Defying the Lycan King

"I love you," the man said. "It’s going to be forever. Not even death can separate us."

Jessica turned her head to look at him. He was sitting right beside her in the moving car, close enough that their shoulders touched, but his face refused to come into focus. It swam and blurred like something seen through a rain-streaked window. His voice came to her from very far away, thick and muffled, as though he were speaking to her from the bottom of a swimming pool.

Their fingers were laced together. She could feel that clearly. That part was always clear.

"Won’t you say you love me back?"

Jessica giggled, and she could not have said why. She was confused and she was warm and both of those things existed at the same time.

"Of course I do. Don’t be silly."

Something hit the car. There was no warning, no screech of brakes, just a violent shove from the side that sent the whole world sliding sideways off the road. And in the space of a blink, everything changed. She was no longer in the front seat. She was in the back, alone, and the man beside her was gone, and the person behind the wheel was somebody else entirely.

"Stay calm," the driver was saying. "It’s fine. I’ve got it. I’ve got everything under control."

He did not have anything under control.

Then there was water.

She was inside it, surrounded by it, and she opened her mouth to scream and the water poured straight in and took the sound away from her. It filled her throat and her chest and her ears. Her hands flailed at nothing. There was nothing to hold. She sank, and she kept sinking, down and down into the dark where the cold was waiting.

Jessica’s eyes flew open.

She jerked upright with a scream caught somewhere behind her ribs, her chest heaving, the sheets twisted around her legs. The room came back in pieces. Ceiling. Lamp. The crack above the wardrobe she had memorised years ago.

Sebastian was there in a heartbeat, sitting on the edge of the bed, one hand already on her shoulder.

"Are you alright?"

Jessica nodded, still dragging in air. "It’s the dream again," she whispered.

He didn’t say anything. He simply shifted closer and pulled her into his arms, and she let him, pressing her forehead against his shoulder while her breathing slowly came back down to something normal.

"It was so real, Seb."

"I know." His hand moved in slow circles across her back. "It’s the trauma. The accident. Your mind’s still trying to work through it."

"Will it ever stop?"

Sebastian was quiet for a second. "I hope so," he said, and gave a small shrug she felt more than saw.

Jessica let her eyes close, but she knew better than to believe him.

Three years. Three years of the same dream, arriving whenever it felt like it, never changing, never explaining itself. Sebastian had told her the facts often enough: she had been in a crash on the road to Aethelwulf, the car had gone into the river, and when she woke up there had been nothing left in her head.

What he could never tell her was who the man in the front seat was.

That was the part that ate at her. The blurred face. The warm hand. The voice under water promising forever like it was the easiest thing in the world to promise.

She had asked him once, straight out, whether she had been married before. Sebastian had shaken his head immediately. Not married. Definitely not married. There had been no ring, no papers, nothing at all to suggest a husband.

So perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps her brain, having lost everything real, had simply invented a man to fill the empty space, the way people invent memories of houses they have never lived in.

She let Sebastian rock her gently until sleep pulled her under again.

***

In the morning, Jessica walked into The Copper Lantern and found Tina waiting for her, arms fisted at her waist, chin lifted.

"You don’t work here anymore."

Jessica stopped in the doorway. "Why?"

Tina looked at her the way you might look at someone who had asked why eating food was necessary. "Are you seriously standing there asking me that?"

"Tina, about yesterday—"

"There is no explanation for your behaviour!" Tina snapped.

Jessica’s jaw tightened. There were so many things sitting right at the front of her mouth, all of them true, all of them completely unsayable.

That she had only defended herself. That she was not the one who had put a man on the floor of this bar, and if Tina wanted to be furious with somebody, her own son was about twenty feet away. That if her parents really had been Tina’s friends before they died, the way Tina always claimed, then maybe protecting their daughter should count for slightly more than a table of drunk contractors and their bar tab.

She swallowed all of it. Because Tina held the flat above this bar, and the job, and everything else, and Jessica had learned very early that her opinions were expensive things she could not afford.

Footsteps came down the stairs behind her. Sebastian appeared, still pulling on his jacket, and stopped the moment he registered the temperature of the room. His eyes moved from Tina to Jessica and back again.

"Sid. What is it?"

Jessica opened her mouth to say it was nothing.

Tina got there first. "She doesn’t work with me anymore, that’s what. She can go and find herself another job. Maybe she’ll learn some manners along the way." She turned and started walking off. "I can’t keep losing customers because of her."

Sebastian’s face changed completely. He went after his mother.

"What do you mean she can’t keep working here? She’s got nowhere else to get money from. We agreed—"

"I know what we agreed, Seb." Tina cut him off sharply, and her eyes flicked past him to Jessica, who was still standing in the middle of the bar exactly where the news had been dropped on her.

Then Tina took her son by the wrist and pulled him towards the back, out of earshot.

Jessica watched them go and felt something bitter twist in her chest. It was always like this. Every single conversation about her life, about her future, about what was to be done with her, happened in another room with the door shut. She was the subject of endless discussion and never once part of it.

Odelia appeared at her elbow and took her hand.

"You can’t carry on living like this, Sid."

"Odelia, please. Not today."

"Especially today." Odelia squeezed her fingers. "My cousin has a place in Aethelwulf. It’s affordable, it’s clean, and it’s an hour’s drive from here. One hour. That’s it. And if you don’t fancy living there, fine, commute. Plenty of people do." She ducked her head to catch Jessica’s eye. "You’re a grown woman, love. You’re allowed to make decisions about your own life. Sebastian isn’t going to be standing next to you forever."

Normally Jessica had an excuse ready. She had a whole collection of them, polished smooth from use. Seb needs me here. I don’t know anyone there. It’s too soon. I owe them.

Today she had nothing. Because Odelia was right, and Jessica was so bone-deep tired of being a problem that other people discussed behind closed doors.

She nodded. "What’s your plan?"

Odelia’s eyes went enormous. "I’m sorry, what? Are you serious right now?"

"It’s not like I’ve got a choice."

"Right." Odelia let out a long breath, visibly recalculating. "Right. Okay. There’s an opening at a restaurant in Aethelwulf. I’ve got the slot. You take it, and I’ll look around for something else."

Jessica shook her head straight away. "No. Absolutely not. That’s yours."

"Sid—"

"That’s your opportunity, Odelia. I’m not taking it."

Odelia grabbed both her hands and held on. "You don’t need to worry about me. I’ve still got a job here, haven’t I? And Tina doesn’t come for me the way she comes for you. She never has. She makes you do things you don’t want to do because she knows you’ve got nowhere else to go, and that stops today."

Something hot pushed up behind Jessica’s eyes. She pulled Odelia into a hug and held on tight.

"Thank you," she said into her friend’s shoulder. "For always having my back."

"Oh, don’t start." Odelia waved a hand as they pulled apart, blinking rather hard herself. "I’ll sort you out some cash to get going with, too." She raised a finger before Jessica could even open her mouth. "No. Pay me back when you’ve got it. That’s the whole conversation."

Jessica laughed wetly and wiped her face with the back of her hand. "Thank you, Odie."

"Aethelwulf’s crawling with humans and shifters both, mind you," Odelia said, straightening her collar with the brisk air of a woman who had won something. "But nobody bothers anybody there so long as you keep to yourself. You’ll be absolutely fine."

Jessica nodded, and this time her smile was a proper one.

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