8. Fable
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Fable
Three days of obsessive googling. Three days of asking careful questions around town. Three days of lying awake at night, replaying the moment when the man I’d been having dinner with turned into a massive wolf and took a bullet meant for me.
Lycan. He keeps correcting me. Lycan, not wolf. Lycan, not werewolf. Apparently there’s a difference, and apparently I should care about the distinction, but it’s hard to care about terminology when you’re still processing the fact that any of this is real.
I’ve filled an entire notebook with bullet points.
Not organized bullet points, because I don’t have the mental capacity for organization right now. Just thoughts as they come, scribbled in whatever color pen I grab first, sprawling across pages in a way that would probably alarm a therapist.
Lycan ≠ werewolf (he was VERY specific about this, like there’s going to be a test)
King = leader of “his people” = other lycans??? Living on the mountain??? HOW MANY???
Has lived in that house for ??? years (he said “inherited” the candelabra but did he inherit it from himself?? Is that possible???)
Mario hates him because he’s a GIANT DOG and Mario is a cat of TASTE and DISCERNMENT
Took a bullet for me. Just. Threw himself in front of it. Like it was nothing.
How old IS he. He said three hundred plus but what does that even MEAN. Has he seen the Civil War? The BLACK PLAGUE? The invention of PIZZA???
Why does he keep showing up???
WHY DO I KEEP THINKING ABOUT HIM???
WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MY LIFE
The last three entries are underlined multiple times, because those are the questions that keep me up at night.
Not the wolf thing. I’ve made my peace with the wolf thing, mostly, in the way you make peace with anything impossible.
You accept it. You move on. You don’t think too hard about the laws of physics you’ve just watched get violated.
What I haven’t made peace with is the way he looked at me before he shifted. The way he stepped between me and that gun without hesitation. The way he said I wasn’t going to let him hurt you like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
And the way I felt when I realized he wasn’t human.
I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t horrified.
I was fascinated.
So I went looking for answers the only way a bookseller knows how: I asked the town.
Mrs. Delgado’s bakery smells like cinnamon and yeast, and she leans over the counter the second I mention the name, lowering her voice as though the muffins might report back.
“The Hallorans?” she says. “They’ve owned that mountain forever, honey. Since before my grandmother’s grandmother. Strange folks. Keep to themselves.”
“Strange how?” I keep my voice light. Casual. Just a curious newcomer, definitely not confirming whether the man who took a bullet for me sheds seasonally.
“Well, they don’t age right, for one thing.
” She sets a muffin on a square of wax paper, warming to it.
“My mother swore Orion Halloran looked exactly the same when she was a girl as he does now. Said he came into town when she was five, and again when she was fifty, and he hadn’t changed a whisker. Same face. Same eyes. Same…”
She stops.
The muffin is halfway to the bag, and her hand just… stalls in the air. Her eyes lose their focus, sliding off my face to some middle distance, and her other hand drifts up to her temple, pressing there like she’s holding something in.
“Mrs. Delgado?”
“…same everything,” she finishes, but slower now, uncertain, the words coming apart in her mouth. “Same. I’m sorry, what was I…” A small laugh, thin and confused. “Would you listen to me. What were we talking about, honey?”
The bakery is very quiet. The muffin is still in her hand. She’s looking at me like I just walked in.
“The Hallorans,” I say carefully. “You were telling me about the Hallorans.”
“Was I?” Her brow creases, working at it, and I watch something go out behind her eyes, some door swinging quietly shut. “Nice family, I’m sure. Keep to themselves.” She brightens, back to safe ground, and pushes the bag across the counter. “Three muffins, was it?”
I pay. My hand isn’t quite steady.
I’ve read about this now, in the dark, on my phone, in the forums where people trade stories they’re afraid to say out loud. A thing that lives in the mountains and edits the people who see it too clearly. I told myself it was folklore. Message-board nonsense.
And I just watched it happen. Watched a memory get eaten out of a woman’s head mid-sentence, gently, like it was nothing, like it was mercy.
They forget, I think, walking home too fast with a bag of muffins I don’t remember wanting. The whole town forgets. Something makes sure they forget.
And the part that keeps me up isn’t the forgetting.
It’s that nobody’s tried to make me forget anything at all.
It’s almost eleven when I hear the sound outside.
It isn’t a knock. It’s softer than that: a shuffle, a whine.
I’m in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, trying to convince my brain that it’s time for sleep even though my brain has other ideas.
Ideas that mostly involve replaying Orion’s face in the candlelight, the way his eyes went gold before the shift, the impossible breadth of his shoulders against the dark.
Stop it. He’s a wolf person. A lycan. A supernatural creature who turns into a giant predator. You cannot be attracted to a giant predator.
The whine comes again. Low. Unmistakably canine.
Unmistakably him.
I set down my toothbrush. Grab the knife I’ve been keeping by the bathroom door since the break-in, a kitchen knife, big enough to be threatening, though probably not threatening to someone who can survive getting shot, and creep down the stairs.
The back door is solid and familiar, and I press my ear against it, listening.
Shuffle. Whine. The sound of something very large settling onto my back steps with a patience that suggests it’s prepared to wait all night.
I take a breath. Square my shoulders. Remind myself that I’ve survived ADHD, anxiety, running a small business, and finding out that werewolves, lycans, are real. I can handle this.
I open the door.
And nearly stab the massive furry gargoyle sitting on my steps.
The knife stops about two inches from his nose. He doesn’t flinch. Just looks at me with his eyes, that impossible storm-cloud gray, familiar in that lycan face, and his tongue lolls out in what might be a smile if wolves could smile.
“O-ORION?!”
He whines. The sound is almost apologetic.
“What the fuck are you doing here? It’s eleven at night! You can’t just… you can’t just show up at people’s back doors in wolf form like it’s normal…”
He pads inside before I can finish the sentence, pushing past my legs like he owns the place, and I’m spluttering, “NO NO NO, we did not discuss this, I did not invite you in,” but he’s already in my stockroom, already turning to face me, and then the shift ripples through him.
One moment: lycan.
Next moment: man.
Naked man. Very naked man. Standing between my shelves of overflow inventory with absolutely no shame whatsoever.
“Sorry to scare you, sweetheart.” His voice is soft. Sheepish. Like he’s a normal person who just showed up unannounced for a chat instead of a supernatural creature who walked through my back door on four legs. “I was just making sure you were all right.”
Sweetheart.
He called me sweetheart.
While naked.
In my stockroom.
This is fine. This is a totally normal situation that I am handling with complete composure.
“You’ve been watching me,” I say, and I mean it to sound accusatory but it comes out more like a squeak. “Haven’t you. These past three days. You’ve been out there. Watching.”
“Protecting.”
“Those are NOT the same thing!”
“Aren’t they?” He says it like it’s a genuine question, like he honestly doesn’t understand the distinction. “Someone tried to hurt you. In my house. Under my protection. Until I’m certain there’s no ongoing threat, I’m going to make sure you’re safe.”
“By lurking outside my window like a creepy stalker wolf?”
“I prefer the term ‘vigilant guardian.’”
“I prefer the term ‘boundaries,’ which you apparently don’t understand!”
“I understand them. I’m choosing to disregard them for your own good.”
“That’s not how boundaries work!”
He tilts his head, and the gesture is so canine, so impossibly wolf-like, that I almost laugh despite my irritation. Almost.
“You’re angry,” he observes.
“I’m CONFUSED. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes! Angry is when someone does something wrong and you’re mad about it. Confused is when someone does something completely insane and you don’t know how to feel about it.”
“And which one is this?”
“BOTH. It’s BOTH.”
I’m waving the knife around as I talk, I realize. Gesturing with a weapon at a naked immortal wolf-man in my stockroom at eleven o’clock at night. This is my life now. This is what my life has become.
“You can put down the knife,” he says. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know you’re not going to hurt me. You took a bullet for me.”
“Then why are you still holding it?”
“Because I don’t know what else to do with my hands!”
I shove the knife onto the nearest shelf, nearly knocking over a stack of paperbacks in the process. The Fabio covers stare at me judgmentally. Even the fictional heroes think I’m handling this badly.
“I don’t need protection,” I say, trying to gather the shreds of my composure. “I’ve been taking care of myself for years. I’ve been fine.”
“I know.” He says it simply, without judgment. “You’ve done an incredible job. You’ve built a business, a life, a routine that works for you. But you don’t have to do it alone anymore.”
“I’m not…” My throat tightens. “I’m not doing it alone. I have Millie. I have my regulars. I have…”
“You have a cat who just adopted you and a stranger who turned into a wolf in your kitchen. That’s what you have.”
“Stockroom. You turned into a wolf in my stockroom.”
“My apologies. I’ll aim for the kitchen next time.”