23. Lynn
— ? —
Lynn
I wake up reaching for him.
My hand finds cold sheets.
For a moment, I just lie there, blinking at the ceiling, trying to orient myself. The room is quiet. Too quiet. Mr. Darcy’s wheel isn’t squeaking, which means he’s asleep, which means it’s either very early or very late.
“Milo?”
Nothing.
I sit up, and that’s when I see it.
A piece of paper on his pillow. Folded once, my name written on the front in his careful handwriting.
My stomach drops.
Lynn-
Pack matters. Emergency session at the compound. I have to leave now, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’m sorry this is a note and not a conversation, you deserve better. You deserve everything.
I’ll explain when I return. I promise.
- Milo
P.S. Feed Mr. Darcy the good pellets. He knows when you give him the cheap ones.
I read it until the words stop making sense.
Then I grab my phone.
Hey. Got your note. Is everything okay?
Sent. I watch the screen, waiting for the three dots that mean he’s typing.
Nothing.
Let me know when you can. I’m worried.
Nothing.
Milo?
Still nothing.
I set the phone down, picking up the note again. Reading it again. Looking for something I missed, some hidden message, some reassurance I didn’t see before.
Pack matters.
What does that even mean? What kind of emergency requires him to leave in the middle of the night without waking me? Without saying goodbye?
I’ll be back as soon as I can.
When? Today? Tomorrow? Next week?
I’m sorry this is a note and not a conversation.
Then why didn’t he make it a conversation? He could have woken me, could have explained, could have-
He could have trusted me.
But he didn’t.
He left a note.
I make it through the morning by sheer force of will.
I shower in his tiny bathroom, put on clothes from the pile Maya brought, and feed Mr. Darcy the good pellets and then the cheap ones too, because he’s been on a hunger strike lately and I figure variety might help.
It isn’t the worry that’s killing me. It’s that my body hasn’t gotten the memo that I’m supposed to be angry.
I keep catching myself reaching for him in the empty bed.
Pressing my face into his pillow because it still smells like pine and warm skin and the specific way his throat smells right under his jaw, which is a thing I know now, a thing I have catalogued, a thing I think about at 2 a.m. like a person with no dignity left.
I’m furious with him and I’m also aching for him and those two feelings are apparently roommates now, sharing the same square inch of my chest.
“This is pathetic,” I tell Mr. Darcy.
He doesn’t disagree.
“He’s coming back,” I tell the hamster. “It’s just pack stuff. Lycan politics. Nothing to worry about.”
Mr. Darcy gives me a look that suggests he has opinions about my emotional well-being.
“Don’t start.”
He goes back to ignoring his food.
Mythology 101 is at 2 p.m.
I almost don’t go. What’s the point? The professor I actually want to see won’t be there. But my absence would be noticed, might raise questions, might compromise the very careful cover we’ve been maintaining.
So I go.
The classroom is the same as always, same seats, same lighting, same view of the courtyard through the high windows. But the front of the room is different.
There’s a man at the podium. Older. Gray hair, gray beard, gray everything. He’s wearing a cardigan that’s probably older than I am, and he’s squinting at Milo’s laptop like it’s personally offended him.
“Right then,” he says, clicking something. The projector flickers to life, displaying a PowerPoint slide. “Professor Draven has been called away on urgent personal matters. I’ll be your substitute for the foreseeable future.”
Foreseeable future.
My heart clenches.
“Today’s lecture: the mythological significance of seasonal transitions.” He clicks to the next slide and then, apparently exhausted by the effort, starts reading directly from the screen. “Seasonal transitions in mythology often represent…”
I stop listening.
The PowerPoint is terrible. The delivery is worse. Milo speaks about mythology like it’s alive, like the stories matter, like they’re trying to tell us something about ourselves. This man speaks like he’s reading a grocery list.
But that’s not what’s bothering me.
Urgent personal matters.
He didn’t say “family emergency” or “illness” or even “personal day.”
Urgent personal matters is what you say when you can’t say the real reason. When the real reason is complicated, or when it’s a truth you don’t want anyone to know.
My phone is in my hand before I realize I’ve reached for it.
Please text me back. I’m in your class. There’s a substitute. He’s terrible.
Nothing.
Everyone’s noticed you’re gone. Someone asked if you were sick. I didn’t know what to say.
Nothing.
I’m getting worried. Please just let me know you’re okay.
Nothing.
The class ends. I don’t remember a single word of the lecture.
The spiral starts slowly.
I’m walking back to the faculty building, because where else would I go? My dorm is three flights of stairs and all my stuff is behind Milo’s office, when the thoughts begin.
He left a note.
That’s normal, though. People leave notes. It doesn’t mean anything.
He hasn’t responded to any of your texts.
Maybe his phone is off. Maybe he’s in meetings. Maybe lycan compounds don’t have cell service.
He said “foreseeable future.”
The substitute said that. Not Milo. Milo said he’d be back “as soon as he can.”
When is that? I don’t know. He didn’t say, and he didn’t wake me to say it, and every hour without an answer makes the not-knowing louder.
I stop walking.
What if he’s not coming back? Or this was always temporary, what if I was always just-
The ritual.
The word surfaces from the depths of my memory. He mentioned it. A pack celebration. Something he needed me for.
A willing human woman.
That’s what this was supposed to be, in the beginning. Before any of it was real. He told me himself, that night in my dorm, the goddess, the naming, the deadline.
One month to find me. One month to convince me to stand beside him under the moon.
A mission with a deadline.
And the deadline is almost here.
Like I was a requirement. A box to check.
And now that it’s here, now that he’s needed for whatever this ceremony is, wouldn’t he need to secure me before the moon rises? Before it’s too late?
No.
No.
I’m spiraling. I know I’m spiraling. This is what those two did to me, made me believe I wasn’t wanted, wasn’t enough, was only kept around for convenience. I promised myself I wouldn’t let anyone make me feel that way again.
But Milo isn’t like them. Milo is different. Milo has shown me over and over that he-
That he what?
The treacherous voice sounds like Brittany. Or maybe Jessica. Maybe both of them, speaking in unison, their perfectly matched sneers twisting with amusement.
That he cares, that he loves you? Has he ever actually said those words?
He’s shown me. In his actions. In the way he touches me, looks at me, takes care of me.
But has he said it?
I try to remember. All those conversations, all those moments. Has he ever actually told me he loves me?
He’s said I’m his. That he wants me. That I’m everything.
But I love you? Those specific words, in that specific order?
I can’t remember.
See? the voice whispers. You were convenient. Available. A willing human woman, and he needed one of those. And now that the deadline’s here, he’s gone back to his pack world where you don’t exist.
“Shut up,” I say out loud, startling a passing student.
I keep walking.
The breakdown happens back in Milo’s bedroom.
I make it through the hidden door, through the office, into the small space that’s become my entire world for the past week. And then my legs give out.
I’m on the floor. I’m crying. I’m holding that stupid note and reading it over and over like the words might change, might reveal some hidden truth, might prove that I haven’t been abandoned.
Mr. Darcy squeaks from his cage.
“I’m fine,” I tell him.
He squeaks again.
“I’m fine.”
He clearly doesn’t believe me.
My phone rings.
I grab it desperately, hoping, praying-
The screen shows my mother’s face.
Mom is TimeFacing you.
I almost don’t answer. I’m a mess. My face is tear-streaked, my nose is running, I’m sitting on the floor of a secret room in a faculty building with a hamster judging me silently.
But it’s been two weeks since I’ve talked to her. And right now, I need my mom.
I answer.
Her face fills the screen. She’s in the kitchen, I can see the yellow walls behind her, the window above the sink. She looks exactly the same as always: warm, worried, like she’s already sensed something is wrong.
“Lindsay Marie Crowe.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“You’ve been crying.”
Of course she can tell. She’s been reading my face since before I could talk, and there’s a whole ocean between us and a phone screen and she still knows.
“I haven’t-”
“Baby, I can see your face.”
I give up on denial. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“You’re on the floor.”
“I’m-” I look around. “Having a moment.”
“Where are you? That’s not your dorm room.”
Of course she remembers exactly what my dorm room looks like. She helped me move in. She scrutinized every inch of it.
“I’m at a friend’s place.”
“A friend.”
“Yes.”
“A friend named…” She trails off, waiting.
“Milo.”
“Milo.” She says the name like she’s testing it. “That’s an interesting name. Is Milo why you’re crying on his floor at-” she checks the time “-four in the afternoon?”
“It’s complicated.”
“It always is with boys.”
“Mom-”
“Is this the same Milo whose last name you wouldn’t tell me?”
I freeze.
She sighs. “I knew something was going on. A mother knows. Ever since that phone call, when you got all cagey about some name-”
“I didn’t get cagey-”
“You got extremely cagey. And now you’re crying on his floor.” She leans closer to the camera. “Tell me everything. Minus whatever parts you think I can’t handle.”
So I do. It comes out in a rush, all of it, the professor who wouldn’t stop looking at me, the family he lights up talking about, the week I spent being cared for like something precious, the way it felt to be that loved even though he never once said the word. And then the part that actually hurts.
“He left in the middle of the night. No explanation. Just ‘pack matters’ - which is, like, a family thing - and he’d be back soon. But it’s been almost twenty-four hours and he won’t answer my texts and there’s a substitute teacher and I don’t know what’s happening and I think-”
“What do you think?”
“I think maybe I was just convenient.” The words taste like poison. “I think maybe there’s this family event coming up and he needed someone to attend with him and I was available and now - now that it’s almost here-”
“Stop.”
My mother’s voice is firm.
“Lindsay. Look at me.”
I look.
“Everything you just described - the care he took of you when you were hurt, the way he talks about you to his own family, the way he looks at you - does that sound like a man who thinks you’re convenient?”
“No, but-”
“Does it sound like someone using you to check a box?”
“No, but-” I pick at a loose thread on my sleeve.
“Then stop building the worst case scenario and moving in.”
“That’s - that’s my thing-”
“I know it’s your thing. It was your thing long before those horrible girls, and it’ll be your thing long after you’ve forgotten their names.” Her eyes soften. “But baby, your thing is wrong sometimes. Not everything that feels like abandonment is abandonment.”
“He left a note, Mom.”
“He left a note in the middle of the night during a family emergency. That’s not ideal, but it’s also not proof of anything except that he had to leave fast.”
“He didn’t wake me up.”
“Maybe he was trying not to worry you. Maybe he was trying to protect you. Or maybe-” She raises an eyebrow. “Maybe he made a mistake. Men do that sometimes. Frequently, in my experience.”
“So what do I do?”
“You know what to do.”
“I don’t-”
“Baby.” Her smile is fond. “You’ve never once waited to be invited to anything. Why start with your own life?”
The words go through me and something loosens.
She’s right.
She’s completely, absolutely right.
I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours sitting in this room, waiting for permission. Waiting for Milo to text me back, for someone to tell me what’s happening.
But that’s not who I am.
That’s not who I’ve ever been.
“The family compound,” I say slowly. “I know where it is.”
“And?”
“And I’ve been there before. I know the way.”
“So?”
“So why am I sitting here feeling sorry for myself when I could be-”
“Getting answers?”
“Getting answers.”
I’m already standing, already looking around for my bag, already calculating the bus routes.
“That’s my girl.” My mother’s smile is proud. “Go get your man, Lindsay. And if he doesn’t have a very good explanation for that note, tell him he’ll be hearing from me.”
“I will.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too, Mom.”
I end the call.
Mr. Darcy is watching me from his cage with what looks like approval.
“You’re coming with me,” I tell him. “Emotional support.”
He squeaks.
“Also, I don’t trust the RA to feed you.”
He squeaks again.
So I pack a bag, and I take Mr. Darcy with me, and I catch the last bus to the edge of town.
The bus ride feels like it takes hours. Or maybe it takes a normal amount of time and I’m just vibrating with impatience. Either way, by the time we reach the end of the line, a small stop near the edge of town, it’s past sunset.
I have Mr. Darcy’s travel carrier in my bag. Extra food, water bottle, a small blanket. I also have my phone, my wallet, and absolutely no plan.
The long private road to the compound is dark.
I’ve only been here once before, and that was in Milo’s car, at night, when I was too overwhelmed to pay attention to details. Now I’m walking, alone, in the dark, toward a settlement full of lycans who may or may not want me there.
This is possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
But I keep walking.
The road winds through dense forest. The trees are tall and dark, their branches reaching overhead like grasping fingers. Every sound makes me jump, a rustle of leaves, a snap of twigs, the distant howl of something that might be a wolf or might be my imagination.
Probably shouldn’t think about wolves right now.
I walk faster.
The gates appear out of nowhere.
One moment there’s just forest and road and darkness. The next, there’s iron and stone, ancient and imposing, with intricate metalwork that catches the moonlight.
And beyond the gates, lit by torches, I can see the compound. Buildings scattered across cleared ground. The great hall in the center, gothic and enormous.
Lights in the windows. Movement in the shadows. Life.
Milo is somewhere in there.
I stand at the gates, breathing hard, my heart pounding.
You’ve never once waited to be invited to anything.
I raise my hand.
And I knock.