Page 89 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

He smiles, and it reaches all the way to his eyes this time, and something in me decides.

It isn’t the bond, or fate, or the cosmic soulmate connection I still don’t fully understand.

Just me. Choosing this. Choosing him.

“I want to ask you something,” I say.

“Another question? We’ve been doing a lot of those.”

“This one’s different.” I set down my coffee cup. “The bite. The one you haven’t given me.”

He goes very still.

“You don’t have to…”

“I want to understand. Really understand.” I look up at him. “What does it mean? Not the romantic version you might tell a nervous human. The real version.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, and I can see him organizing his thoughts, carefully, precisely, the way he organizes everything.

“The bite creates a permanent bond,” he says finally. “Not like the mate recognition, which is awareness. Connection. This is… completion. After the bite, we would feel each other… emotions, presence, sometimes thoughts. Not constantly, but in moments of intensity. When one of us is hurt or frightened or overwhelmed with joy, the other would know.”

“And it can’t be undone.”

“No. It can’t be undone. It can’t be rejected. Once the bite is given and accepted, it lasts…” He pauses. “Forever. Or as close to forever as we understand.”

“Even after you die?”

“We don’t know for certain. None of us have died and come back to report.” The corner of his mouth quirks. “But the legends say yes. That the bond persists. That mates find each other again, somehow.”

I absorb this. The weight of it. The permanence.

“Why haven’t you asked?”

“Because you have to choose it. Not in the moment… not caught up in sex or emotion or the aftermath of a fight. You have to choose it knowing exactly what it means.” His eyes meet mine, gray and steady. “And I would rather have you without the bite than pressure you into something you’re not ready for. Not yet. But someday, when you ask me knowing exactly what it means, I’ll give you anything you want.”

“Anything?”

“Everything.” His voice is rough now. Raw with something I’m only beginning to understand. “I would give you everything, Fable. Every piece of me. Every year I have left. Every moment of the next three hundred years, if you’ll have them.”

My eyes are stinging.

“That’s a lot to offer a woman over crêpes.”

“The crêpes are just a bonus.”

I laugh, and it comes out watery. “I don’t know if I’m ready for forever.”

“I know. I’m not asking you to be.”

“But I want to be.” The admission surprises me. “I want to want it. I want to get there. Is that… is that enough for now?”

“That’s everything.” He reaches out, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “That’s more than I dared to hope for.”

And then I’m kissing him.

There’s no desperation in it this time, none of the dam-breaking, rain-on-the-windows urgency of that night in my apartment. This is different. Slower. A choice made with eyes open, with full knowledge of what I’m choosing.

He makes a sound against my mouth, half groan, half prayer, and his hands come up to frame my face with a gentleness that makes my chest ache.