Page 11 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

“And you just… came?”

His expression tightens, a small change around the eyes and jaw, barely perceptible. His voice stays level, but there’s weight underneath it, something that isn’t quite audible but I can feel anyway, the low vibration of bass in a song.

“The hospital said you were alone,” he says. “That you’d been in an accident, and you’d listed me as your contact, and there was no one else coming.”

“There was supposed to be someone else coming! I just wrote the number wrong!”

“I know.” He’s still so calm. How is he so calm? “I knew it was probably a mistake. But I wasn’t going to ignore it.”

“Why not?”

The question comes out harder than I intended. More suspicious. More scared.

Normal people don’t do this. Normal people get a random call from a hospital about a stranger and they say “wrong number” and they hang up and they go about their lives. Normal people don’t drive two hours and sit in waiting rooms and show up at bedsides like knights in really nice sweaters.

“What kind of person would that make me?” He says it simply, like it’s obvious. Like the answer is self-evident. “To ignore someone who was hurt and alone?”

The normal kind. The regular kind. The kind that understands boundaries and doesn’t show up at strangers’ hospital beds.

I don’t say that. I don’t say anything. I just stare at him, trying to make his existence make sense, trying to fit him into a category I understand.

Rich guy with a savior complex? Possible. Serial killer with a very long game? Also possible. Romance novel hero who somehow escaped into real life? Unlikely but would explain the jawline.

“I’m Orion Halloran,” he says, party-introduction smooth, in a hospital room where I’m doing my best impression of a raccoon that lost a fight with a windshield. “I live up on the mountain. I don’t come into town much.”

“The rich recluse.” The words come out before I can stop them, before I can decide if it’s rude to call someone a recluse to their face. “I know who you are. I’ve heard about you.”

His expression sharpens. Interest, maybe, or wariness. It’s hard to tell.

“Good things, I hope.”

“Weird things.” I’m committed now, so I might as well keep going. “People say you own half the mountain. They say you never come to town. They say you’re, what, mid-thirties? Living alone in some giant house in the woods?”

“Thirty-four,” he says smoothly, without hesitation. “So they tell me.”

I pause.

That was a weird way to phrase it. That was a very specific kind of weird phrasing that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Thirty-four. So they tell me.

Not “I’m thirty-four.” Not “yes, mid-thirties.” But “so they tell me,” like thirty-four is something that happens to other people, like it’s a number someone assigned to him rather than something he actually is.

“That was weirdly evasive,” I say.

“Was it.”

“Yes. It was. ‘So they tell me’ is the answer you give when someone asks how old you are and you’re either lying or you genuinely don’t remember.”

“Maybe I don’t count the years very carefully.”

“Everyone counts the years. That’s how time works.”

Another flicker at the corner of his mouth, definitely amusement this time, a slight warming in that grave gray gaze, and I realize I’m arguing with a stranger about his own age while lying in a hospital bed looking every inch the horror movie extra.

Priorities, Fable. You have them. You should use them.

“Okay.” I take a breath. Let it out. Try to find something resembling composure. “Okay. This is… fine. This is a situation that’s happening, and I’m handling it. I will just call Millie, the actual Millie, and she’ll come get me, and you can go back to your mountain and your mysterious age and your life of showing up at hospitals for strangers.”