Page 95 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

Fable

The gathering is the following night, and my hands are shaking again.

It isn’t the car tremor. I know that one intimately by now: the white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, the shallow breathing, the way my vision narrows to a single point on the road ahead. This is different. This is standing at the edge of a firelit clearing surrounded by more lycans than I can count, none of whom I’ve ever met, all of them staring at me like I’m either their salvation or their evening’s entertainment, and I genuinely cannot tell which would be worse.

Breathe. Four in, six out. You’ve done harder things than this.

Have you, though? Have you really? Name one.

Driving up the mountain in the dark.

Okay, that was pretty hard. But this is a whole clearing full of supernatural creatures who might literally eat you if things go badly.

They’re not going to eat me. Probably.

Mario is back at the house, sulking on Orion’s couch where we left him. I invited him along. He declined by walking into his carrier, turning around, and walking back out. Pack politics, apparently, are beneath him.

The clearing is beautiful in a terrifying way. Ancient oaks ring the perimeter, their branches bare and reaching toward the sky like grasping fingers. Torches have been set into the ground at regular intervals, casting dancing shadows across the packed snow, making everything flicker between gold and darkness. The pack has gathered in loose semicircles, faces appearing and disappearing in the firelight, some curious, some hostile, some carefully neutral in ways that suggest they’re withholding judgment until they see which way this goes.

I recognize a few faces. Theo, standing near the front with his arms crossed and his expression giving away nothing. Mira, bouncing on her toes near the back, looking like she’s watching the opening of a movie she’s been waiting years to see. Winnie, who dropped the bomb at the barbecue, catches my eye and looks away quickly, shame written across her features.

But most of them are strangers. A hundred strangers with very sharp teeth.

“You don’t have to do this.”

Orion’s voice is low behind me, his hand warm on the small of my back. I can feel the tension radiating off him, protective fury barely contained, a lycan ready to fight anyone who looks at me wrong. The urge to protect me is so strong it’s almost a physical presence beside me in the dark.

“I know.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “But I want to.”

“You could wait at the house. I can handle Aaron… I’ve managed him this long…”

“Orion.” I turn to look at him, and his expression cracks at whatever he sees in my face. “I’m not hiding while someone challenges my right to be with you. That’s not who I am.”

“I know it’s not.” His jaw tightens. “I just hate that you have to defend yourself to people who should already…”

“I don’t have to. I want to.” I reach up, touch his face. “There’s a difference. And these are your people. If I’m going to be their queen, or whatever the lycan equivalent is, they deserve to hear from me. Not just from you defending your choice.”

The look that crosses his face is fierce and proud and aching with something that might be wonder.

“You’re remarkable,” he says quietly.

“I’m terrified. But sure, let’s go with remarkable.”

A horn sounds somewhere at the far end of the clearing, low and resonant, the kind of sound that vibrates in your chest. The crowd stirs, parts, and Aaron steps forward.

He’s exactly what I remember from the barbecue, and somehow worse up close. Silver-haired, sharp-featured, with the kind of bone structure that suggests centuries of selective breeding and a face that probably hasn’t smiled since before the Revolutionary War. He moves with the careful precision of someone who knows exactly how much power he holds and enjoys making sure everyone else knows it too.

He looks at me the way you’d look at something stuck to the bottom of your shoe. Unpleasant and unexpected and deeply beneath your notice.

“We gather tonight,” he announces, his voice carrying across the clearing with the practiced projection of someone who’s been making speeches for centuries, “as our traditions require, to address a matter of grave importance to the Hartsgrove pack.”

The formal language makes my stomach clench. This isn’t just a confrontation, it’s a ritual. A ceremony. And I’m standing in the middle of it without any idea of the rules.

“Our king has claimed a mate.” Aaron’s tone makes it clear he finds this development disappointing at best. “As is his right. As the bond demands. But the question before us tonight is whether that mate is fit to stand beside him.” His gaze lands on me, cold and assessing. “Whether a human can fulfill the duties our traditions require of a queen.”

Murmurs ripple through the crowd. I catch fragments, never been done and she seems nice enough and what was he thinking, before they’re swallowed by the crackle of the torches.

“Our laws are clear,” Aaron continues, beginning to pace in front of the assembly, a prosecutor presenting his case. “For three hundred years, the queens of Hartsgrove have been lycan. Have been one of us. Have understood our ways, our customs, our responsibilities to this land and these people. They have run our borders. Led our hunts. Defended our territory with tooth and claw.”