7. Orion #2
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’ve never done this before. Telling someone, I mean. Someone who isn’t pack. Someone who matters.”
Her face changes at that last word. Matters. Like she’s not sure she believes it, or not sure she should.
“Let me take you home,” I say again. “Please. You can hate me from the comfort of your own apartment.”
She looks at Mario. Mario looks at me and screams.
“Fine,” she says finally. “Take me home. But I’m keeping the cat.”
“I wouldn’t dream of separating you.”
The drive down the mountain is an exercise in restraint.
She’s in the passenger seat, Mario curled in her lap, and her knuckles are white on the door handle.
I can smell her fear with every breath I take, not fear of me, exactly, that scent is different, sharper, tinged with adrenaline and the aftermath of shock.
This is older than that. Deeper. It has nothing to do with lycans or bullets or impossible transformations.
She’s afraid of the car.
I noticed it the first time I drove her, that night at the hospital.
The rigid posture. The shallow breathing.
The way she gripped the door like it was the only thing anchoring her to the earth.
I wrote it off then as lingering trauma from the accident.
But this is more than that. This is practiced fear.
Habitual fear. The kind that builds over years, that becomes as familiar as breathing.
Who hurt you?
The question circles through my mind, a restless animal, pacing, waiting.
I know so many things about her now, her favorite books, her coffee order, the way she talks to herself when she thinks no one’s listening, the color-coded system she uses for her sticky notes.
But I don’t know this. I don’t know what made her flinch at the sound of engines.
I don’t know why her hands shake every time she gets into a vehicle.
And she hasn’t told me. Hasn’t offered. Changes the subject every time I get close.
Patience. She’ll tell you when she’s ready. If she’s ever ready. If she doesn’t run screaming into the night and never speak to you again.
I slow the car down. Take the curves more gently than necessary. Keep my movements smooth and predictable, telegraphing every turn, every brake, every acceleration. It’s the same technique I use with spooked horses, no sudden moves, no surprises, just steady and calm and safe.
She doesn’t relax. But her breathing evens out a little. Her grip on the door handle loosens by a fraction.
Small mercies.
“You’re being very quiet,” she says, about halfway down the mountain.
“I’m driving.”
“You were quiet before, too. Before the…” She waves her hand. “Before the whole wolf thing.”
“Lycan thing.”
“I’m going to start charging you every time you correct me.”
“I’ll open an account.”
She almost smiles at that. Almost. It’s there in the corner of her mouth, a twitch that doesn’t quite commit.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks. “Right now. While you’re being so quiet and driving so carefully.”
You. Always you. The way you smell, the way you breathe, the way your heart beats too fast when the car takes a curve. The three hundred years I spent waiting for something I didn’t even know I was waiting for, and how all of that time feels like nothing compared to the four days I’ve known you.
“The road,” I say instead. “The weather. Whether Theo has caught up with our intruder yet.”
“That’s a lot of things to think about at once.”
“I’m good at multitasking.”
“You’re good at avoiding questions, is what you’re good at.”
“That too.”
We drive in silence for another few minutes.
The rain has slowed, but the roads are still slick, and I keep the speed well below what I’d normally take these curves at.
Every few seconds I check the rearview mirror, watching for threats that probably aren’t there, watching for the other car that’s definitely not following us.
Paranoid. Three hundred years of survival and I’m still jumping at shadows.
“Can I ask you something?” Fable’s voice is tentative. Careful.
“Anything.”
“The bullet. The one you took. Are you…” She stops. Swallows. “Is it still in there? Do you need a doctor? Do lycans even have doctors?”
“It’s already working its way out.” I rotate my shoulder slightly, feeling the last of the foreign metal pushing toward the surface. “Should be fully expelled within the hour. Lycan healing is considerably faster than human.”
“That’s… convenient.”
“It has its uses.”
“So you’re not going to die.”
“Not from this. From most things, actually, I don’t get to die.”
“What would kill you?”
I glance at her. She’s watching me closely, scientific curiosity, maybe, or the particular focus of someone cataloging survival information.
“Silver, if delivered to the heart,” I say. “Decapitation. Complete destruction of the body. Essentially the same things that would kill any living creature, just… more difficult to accomplish.”
“Because you heal fast.”
“And because I’m very hard to kill in general.”
“That’s reassuring.” Her voice is dry. “I feel so much safer knowing that my emergency contact is functionally immortal.”
“Not immortal. Just long-lived.”
“Three hundred years.”
“Give or take.”
“That’s a lot of takes.”
“Time moves differently when you’ve seen as much as I have.”
She’s quiet for a moment, processing. Then: “What have you seen? In three hundred years?”
Wars. Plagues. The rise and fall of nations.
The invention of the telegraph and the telephone and the internet.
The slow march of human progress, punctuated by periods of devastating regression.
Love and loss and love again, though never the kind of love that meant anything. Never the kind that felt like this.
“A lot,” I say. “Ask me again sometime when we’re not in a car and you’re not recovering from shock.”
“That’s another evasion.”
“I contain layers.”
“You said that already.”
“It bears repeating.”
We pull onto Main Street, and I watch her posture change. Watch the tension drain from her shoulders as we approach solid ground, familiar territory, the bookstore that’s both her business and her home.
She’s out of the car before I’ve fully stopped, Mario clutched to her chest, feet hitting the sidewalk like she’s escaping a flooding room.
She only breathes normally once she’s standing on solid ground.
I will find out what hurt you. Someday. When you’re ready to tell me. And then I will do whatever I can to help you heal.
“Goodnight,” she says, and her voice is tight. Controlled. “I’m going inside now. To process. Alone. With the cat.”
“Keep him. He likes you better anyway.”
Her expression shifts. “You’re giving me your cat?”
“He was never really mine. I just provide food and shelter. You’re the one he chose.”
She looks down at Mario. Mario looks up at her with those copper-penny eyes and purrs like he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.
“Okay,” she says softly. “Okay. I’ll keep him. But this doesn’t mean…”
“It doesn’t mean anything. Except that he deserves to be with someone who makes him happy.”
She nods. Turns toward the door. Pauses with her hand on the knob.
“Orion?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For…” She stops. Swallows. “For the bullet. And the honesty. And the cat.”
“You’re welcome. For all of it.”
She goes inside. I wait until I hear the lock click. Then click again. Then a third time.
Three locks. She checks them in threes, like I do. Her brain needs the same kind of order mine does, just arranged differently.
I should leave. Go home. Report to Theo. Deal with the aftermath of the break-in. There are protocols to follow, responsibilities to attend to, a territory to maintain.
Instead, I pull the car into the alley behind her building, cut the engine, and shift.
The transformation is easier in the dark, when no one’s watching. Bones reshape, muscles reorganize, and then I’m on four legs, padding through the shadows to take up my position behind Fable Tales.
I’ve done this every night since the crash. Watching her window. Listening to her heartbeat. Making sure nothing and no one gets close enough to hurt her.
Symptom, I remind myself. Not devotion. Just the obsession of a creature who waited three centuries for something and now can’t let it out of his sight.
I settle into the shadows, nose pointed toward her window, ears pricked for any sound of distress.
And that’s when I realize I’m not alone.
There, on the ridge above her building, barely visible, downwind so I didn’t catch the scent until now, another shape in the darkness. Pack. One of mine. Watching the same window I’m watching. Following the same woman I’ve been following.
My contentment curdles, going cold.
Someone is watching me watch her.
And I need to find out why.