Page 99 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. I ruined everything…”

“You didn’t ruin anything.” I take her hands. “You told me something I needed to know. It hurt at the time, but… I’m glad I know now. I’m glad I got to choose this with my eyes open.”

She looks like she might cry. “Truly?”

“Truly.”

Orion finds me through the crowd, and the look on his face makes my breath catch. Pride and relief and love, so obvious it might as well be written across his forehead in neon.

“You were incredible,” he says, pulling me close.

“I was terrified.”

“Same thing.”

“I don’t think that’s how words work.”

“It’s exactly how words work when you’re talking about courage.”

His arms tighten around me, and when he speaks again his voice has dropped, gone rough at the edges.

“I need you to know something. He was never going to touch you. If there had been one drop of true intent in that charge, he would have been dead before his foot left the ground. Tradition or no tradition.”

“I know.”

“But I couldn’t intervene. The moment I stepped in, the test was void, and your claim stayed unproven, and the provision he invoked stayed on the table. It was the old form, Fable. He was testing you, not threatening you. That’s the only reason I stayed where I was.” A breath moves through him, not quite steady. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I once sat through the entire eighteenth century.”

“I know that too.” I pull back enough to look at him. “Although, for someone who ‘stayed where he was,’ you were growling loud enough to rattle the torches.”

“I was not.”

“Theo has it on video.”

“Theo is fired.”

He kisses me then, right there in front of everyone, and the pack howls their approval like this is the climax of a movie they’ve been waiting for.

When we finally break apart, I’m breathless and flushed and Mira is definitely taking pictures.

“Run,” I whisper against his mouth.

He pulls back, confused. “What?”

“I want you to chase me.” I’m grinning now, that wild reckless feeling from the night I drove up the mountain surging through me again. “I want you to catch me.”

His eyes flash gold.

“Fable…”

I bolt.

Behind me he shifts, the crack of bones, the rustle of fur, and then the thunder of paws on the forest floor, and my heart is pounding and my lungs are burning and I’m running through moonlit woods with a lycan at my heels.

I have never felt more alive.

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