Page 94 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

More crashing. A sound that might be books falling. Mario’s victory cry.

“He really missed hating you,” I observe.

“He really did.”

A knock at the front door.

Not a normal knock. Three raps, evenly spaced, formal in a way that makes the hair on my arms lift before I understand why. Beside me Orion goes still, the easy warmth of a moment ago draining out of him between one breath and the next.

“Stay here,” he says, already pulling on sweatpants.

I do not stay here. I wrap myself in his shirt and follow him down, and by the time I reach the bottom of the stairs he’s opened the door on Theo, who stands on the threshold in the falling dark with snow on his shoulders and an expression I’ve never seen him wear. No dry humor. No warmth. His hands are folded in front of him, and in them is a single folded page, cream-colored, sealed with a blot of dark wax.

“My king,” Theo says, and even his voice is different. Official. Sorry. “I was required to bring this in person. The form demands it.”

Orion takes the page. Breaks the seal. And as his eyes move down it, I watch three centuries of composure turn to stone, watch his jaw set, watch something go cold and lethal in his face.

He doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t say anything for so long that the not-saying becomes its own alarm, and I can’t stand it, the way his silence is trying to protect me from a thing that already has my name on it.

I take it out of his hands.

He lets me. That’s the part that scares me most, that he lets me.

The handwriting is old-fashioned and precise. I read it out loud, because reading things out loud is how I make them real, and my voice starts steady.

“‘A formal gathering is called. The king’s selection of a human as queen is contested, on grounds of unfitness, before the full pack. Tomorrow night.’” I keep going. “‘The contested claim shall be tested according to the old law. Should the claim be found wanting…’”

I stop.

The next words don’t want to come out of my mouth.

“Fable,” Orion says quietly. “You don’t have to read the rest.”

But I do. Because pretending I didn’t see it won’t make it not true.

“‘Should the claim be found wanting, it shall be dissolved, and the human returned to her life with all memory of the pack adjusted.’” The word lands in the cold hallway and just sits there. “Adjusted.”

I look up at Theo. “That means what I think it means.”

Theo doesn’t look away, and I respect him for it. “It means the same thing that happened to a baker in town not long ago, my queen. Except all of it. Everyone. Him.”

Him. Orion. The FAQ with the little drawing. The crêpes. The photo strip in his coat pocket. Smoothed over, sanded down, gone, and I wouldn’t even know enough to grieve it.

My hands are shaking. But not the way they shake for cars.

“You don’t have to come,” Orion says, and his voice has gone rough. “This is my fight. I’ve been handling Aaron for two hundred years…”

“He’s not challenging you.” I fold the page along its old creases, very carefully, because if I don’t do something careful with my hands I’m going to do something reckless with them. “He’s challenging me. My right to remember my own life.”

“Fable…”

“I’m going.” I hand the page back to Theo. “And I’m going to win.”

20

— • —