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“You’re the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever seen,” he says simply. Like it’s not a big deal. Like he’s complimenting my taste in socks.
My sex drive’s cobwebs have grown their own cobwebs.
“Not to kill your buzz, but I doubt you get to claim a Mass Murderer commemorative coin if it was in self-defense.”
The ease with which I’m digesting the news that I’m about to become maggot feed is almost more disquieting than the knowledge itself.
I grin at him, wondering when it will sink in that I’m about to die. The atoms that make me will be eaten by worms and turn into fungi and undergo redistribution within the universe. Why do I feel so little?
Whoever intends to hurt her will have to crawl over my cold, rotting corpse. Literally, perhaps.
Faced with proof of the existence of stuff like biologically mandated mates, and hybrids, and the legality of child beauty pageants, it’s hard to discount…anything. I’m a single internet rabbit hole away from becoming a Hollow Earther.
So nice, to discover that the dude who’d told me I was his mate was impalement happy.
Juno is almost pathologically humorless. Nice, though, and the flowchart I use to decide whether to consider someone a friend is made up of a single question: Have they tried to kill me or Misery? No? Fantastic. Let’s have a spa day. Go zip-lining. Overshare about recurring UTIs.
“She bought it for me with her monthly allowance.” Which is nearly as high as my salary used to be. Misery is not strict with that child.
“It’s important to me,” I continue weakly. “What? You don’t believe that a family can be a girl and her pink stuffed penguin?” “I emphatically do not.” “You’re so bigoted.”
“Like God intended,” he says, with the tone of someone whose opinion of God’s will is that it’s secondary to his own.
But maybe I wouldn’t? Mundane things can feel so exotic when your entire life has been one plot twist after another.
Saul laughs. “That’s some grade A compartmentalization.” “Thanks.” I toss my hair back. “It’s the childhood trauma.”
And I wrote one for Lowe, too, but it’s mostly about how to take care of Misery once I’m not…I mean, he’s doing a great job already. But there are some quirks you only find out by living with someone for a decade, like Misery’s penchant for hate-reading, her terrible taste in clothes if left to her own devices, the fact that sometimes she uses fancy words without really knowing their meaning. She could fall back into her mismatched socks phase, and…”
He easily resigned himself to a lifetime without her, but… Simply put, he is unwilling to contemplate a universe in which she no longer exists.
“I’m just saying that we must, to some degree, have done something to deserve the shit coming our way.” “Well.” I rub my palm against my belly, wondering if the cramps I’m experiencing are a fun new addition to my symptoms dance card. “We did pretend you were overtaken by bloodlust that time Mr. Barca got a paper cut.” “And made him piss himself. You know what? Maybe it was worth it.”
“I liked you better when you were a virgin.”
Misery: Oh my god. Are you dying? Shit. Serena: Is that the only reason for me to tell you nice things? Misery: It’s the only reason for me to listen to them.
And then I found you, and, Serena…there isn’t one thing I would change about you. Or one single thing I regret about knowing you.”
Serena is the name by which my sister calls me. The name on my diploma. The name Koen whispered in my ear last night. Eva might be what Fiona chose when I was a child, but it belongs to someone who was at the mercy of others, someone who doesn’t exist even in her own memories. Serena was a spur-of-the-moment decision by a nurse, but it’s my name because I made it so. Everything I built is attached to it.
But lo and behold, we found a single conspiracy theory grounded in reality. Of course it’s the one about genitalia.”
“What came before Neanderthals?” I ask him afterward. He shrugs. Pouts. “Whatever they were, you’re the one before them.”
“Excuse me, Alpha. I must have misheard when you threatened to chain her to the radiator to prevent her from stubbing her toe.” “She is my mate,” Koen snarls. “I get to treat her like she’s made of mother-of-pearl. You do not.”
“Um, so. Koen was, um, mad.” “Ah.” “You have been de-aunted, I fear.” “How tragic,” I say, not giving a single fuck. “The girl?”
“No, Serena, I’m talking. Remember when you didn’t tell me you were a Were? And we agreed that you should have? Clearly you learned nothing. You acted selfishly again. And you know what? I’m sick of this. I’m sick of you shouldering everything like you’re the fucking guy with the stone.” “Sisyphus?” “No—the other guy.” “King Arthur?” “No, the asshole who carries the planet.” “Atlas!”
He sighs. Tightens his hold on me. “Such a fucking nuisance.” I wonder why it took me until this very moment to realize that it’s been his way of saying I love you all along.
She makes him buy her a TV and forces him to watch stupid Human movies she grew up with, and it’s just not plausible, that the twins came back from camp having switched places and the parents did not immediately figure it out from their scents.
Maddie ignores him. “Is that why he checks his phone every two minutes?” “Yes,” Lowe says, just as Koen grunts morosely, “I have a Tetris addiction.”
Just be fucking patient, he snarls at himself. You’re not the center of the fucking world. She is.
He would die for her, and he would kill for her. More importantly, he will live for her. She’ll be the purpose driving every second of his every day.
