Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            He studies me like he’s not sure whether I’m a bench or a postmodern sculpture. A muscle twitches in his jaw. “I truly don’t get it,” he muses.

            “Get what?”

            “How you managed to stay alive despite your reckless outbursts.”

            “I must be very smart.”

            “Or incredibly stupid.”

            Our eyes clash for a few seconds, full of something that feels more confusing than antagonism. I glance away first.

            And just say it, without thinking it through. “Take me with you. Let me help with the tech part.”

            He huffs out a tired, noiseless snort. “Just go to bed, Misery, before you get yourself killed.”

            “I’m nocturnal,” I mutter. “Little offensive, that my husband doesn’t think I can take care of myself.”

            “A lot offensive, that my wife thinks that I’d take her with me into a highly volatile situation where I might not be able to protect her.”

            “Okay. Fine.” I glance back at him—his earnest, stubborn, uncompromising face. In the fading moonlight, the lines of his cheekbones are ready to slice me. “You can’t do it on your own, though.”

            He gives me an incredulous look. “Are you telling me what I can and cannot do?”

            “Oh, I would never, Alpha,” I say with a mocking tone that I only half regret when he glares back. “But you can’t even start a computer.”

            “I can start a fucking computer.”

            “Lowe. My friend. My spouse. You’re clearly a competent Were with many talents, but I’ve seen your phone. I’ve seen you use your phone. Half of your gallery is blurry pictures of Ana with your finger blocking the camera. You type ‘Google’ in the Google bar to start a new search.”

            He opens this mouth. Then snaps it closed.

            “You were about to ask me why that’s the wrong way.”

            “You’re not coming.” His tone is definitive. And when he makes to stand, driven away by my insistence, I feel a stab of guilt and reach out for the leg of his jeans, pulling him back down. His eyes fix on the place where I’m gripping him, but he relents.

            “Sorry, I’ll let the matter go.” For now. “Please, don’t leave. I’m sure you came here to . . . What do you do here, anyway? Scratch your claws? Howl at the moon?”

            “Deflea myself.”

            “See? I wouldn’t want to be in your way. Do go on.” I wait for him to pick critters out of his hair. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping, anyway? You are not nocturnal.” It’s past midnight. Prime awake time for me, the cicadas, and no one else for miles.

            “I don’t sleep much.”

            Right. Ana said that. When she mentioned that he had . . . “Insomnia!”

            His eyebrow quirks. “You seem overjoyed by my inability to get decent rest.”

            “Yes. No. But Ana mentioned you had pneumonia, and . . .”

            He smiles. “She mixes up words often.”

            “Yup.”

            “According to Google, which I apparently don’t know how to use”—his side look is blistering—“it’s normal for her age.” He looks pensive for a long moment as his smile sobers.

            “I can’t imagine how difficult it must be.”

            “Learning to talk?”

            “That, too. But also, raising a young child. Out of the blue.”

            “Not as difficult as being raised by some asshole who doesn’t know to buy a car seat for you, or gives you Skittles before bed because you’re hungry, or lets you watch The Exorcist because he’s never seen it, but the protagonist is a young girl, and he figures that you’ll identify with her.”