Prologue

Three small words.

That's all it took. Just three small words and they'd be together forever. It's not as if she didn't know he felt the same way about her. This much was obvious. In fact, sometimes she couldn't quite put her finger on the reason she was so scared to tell him.

Possibilities ran through her head constantly. Maybe it was the fact that her husband was frozen and dead in a vault. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she just learned that her formerly thought to be an infant son was 30 years older than she was and running the very thing that the whole Commonwealth was afraid of. Maybe it was the fact that in her best efforts to save the place she now called home, she had to watch her son die in the process. Maybe it was all of these things, but one thing in particular that stood out to her, and it was this thing that she always came back to.

When scouting out the former theme park known as Nuka World, she met a very strange ghoul by the name of Oswald. He said there had to be a cure for ghoulism and that his woman was out there looking for it as they spoke. She almost believed him to, until she traveled further north and discovered the body, along with a holotape.

"Oswald, I'm sorry. I've looked everywhere I could think, but there's no cure. What towns and outposts I could find said that we ghouls just go feral eventually, and there's nothing to be done."

Those words. Those sounds. They were stuck on repeat constantly ringing through her ears. Over and over she would hear Rachel say her goodbyes while slowly turning feral. She heard them whenever she looked over to the man he loved. Was this his fate? Was it inevitable that eventually he too would become one of them? How long would it take?

"Wow, well, let's hope that shit doesn't happen to me," he chuckled after the holotape was over. She even laughed with him, because of course it wasn't going to happen. Lately though, it's all she could think about. She couldn't lose another love, she just couldn't.

So now here she was, facing a question with no answer. She knew he wanted her, and God did she want him. She just didn't see how she could risk the pain. What if he did turn feral? What then? Would she have to kill him herself? She knew she couldn't stomach that.

There she sat, wondering how in the hell she got herself into this mess. How did she fall hopelessly in love with the ghoul mayor of Goodneighbor?