Page 69 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

Three knocks.

Soft. Deliberate. The same pattern he’s used every night for a week, announcing himself before entering so he doesn’t startle me.

“Fable?” His voice, muffled through the back door. “Let me in. Please.”

My hands move on autopilot. Unlock the door, once, twice, three times, because even in the middle of a panic attack my brain insists on the ritual, and then he’s there, filling the doorway, eyes going gold the moment he sees my face.

“You’re safe.” He doesn’t touch me yet. Just stands there, solid and present, blocking the rest of the world out. “You’re safe. I’m here. Can I touch you?”

I nod, unable to speak.

His hands find my shoulders. Press down. Grounding pressure that cuts through the static in my head, an anchor in the chaos.

“Breathe with me.” His voice is calm. Steady. Like there’s nothing unusual about this moment, like he’s done it a hundred times before. “In for four.”

He remembered. He memorized my…

“Count with me, Fable. One. Two. Three. Four.”

I try. The numbers come out broken, gasping, barely audible.

“Good. That’s so good. Now out for six. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.”

His thumbs are making small circles on my shoulders, matching the rhythm of the count. Something to focus on other than the terror still coursing through my veins.

“Again. In for four.”

We breathe together. Him counting, me following, both of us focused on nothing except the rhythm. In for four. Out for six. In for four. Out for six.

Slowly, slowly, my heart rate settles. My chest loosens. The world stops narrowing.

“That’s it.” His voice is soft now. Proud, almost. “You’re doing so well. One more time. In for four.”

“How did you…” My voice comes out raw, scraped clean by the panic. “How did you know my techniques?”

“You told me. That first week, when you were explaining how you manage the anxiety.” His hands stay steady on my shoulders. “You said in for four, out for six. You said grounding pressure helps. You said counting gives you something to focus on outside your body.”

I mentioned it once. Offhand. Certain he wasn’t really paying attention because nobody pays attention to that stuff, nobody remembers the random details I share about my mental health management…

“You memorized my coping strategies.”

“I memorize everything about you.”

The words land somewhere in my chest and stay there, warm and aching.

“That’s…” I struggle for the right response. “That’s either very romantic or very concerning.”

“Can it be both?”

“Probably shouldn’t be.”

“And yet.”

He’s so close. So impossibly close, hands still on my shoulders, eyes still watching me with that devastating attention. The panic has drained away, leaving something else in its wake, a hot and urgent thing, pressing against the inside of my ribs and demanding out.

This is wrong. He just talked you down from a panic attack. Wanting to climb him thirty seconds later is deranged. This is textbook misattribution of arousal, this is trauma chemistry, this is…

His thumb brushes the corner of my jaw, and every clinical word I know evaporates.