9. Orion
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Orion
My routines have never felt so hollow.
Pack reports by eight. Theo’s voice in my head, steady and reliable: Territorial boundaries secure. No unusual activity. The human from the break-in has been released, memory adjusted, no lasting harm. He’s telling people he had a strange dream about wolves. Standard response.
Good, I send back. And the other matter?
Still watching. Whoever was on that ridge hasn’t come back. Might have been random patrol that didn’t realize they weren’t supposed to be there.
Or might have been something else.
Or might have been something else, Theo agrees. I’ll keep eyes on it.
I end the connection and stand in my kitchen, surrounded by the precise order I’ve spent decades cultivating, and feel absolutely nothing.
I have survived plagues. Wars. The fall of empires and the rise of nations.
I survived the Spanish flu and the Inquisition and both World Wars.
I survived the invention of the automobile and the telephone and the goddamned leaf blower, that noise, that infernal noise, every autumn for the past sixty years.
Three hundred years of survival and adaptation and control, and one human with sticky notes and chaos shelves has completely dismantled my ability to function.
I pour the rest of the coffee down the drain.
Go to check the locks again.
Stop myself with my hand on the front door.
This is ridiculous. You checked them. They’re locked. You know they’re locked. You watched yourself lock them three times.
I check them anyway. The fourth time doesn’t feel as satisfying as the first three.
She’s keeping her distance.
I expected that. Hoped against it, maybe, somewhere in the irrational part of my brain that doesn’t understand concepts like “space” and “processing time.” But expected it nonetheless. After what she saw, what I showed her, distance is reasonable. Healthy. Smart.
She needs time to decide if she can accept the impossible.
I hate every second of it.
Give her space. She asked for space. Respecting her boundaries is the bare minimum you owe her after showing up at her back door naked.
I respect her space.
I also patrol the perimeter of her building every night, because respecting her space doesn’t mean I have to stop keeping her safe. Those two things can coexist. I’m a multitasking alpha.
It’s on day nine that I find the paper.
I’m in lycan form, padding through the shadows behind Fable Tales, when I catch the scent of fresh ink and her particular blend of coffee and anxiety. Something new. A trace that wasn’t here last night.
I shift, quickly, quietly, and follow the scent to her back door. There, tucked under a rock, a kept secret, is a folded piece of paper.
My name is written on the outside. In purple ink. With a small drawing of what might be a wolf or might be a very fluffy dog, she clearly wasn’t sure which.
My chest does something complicated, a warmth and a tightness at once, a feeling I haven’t experienced in so long I’ve almost forgotten what it’s called.
Hope.
I sit on her steps, human form, clothed, respectable, and unfold the paper.
LYCAN FAQ FOR THE CONFUSED HUMAN Please answer honestly. I will know if you’re lying. (I won’t, actually, but it sounded threatening.)
I read the questions.
1. How old are you REALLY? 2. Do you eat people?
3. Can you turn me into a lycan? (NOT a request, just curious.) 4.
Is your whole family like this? 5. Why do your eyes do the gold thing?
6. What’s the deal with the “mate” thing I keep reading about online?
(The internet is UNHINGED about this.) 7.
Are you going to keep lurking outside my window? 8. Why?
Eight questions. Some practical. Some suspicious. Some that make my heart race and my hands shake slightly.
She’s researching. She’s asking. She wants to understand.
She hasn’t run yet.
I pull a pen from my pocket, I always carry a pen, have done since the invention of the ballpoint, and start to write.
***
LYCAN FAQ: ANSWERS
(Note: Alphabetized by question number because my brain physically cannot organize information any other way. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. You’ll learn to love it.)
Q1. How old are you REALLY?
Old enough to know better. Young enough to still make terrible decisions, see: showing up at a stranger’s hospital bed, alphabetizing her bookstore, shifting in her stockroom while completely naked.
Town says thirty-four. Town is polite.
I stopped counting after the first century because the numbers started to feel meaningless.
What does it matter if you’ve seen one hundred years or two hundred or three?
After a certain point, you’ve witnessed enough births and deaths and empires rising and falling that the specifics blur together.
You remember feelings more than dates. Moments more than years.
You asked for honesty, so here’s the most honest thing I can tell you: I’ve been alive for a very long time, and most of it felt like waiting. Like standing in an empty room, listening for a sound that might never come.
Then I found you bleeding in a car, calling me pretty like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
I’m not waiting anymore.
(Footnote: The Spanish flu was terrible. The Inquisition was worse. The invention of the leaf blower was a close third.)
Q2. Do you eat people?
No.
Absolutely, categorically, without exception: no.
We’re predators, not monsters. There’s a difference, and it matters. Lycans hunt, it’s in our nature, unavoidable, but we hunt animals, not people. Any lycan who ever tried to harm a human for food would answer to me personally, and the results would be extremely unpleasant for them.
I’ve been king for over two hundred years. In that time, I’ve dealt with exactly three cases of a lycan threatening a human. None of those lycans are threats anymore.
I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about what that means.
(Footnote: I’m vegetarian about 60 percent of the time these days. Not for ethical reasons, more for variety. Three hundred years of the same diet gets boring.)
Q3. Can you turn me into a lycan? (NOT a request, just curious.)
Not through a bite, despite what popular media suggests. The condition is genetic, passed through bloodlines. Werewolf rules don’t apply to us, we’re a different species entirely, with different biology and different limitations.
There is a ritual that can turn a human, but it’s ancient, dangerous, and rarely performed. The survival rate is… low. Most humans don’t make it through the transformation.
I’m choosing to believe you when you say this isn’t a request. But if it ever becomes one, if you ever wanted this, the answer would still be no. Not because I wouldn’t want you as one of us. But because I refuse to risk losing you to a process that could kill you.
Some things aren’t worth the gamble.
(Footnote: The last human who successfully completed the transformation did it well over a century ago. She lived a long lycan life and became one of the most formidable alphas in North America. But she’s the exception, not the rule.)
Q4. Is your whole family like this?
Yes and no.
The Hallorans have been lycans for as long as anyone can remember, centuries, at least, probably longer. We’ve lived on this mountain for generations, keeping to ourselves, maintaining the territory, trying not to alarm the humans who settled in the valley below.
Most of the “strange folks who keep to themselves” that your neighbors gossip about are my family in some form. Blood relatives, pack members, people I’ve known for a hundred years and trust with my life.
But family is complicated when you live as long as we do.
Blood ties matter less than chosen ties.
The people I consider family are the ones who’ve stood beside me through the hard parts, the losses, the wars, the long centuries of waiting.
Some of them share my blood. Some of them don’t.
All of them would die for me, and I for them.
(Footnote: Mario is not a lycan. He’s just a cat with strong opinions. Though I understand the confusion, he does seem to hate me with supernatural intensity.)
Q5. Why do your eyes do the gold thing?
They shift color when I feel something too strongly to hide.
Anger. Protectiveness. Joy. Desire.
The shift is involuntary, my body’s way of expressing emotions that my face might otherwise conceal. Most lycans have better control than I do. I’ve always been… intense.
(Footnote: They’ve been doing it a lot since I met you. Almost constantly, actually. I’m choosing not to examine that too closely.)
Q6. What’s the deal with the “mate” thing I keep reading about online?
I stare at the question for a long time.
My pen hovers over the paper. Touches down. Lifts again.
She found something. She researched. She knows enough to ask, which means she knows enough to be frightened, or confused, or…
I can’t tell her like this, not in writing, not without being able to see her face, to gauge her reaction, to explain that the bond is real but the choice is hers.
That I would never trap her. Never force her.
That I’ve been waiting three hundred years for someone who would stay, and I’d rather have her slow and human-paced than risk losing her to fear.
Instead, I draw a small wolf in the margin. Careful lines, precise strokes, a little cartoon version of myself, looking up at the question with what I hope reads as earnestness rather than evasion.
Then I write:
Ask me in person. Not because I won’t tell you. Because you deserve to see my face when I do.
Q7. Are you going to keep lurking outside my window?
Yes.
Try to stop me. I’ve gotten good at being quiet.
(Footnote: You talk in your sleep, by the way. Last night you argued with someone about shipping costs for a rare book order. You won. I was very proud.)
(Additional footnote: The night before, you said my name. Just once. Just “Orion,” like you were asking a question. I didn’t answer, I wasn’t supposed to be listening, but I wanted to. I wanted to very much.)
Q8. Why?
I write: Because…
Stop.
Cross it out.
Write: Because I can’t…
Stop.
Cross it out.
The pen presses hard enough to tear the paper slightly. I stare at the question, Why?, and feel three hundred years of carefully maintained control crumbling at the edges.
Because you’re mine, I want to write. Because I pulled you from that wreckage and held you while you bled, and you called me pretty like it was the most natural thing in the world, and right then I knew the three centuries of waiting had all been for you…
I cross out everything I’ve written for this question.
Start again.
Because you called me pretty while you were bleeding, and no one has looked at me like that in a very long time.
***
I fold the paper carefully.
Tuck it back under the rock, exactly where I found it.
She’ll find it when she wakes up. She’ll read my answers.
She’ll have more questions, she always has more questions, it’s one of the things I love about her, and maybe, eventually, she’ll ask question six again.
In person. Where I can see her face, and she can see mine, and I can tell her the truth without hiding behind paper and ink.
Mate. She’s my mate. And she doesn’t know what that means, not really, not the way I do.
I should feel anxious about that. Terrified. Worried about her reaction when she finally understands.
Instead, I just feel hopeful.
She’s still here. She’s still asking questions. She left me a questionnaire, for god’s sake, with a drawing of a wolf on the outside and purple ink and a footnote about her inferior lying detection abilities.
She hasn’t run yet.
I’m rising to leave when I hear it.
The back door opening. Paper rustling as she picks up the FAQ. A pause, she’s reading, I realize, standing in her doorway in the early morning light, reading my answers while I crouch in the shadows, a lovesick fool.
Then: laughter.
Surprised. Genuine. Warm.
Best sound. Best sound I’ve ever heard in three hundred years of sounds.
And beneath the delight, threaded through her scent even at this distance, is a warmer note.
One that spikes every time I come within ten feet of her, that clings to her doorway and the collar of the cardigan she wears three days out of five.
She wants me. Her body has been broadcasting it for days, honey and lightning on every inhale, and being downwind of it is its own particular torture, and I would sooner tear out my own throat than rush her.
Patience. You’ve waited three hundred years. You can wait until she’s sure.
She laughed at my answers. She read about my age and my diet and my inability to stop watching her window, and she laughed. There was no mockery in it, no cruelty. Just delight. Amusement. The laugh of someone who’s discovering that the impossible can also be funny.
I want to burst through the shadows and make her laugh again. Want to spend the rest of my very long life learning what makes that sound happen.
Patience. Space. Let her come to you.
I force myself to retreat, to slip back into the darkness, to leave her to her reading and her processing and her slow, careful approach to the impossible.
And that’s when I hear the second set of footsteps.
They aren’t hers. They aren’t human.
There, on the ridge above her building, the same place I caught the shape before, movement in the trees. Pack. One of my own. Shadowing the woman I’ve sworn to protect, and doing it in secret, which means someone doesn’t trust me with my own choices.
Again.
My contentment drains away, going cold.
I told Theo to monitor. Told him to report if anyone came back. Either he failed, or this is someone who doesn’t report to Theo.
Either way, I need answers.
I turn toward the ridge, ready to shift and chase, ready to demand explanations…
And the watcher vanishes into the trees before I can catch their scent.