a hospital. You’re not dead, you’re just concussed and horizontal and…

Something tugs at my forehead when I try to frown.

Stitches. I can feel them, a tight pulling sensation just above my left eyebrow, little threads holding my skin together like I’m a torn book that someone’s trying to repair. Three of them, if my fuzzy counting is right, which it probably isn’t, because my head is pounding and my eyes won’t focus and everything feels like it’s happening on a slight delay.

Three stitches. Mild concussion. Some bruising. You’re fine. You’re completely fine. You’re just also in a hospital, which is less fine, but still fundamentally okay.

I try to lift my hand to touch the stitches, to confirm they’re real, to ground myself in something physical, but my arm feels like it weighs seven thousand pounds. Moving seems like a lot of effort. Breathing seems like a lot of effort. Existing seems like a lot of effort.

So I lie there instead, staring at the wrong ceiling, letting my brain slowly piece together what happened.

You were driving. You were going somewhere brave. You were almost there, and then there were headlights in the wrong lane, and then…

Glass. Metal. The sound of the world ending.

Warmth on my face. Blood, probably. Definitely blood.

And a face in the window. A hallucination. An angel.

Gray eyes. Black hair. A voice like calm in the middle of a storm, telling you to stay with him.