Page 78 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

Millie stops pacing. Stares at me. “Define intense.”

“I don’t think I should.”

“Define intense immediately or I’m calling him right now and asking personally.”

“You don’t have his number.”

“I will find his number. I’m very resourceful. Define intense.”

“He… grounds my panic attacks. He memorized my breathing exercises from one conversation. He makes me feel safe in a way I haven’t felt since…” I stop. Swallow. “Since before the accident.”

The playfulness drains from Millie’s expression. She sets down her wine and comes to sit beside me, close enough that our shoulders touch.

“Fable,” she says quietly. “What happened at that barbecue?”

So I tell her.

Except there’s a piece I have to hand over first, the piece everything else is built on, and I’ve been rehearsing versions of this sentence for an hour and they’re all terrible, so I just say it.

“Millie. Orion is a lycan.”

She blinks. “A what?”

“A werewolf. Technically a lycan. He’s very specific about the distinction.”

Millie, who has just picked her wine back up, sets it down again with the extreme care of a person handling live explosives. “Fable.”

“I know how it sounds.”

“You had a car accident. A head injury. A CONFIRMED head injury…”

“The CT was clean, and also I’ve watched him turn into a lycan the size of a horse in my own shop, so.”

“Okay.” She presses her fingertips together in front of her mouth, her processing pose, the one she deploys on grant applications and bad dates. “Okay. Walk me through the evidence. Because right now my two options are ‘werewolves are real’ and ‘my best friend needs a neurologist,’ and I know where my money is.”

I pull out my phone and open the photo Diana sent me from the barbecue: Mario, regal and unbothered, riding an enormous black lycan across a sunlit lawn while a crowd cheers.

Millie stares at it for a long time.

“That’s a big dog.”

“That’s Orion.”

“That is a BIG. DOG.”

“Millie. Look at the passenger. You know Mario. Mario once bit an actual therapy dog for the crime of optimism. Would Mario, our Mario, voluntarily sit on a dog?”

She looks. Her certainty wobbles. Mario’s expression in the photo is the expression of a creature exactly where he believes he belongs.

“Oh my god,” she says, very quietly. “You’re serious. You’re actually serious. Werewolves are real and you’re dating one.”

“Lycan.”

“I will call him whatever I want, I’m in crisis.” She reclaims her wine and drains half of it. “Wait. Am I allowed to know this? Is a wolf hitman going to show up and erase my brain? I’ve seen movies.”

“The king’s people are protected. Anyone I claim as mine counts.” I pause. “You count.”

“Did you just claim me?”