Fable
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The pack barbecue, three days later, is chaos in the best possible way.
I drove here. Myself. In my own car, no less, back from the body shop for a week now with a rebuilt front end and new glass, smelling of upholstery cleaner and fresh paint. Orion had it inspected before he’d let it anywhere near me. Twice. By two different mechanics who don’t know about each other.
It was a whole production: the laminated checklist on the visor, the pre-drive ritual performed twice, and Orion’s SUV a patient shadow in my rearview the entire way up the mountain, because I only agreed to try if he promised to follow.
Baby steps. My hands shook for the first mile and then, somewhere around the third switchback, they simply stopped, and when I parked in the meadow he got out of his car wearing the expression of a man watching someone summit Everest.
“Don’t make it a thing,” I warned him.
“It’s a thing.”
“Orion.”
“It’s an enormous thing. I’m planning a commemorative plaque.”
Orion’s backyard, which is less a backyard and more a sprawling meadow that probably qualifies as its own zip code, has been transformed into a festival of controlled mayhem.
Smoke rises from an enormous grill where Theo stands sentinel, flipping burgers with the focused intensity of a surgeon performing a triple bypass.
Folding tables covered in mismatched cloths sag under the weight of potluck contributions, casseroles and salads and at least three different kinds of pie.
String lights crisscross between the trees even though it’s barely four in the afternoon, and somewhere someone has set up a speaker playing music that I can only describe as “mountain folk crossed with something that has too much bass.”
Children run between adults’ legs, shrieking with laughter, and I watch in fascinated horror as a little girl with pigtails shifts mid-sprint into a tiny silver lycan, yips excitedly at a butterfly, and shifts back without breaking stride.
Because for them, this is normal, I remind myself, white-knuckling my drink. This is just Tuesday for these people.
I have my laminated checklist in my pocket. The socializing one, not the driving one. Orion doesn’t know I made it. It says things like remember names and ask follow-up questions and do not mention that you saw Mrs. Delgado’s husband buying romance novels and he made you promise not to tell.
Mario is in his harness, which I insisted on because I wasn’t sure how he’d react to a yard full of lycans. He’s currently perched on my shoulder, a furry orange parrot, surveying the chaos with the disdain of a tiny emperor forced to mingle with peasants.
“You’re doing great,” I mutter to him.
He flicks his tail against my neck. This is not agreement. This is tolerance, and barely.
“You must be the human!”
I turn to find a woman I don’t recognize beaming at me, silver-streaked hair, laugh lines, the kind of face that suggests she knows every piece of gossip in a fifty-mile radius and isn’t afraid to deploy it.
“That’s me,” I confirm. “The human one.”
“Diana. Orion’s second cousin, maybe third… nobody can keep track anymore.” She presses a drink into my free hand, something sparkling and pink that smells like it could strip paint. “We’re so glad you came. You have no idea how long we’ve been waiting for someone to put that man in his place.”
“I’m not sure I’m putting anyone anywhere…”
“Oh, honey.” Diana’s grin widens. “He alphabetized our entire pack library last month because someone shelved a book in the wrong section. One book. In a collection of three thousand. And he found it.” She shakes her head. “The man needs someone to make him relax. You’re already a hero.”
Before I can process this, movement across the lawn catches my attention.
Orion is in his lycan form, massive and dark, moving through the crowd with the careful grace of someone very aware of how large and potentially terrifying he is.
Pack members pat his flank as they pass, completely casual, occasionally tossing him scraps from their plates like he’s an extremely well-behaved dog at a family picnic.
And perched on his back, sitting perfectly upright with the dignity of a tiny furry warlord, is…
“Is that my cat?”
“Happens every time,” Theo says, materializing at my elbow with a plate of perfectly grilled burger patties. “Hates him as a human. Loves him as a lycan. We’ve stopped trying to understand it.”
Mario has somehow teleported from my shoulder to Orion’s back, and he’s riding the massive lycan across the lawn like he’s surveying conquered territory. His copper-penny eyes scan the crowd with regal disdain. His tail flicks occasionally, as if directing his mount’s movements.
Pack members are taking pictures. Actually taking pictures, phones out, faces delighted, capturing the moment like it’s Christmas morning.
“He’s majestic,” Theo says solemnly. “Truly.”
Orion, in lycan form, makes a sound that I’m pretty sure translates to why does everyone betray me.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever seen,” I admit.
“We have a calendar,” Diana adds. “Of Mario riding various pack members in lycan form. It’s our biggest fundraiser.”
“A calendar?”
“The April picture is particularly good. He’s wearing a tiny crown.”
I watch the tiny orange warlord continue his parade, and warmth settles in my chest. This is absurd.
This entire situation is absurd, the supernatural barbecue, the lycan-riding cat, the three-hundred-year-old lycan king who got his feelings hurt because a fifteen-pound rescue cat likes him better in a different body.
This is my life now.
I think I love it.
“So you’re, like, actually an expert?”
The teenage girl asking the question, Mira, I remember, because I checked my mental checklist, is looking at me with the kind of reverence usually reserved for rock stars or particularly impressive TikTok creators.
“I own a bookstore that specializes in romance,” I clarify. “That doesn’t make me an expert. It just makes me someone who’s read a lot of books with shirtless men on the covers.”
“But you know things.” Mira leans forward, dark eyes bright with enthusiasm. “About the tropes. About what makes a good love story.”
“I know what I like. That’s different from expertise.”
“Okay, but…” She holds up a finger like she’s about to conduct a quiz. “Enemies to lovers?”
“Classic. Best when there’s forced proximity and the hatred is secretly just really aggressive attraction.”
“Only one bed?”
“A personal favorite. Especially when neither party will admit they’re delighted about the sleeping arrangements.”
“Grumpy-sunshine?”
I glance across the lawn to where Orion, human again, Mario presumably returned to his throne of judgment, is standing with his arms crossed, listening to an elderly pack member with an expression of barely concealed impatience while simultaneously scanning the crowd until his eyes find me.
“Pretty sure I’m living that one.”
Mira actually squeals. “Oh my god, you’re right. He’s so grumpy and you’re so…”
“Chaotic?”
“I was going to say sunny, but chaos works too.” She’s practically bouncing. “This is amazing. You’re like a real-life romance heroine.”
“I’m a mess who accidentally summoned a lycan king by writing down the wrong phone number. That’s not the same thing.”
“That’s exactly the same thing! That’s a meet-cute! That’s the inciting incident!” She clutches her hands to her chest. “The universe literally threw you together through a series of improbable coincidences. That’s fate.”
The word lands differently than she intended. Heavier. But I push the feeling aside.
“Your enthusiasm is terrifying and I respect it.”
“I’m going to put you in my book.”
“You’re writing a book?”
“I’m writing seven books. They’re all romance. You’re going in the one about the werewolf prince.”
“Lycan,” I correct automatically, and then catch myself. “Oh god, I’ve become one of those people.”
“One of us,” Mira says solemnly. “One of us.”
An older woman, Grandmother Esme according to my mental notes, the one who makes the really good lemon bars, pauses to pat my arm as she passes.
“Three hundred years of that man scowling at the horizon,” she murmurs, “and now he can’t stop smiling. You did that, dear.”
Her gaze drifts across the lawn, and something in it cools. I follow it to a silver-haired man standing apart from the celebration at the tree line, straight-backed, hands folded, watching me with an expression carved out of pure disapproval. He’s the only person here who hasn’t smiled once.
“Don’t mind Aaron,” Esme says. “Old guard. He’ll come around, or he won’t.” Her voice drops, and for a moment the twinkle in her eyes goes somewhere far away. “He wasn’t always like this, you know. There was a woman, once. Long before your time. Long before almost anyone’s time.”
“What happened to her?”
“That’s his story, not mine.” She pats my arm one more time and drifts toward the pie table, leaving the words to settle in my chest, a stone I don’t know where to put.
I look across the lawn to where Orion has abandoned his conversation and is watching me with an expression I’ve never seen him wear in public. Soft. Unguarded. Almost wondering, like he can’t quite believe I’m real.
Three hundred years. He’s been alone for three hundred years.
And he’s looking at me like I’m the answer to a question he didn’t know he was asking.
Something dangerous blooms in my chest. It feels like permanence. Like roots growing where I didn’t know I wanted them.
“You’ve got it bad,” Mira observes.
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying. The heart eyes are intense. Both directions.”
“I don’t have heart eyes.”
“You absolutely have heart eyes. But it’s okay.” She pats my arm. “He has them too. You’re disgustingly cute together. I ship it so hard.”
“You can’t ship real people.”
“Watch me.”
I throw a napkin at her head. She catches it, laughing, and I’m laughing too, and for a moment everything feels simple. Good. Like I’ve found something I didn’t know I was looking for.
The bomb drops without warning.