And the two of them faced Dante together and explained to him that there was this whole seedy underworld of monsters and fey, that they had always existed alongside humanity, and he was about to enter a whole world of crazy. Dante, now extremely curious as to Shallow’s whereabouts, thought to reach out to him psychically. He received no response. Without any real reason to sound an alarm, he tuned back into the story. At this point they were explaining the Mist. The eerie, reality bending nonsense that made it all too easy for monsters to live amongst humanity with the latter being none the wiser. Save for a select few. A few that Dante could now call himself a member of.

  “It’s a lot of information. I know,” Opal pleaded, “But I really need you up to speed. A lot has happened.”

  Varin nodded, “Much more than you could possibly be expecting.” He turned to Opal, not sure if he should say what came next, but not seeing many other options, “Does he know?”

  Opal, incredibly thankful she was incapable of blushing, shook a lowered head. Varin rubbed at the bridge of his nose, “Opal. Dude.”

  Dante, tired of the shenanigans, decided to play things cool, “Cool story. Look, you guys are welcome to hang out, but I can’t get in the middle of any of this shit. Let’s say I believe you, what am I gonna do to help? I’m just some guy. Hang out, get your bearings, whatever, but that’s it. Want a drink?”

  Opal sat in silence and Varin said he would most certainly love a drink, happy to leave the young man right where he was. As Dante went to stand from the couch, a mushy moist presence invaded all 3 of them. Opal and Varin, completely unaccustomed to the invasion, each flinched in a mortified disgust.

  “ONE SECOND, ONE SECOND.” Shallow hurried out of Dante’s bedroom, dragging his bowl along the carpet like a very fucking bad dog, the rest of his tentacles limp and lazy. Opal and Varin looked on in silence. Their eyes wide.

  Shallow continued as Dante, wondering how he could have possibly ever hoped for something different, looked on in a stoic stupefaction, “YOUNG WOLF, IF YOU DON’T MIND I THINK I’LL GIVE ‘EM A STEP HIGHER THAN THAT HOGWASH YOU CALL BEER.” Shallow was drunk. Already. His tentacles tried and failed to lift himself up, and he stumbled his way to the fridge, slurring out introductions.

  “—PLUNDERER OF A THOUSAND HOLDS, YADA YADA YADA. YOU GET THE IDEA. AND OF COURSE WE HAVE OUR YOUNG WOLF.”

  Dante looked at Varin and Opal, with nothing save boxer brief filling fear as they watched what unfolded in front of them. If Dante hadn’t looked on in horror at all, they might have missed that last part of Shallow’s drunken expose. Varin was too busy watching the slimiest fish bowl he’d ever seen drag its way across the living room by means of tentacle to notice the slip, but Opal had her eyes dead set on Dante, and watched him realize his own folly and correct his expression.

  As Shallow got glasses and bottles of that most dismal Captain Morgan, Dante tried to be a bit more forthcoming with his gracious kidnappers. Shallow stretched across the room and handed him a slime soaked glass that he took with kindness, before making his own way over to a cupboard and grabbing a few untouched ones as he began a long drawn out explanation, about he was all too aware of the world of monsters, and that it was a world that he very much liked to avoid. Opal watched him, a cock in her eyebrow and suspicion lying just behind her lips, but she drew 6 deep breaths and took hold of herself, annoyed that her and Varin’s long drawn out explanation had gone entirely to waste. Yeah, that was cheap. Gimme a break, and someone get Baby Julius to quit fucking crying please. Anyway, Dante, sensing the subtle aggravation from the immense staredown he was receiving just then, tried to placate her, and didn’t realize he was interrupting whatever Shallow was still talking about.

  “THE YOUNG WOLF—“ Dante almost ripped out his hair trying not to place his head in his hands, “BELIEVES THAT HE HAS STUMBLED INTO A SITUATION THAT IS BEYOND HIS MEANS, BUT THIS IS QUITE THE OPPORTUNITY. YOU KNOW HE HASN’T TERRORIZED A SINGLE TOWN IN ALL MY YEARS OF KNOWING HIM?”

  “Shallow.” Dante called Ol’ He Who Dwells by his pet name, hoping to grab his attention, no matter how sour. It didn’t work.

  Opal, amused by the absolute buffoonery occurring around her, and Varin, still waiting for one of these two shmucks to pour him his damn beverage, sat, eager to see whatever would come next.

  Dante needed to grab a quick and stern hold of this entire conversation, or things were about to go very south, very quickly. He quickly trotted around the room, handing off the glasses to Shallow’s most esteemed visitors, and stood at the center of his room, arm sharp and crooked, holding up a beer of his own in preparation for a toast. Shallow was busy topping off the glasses with the rum he floated around the room, and he even offered Opal a soda to cut it with. When he offered one to Varin, he politely declined and asked if he could have his ration doubled, which Shallow, only stingy when sober, was more than happy to oblige. Unknowingly ignoring Dante’s attempts at a toast, he continued on his spree.

  “HE NEEDS TO LET LOOSE EVERY NOW AND AGAIN. LIKE I KNOW YOU TWO MUST, YOU FILTHY BLOODSUCKERS YOU. HE KEEPS IT LOCKED UP, YOU KNOW—“

  Dante proceeded with the toast anyway, “To new friends and well wishes!” Varin and Opal, their eyes unable to depart from Shallow’s performance, raised their glasses as though in a trance, and mumbled the words back to Dante, not wanting to miss a word of Shallow’s.

  “IT’S A SHAME, IT REALLY IS— “

  Dante, his head hot and chest heaving, shouted some guttural noise, nothing close to resembling the fucking English language anyway, a noise so absurd it finally snatched Shallow out of his monologue.

  “Shallow. Shut up. Now.”

  Shallow sat silent, but only for a moment. He wasn’t too keen to pick up that shit they tossed earlier that morning, but to taper his temper was to shut a window against a hurricane. You’re really only buying yourself a few more minutes at best, and at the much more likely worse you’re about to get some fucking glass in your eyes.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “FORGIVE HIM. HE’S STILL A BIT TENSE. HE JUST HAD A TRANSFORMATION LAST NIGHT.”

  Opal, not having missed a lick, had finally collected enough gears from the conversation for them to begin spinning. Dante’s weird nickname, this fishbowl’s expectations of him, and now this crowning clue. Her eyes widened, only just now realizing the weight of her mistake. Trying to convince herself that she was calm, she drew the quickest, calmest 6 breaths she’d ever drawn in her life, and asked Dante a very serious question.

  “Dante. Are you—“

  “YES,” Shallow interrupted. Drew raised a hand in frustration and wagged it at him. “Alright! You won, they can know. I’ve got it.”

  Shallow watched, wondering where his sharpie was at so he could practice his latest attempt at a smiley face on the side of his bowl. After a few more moments, he stopped wondering and propped his tentacles up as a chair for his bowl. He decided to get his practice in later, he didn’t wanna miss a single second of this.

  “Opal…”

  Opal, her mind throwing her a million thoughts, thinking of different ways to approach asking a very fucking important question, her train of thought now a fucking train wreck, slipped out through all the metal and carnage down another interesting avenue. One that could also mean a whole heap of trouble.

  “How do you know my name?”

  Dante, completely unprepared for what he’d later call The Weirdest Day of His Life, saw just how badly that question made him look. I mean, holy shit. He’s the kidnapped guy here! Who’s been kidnapped to his own home and is now partying but whatever, the point is if anyone should be feeling incredibly suspicious right now, Dante would be more than happy to challenge them for the title belt. But, he also remembered the pistol Varin had in his pocket, that his hand was currently still clasped around, and imagined it being placed square against his head once again before calming himself down, and contorting his face into the most trustworthy smile he could manage.

  And it wasn’t pretty.

  “Stranger Tots? Remember that place?”

  “The daycare?”

  Opal’s eyes widened with the realization. “…Dante?”

  Seeing her eyes flare up with that spark of familiarity is, to this day, one of the best feelings has ever experienced. He rated it a nine out of ten, always leaving room for something greater, and SharkboyPoser987 even gave it an honorable mention on a top 10 Opal Feats list. A wave of peace flew over him, like nothing he’d felt in years, and his face relaxed into an actual smile.

  Opal’s eyes narrowed, “Was it you?”

  Dante, puzzled, asked her to repeat.

  “Was it you? Did you put that fucking gum in my hair?”

  And there it was. The first of many tests. Dante slowed everything down as much as he could. Varin was mid-peak through the blinds once again, Shallow was flopping a tentacle around the kitchen, slobbering away on the microwave, his popcorn mere seconds from burning, and Opal. Opal Sanchez, his beacon supreme, sat across from him on the couch as he looked into two mahogany portals, and held back a sigh of awe as rays of sunlight sliced through the blinds and danced upon olive skin, as he pondered whether or not he was fixing to lie his ass off. If he admitted to it, she might forgive him. But, she might not. And everything his heart and dick was telling him, and I don’t want to put a lot of weight on the dick, but it is there, was saying that admitting something like THAT at a time like THIS was a well-paved path back to beautiful celibacy.

  But he also didn’t want to lie to her. After thinking over for some time, he found the perfect solution. Remembering that I had mentioned he wouldn’t remember this “supposed” gum-in-hair nonsense until many years later, he set his mind to quick work of deleting every trace of the previous train of thought, simultaneously saving the continuity, and upon doing so, appropriately replied,

  “Did you have a fucking stroke?”

  Opal stood staring at him, dumbfounded.

  Genuinely puzzled, he tried a less direct approach, “Gum in your hair? What’re you talking about?”

  She realized the ridiculousness of expecting him to answer the question right off the bat with zero context whatsoever, and if he didn’t have anything to do with it, which she still wasn’t exactly sure of, then it probably wouldn’t be something he’d remember. She lowered her gaze but a moment, and tugged at her hair, before saying an unprecedentedly quiet “nevermind.” Dante wasn’t sure why but a feeling was clawing its way from the recesses of his mind. It was of guilt.

  “I don’t really remember. Honest. I might have.”

  Opal nodded, a smirk forming across her lips, “Well, it was in there for a while. Nonetheless, it’s good to see you again.”

  Which was true, but after she said she let her hands form a tent around her mouth, which brought her back to her original question.

  “Dante..are you a—“

  Dante nodded his head, letting his eyes flicker over to Varin for just a moment, who was still all too engaged with his slit in the window. Shallow, unable to hide his excitement, almost tipped his bowl in anticipation, and Dante rose his head, “Yes. I’m a werewolf..”

  Opal closed her eyes in quiet solitude as she clutched at a chest that just had a bolt of lightning shoot right through it. “Okay. Okay. This is fine. Everything still works.”

  Varin closed the blinds with a flash, having not missed a word, and said “We need to move. Now.”

  Doing battle with the legion of thoughts and plans and fears proved too great an occupation to Opal, and she didn’t register Varin’s words at all. She was busy picking up the pieces of her initial formulations of something adjacent to a cohesive plan, having been shattered by a new all too beastly shaped puzzle piece, and with it now in ghastly consideration, she began rearranging all the pieces into something new.

  And Dante knew nothing of it. Opal hadn’t gotten around to explaining it just yet, but from the very second her fangs had grazed the neck of Dante, they were tied together. Forevermore. Opal Sanchez, somehow navigating the Weirdest Day of Her Life’s endless seas of shit, had hatched a plan that just might see us through the rest of this story. It was a dirty move, it was a brilliant move, it was a really sort of awful something to do, and it was the best idea she could muster at the time. She wanted to tell him, and she needed to tell him, but how do you even give someone news like that? What possible arrangement of words could there be to successfully get through a conversation like that? She knew she didn’t have time to run the numbers, and this plan absolutely depended on this first crucial step, so she grabbed as many words as she could out of the lineup, and hit execute.

  “Dante. We’re kind of married now.”