Page 76 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

“Why not?”

“Because humans can reject the bond.” The words come out like they’re being torn from somewhere deep. “And if I told you too soon, if you felt trapped, obligated, like you had no choice, you might have walked away. And I would rather…” His voice breaks. Actually breaks, this controlled, ancient, impossibly steady man. “I would rather have you slow and human-paced, choosing me every day because you want to, than have you feel like a prisoner of fate.”

“So instead you lied to me.”

“I didn’t…”

“Omitted. Withheld.” I’m crying now, I realize. Tears tracking down my cheeks, blurring him at the edges. “Let me fall for you without knowing I was already yours. That’s not protecting me, Orion. That’s controlling information. That’s making decisions about my life without letting me participate in them.”

“I know.” His own eyes are bright. Wet. “I know, and I’m sorry, and I was going to tell you… I’ve been trying to find the right moment…”

“The right moment was the beginning. The right moment was before I…” I choke on the rest.

Before I fell in love with you.

But I can’t say that. Not now, not when everything I thought I understood about us has just been rewritten.

The silence stretches between us, filled with the distant sounds of a party that’s probably pretending very hard not to listen.

“I need space,” I say finally. “I need to think.”

“Fable, please…”

“Don’t.” I hold up a hand. “Don’t follow me. Don’t show up at my window. Don’t use your supernatural hearing to check on me. Just… give me time. Please.”

He nods. Once. His face is devastated, three hundred years of control cracking along fault lines I can see but not repair.

But he doesn’t move.

He lets me go.

I walk back through the party, past faces that blur together, past Theo who looks like he wants to say something and doesn’t, past Mira who’s crying for some reason, past Diana who reaches for me and then pulls back.

I get in my car.

On the drive up there was a checklist and a ritual and a promise and a patient SUV in my rearview. Now there’s just me, no escort, no plan, no ritual, shaking apart in every way except the one that matters.

I put my hands on the wheel.

They’re not shaking.

I stare at them, steady, calm, completely still against the worn leather, and I don’t understand. I should be spiraling. I should be paralyzed. I just had my heart broken at a supernatural barbecue and learned that the man I’ve been falling for has known we were cosmically destined since before I opened my eyes, and my hands should be shaking so hard I can’t grip the wheel.

But they’re not.

For the first time in six years, I’m sitting in a driver’s seat after an emotional crisis, about to drive somewhere I haven’t planned, and my hands are completely, perfectly steady.

I should feel relieved.

Instead, I’m terrified.

Because the man who just broke my heart is apparently also the man who healed something I didn’t know was still broken. And I don’t know if what I felt, what I feel, is real.

And I don’t know if I can survive finding out.

I turn the key.

I drive.