Page 71 of Mated to the Monster God
Stilling my heartbeat, I navigate further. I smell sterilization gas. The corridor glows pale and clinical. The doors to the Conversion Chamber sit ajar.
My tail curls, a living tether of fury. I push through.
Lights blaze red. The Conversion Chamber opens onto everything I feared. Esme lies strapped to a stainless slab.Pale flesh glazed in silver fluid. The line between flesh and machine blurs where the tubing enters her vein. The residue of the activation—the hiss of pressurized serum and the hum of nanowires—makes my skin crawl.
Her eyes flutter open. Fear. Relief. Recognition.
She tries to whisper.Sagax.
Her voice trembles with life and love.“Knew you’d come.”
My control snaps. Muscle and scale surge through my veins like molten gold. I strike.
One blow—bone to machine—collapses the conversion device. Sparks roil as circuits fry. Fluid vats crack. The machinery shudders and dies.
Esme convulses slightly as the silver fluid drains into her veins. I drop to my knees beside her, prying straps. My claws, bleeding and shaking, undo the bonds. She breathes ragged, shaking out fog and survival.
My arms wrap around her, trembling scales and beating heart. The world is none of this chamber—the steel walls, the hum of life-support—when she’s in my arms.
I whisper a vow: “I vowed I’d come.”
She catches my gaze. Her lips curve into a fragile, radiant smile.“I knew.”
The hiss of the storm fades. My world is narrowed to her warmth in my arms, the wet thrum of life, the distance closing between promise and reality.
Holding her close, I rise. Breaks in steel echo behind us as I carry her toward darkness and sanctuary.
The chamber’s steel girded bones thrust upward as though it’s the heart of a dying planet. Sparks rattling from shattered wiring mix with rainwater seeping through cracked panels. It’s vast, oppressive—oversized for a fight, perfect for war.
Krenshaw stands at its center, reanimated and hyper-evolved. His form is skyscraper tall, broader in his torso,limbs engineered to cut. Red circuitry pulses beneath stretched synthetic dermis, illuminated as though Commodore bolts had been embedded in flesh. He’s sleek, deadly—predator perfected.
Esme stands close, trembling, soaked in that silver resin—but alive. My heart aches with danger, radiating acid heat.
He smiles—half man, half hallucination: “You both defied expectation.”
I bare my claws, voice low: “He touches her—he dies.”
We collide.
My first strike is thunder and motion. Claw meets plated limb. Ringing metal gives way like copper. Sparks spray. Red-blue circuitry fractures.
He counters, telepathic pulse hammering my gut. Pain blooms, white and hot, burning into bone. Breath whips out. I stagger, a bruise on reality.
He smirks, advancing. “Impressive, but insufficient.”
I charge with fury lacing my limbs. My scales shift—dark jaguar patterns pulsing, then roaring back to patrol black. My senses feed me—metal smell, ozone hum, the tightening thread of Esme’s pulse trembling through my mind.
I crash into him—shoulder against synthetic bone—crude physics and trembling faith. His blood-less flesh groans; I feel satisfaction, but something long and cold snaps inside me.
He telepathically flares again—the wave tears across my vision, knocks me to my knees. Dizziness, disorientation, the world is falling apart.
He reaches Esme—but I don't watch. I block the grab, steel shoulder crashing into cyber limb. He snarls.
Esme gasps. I’m rising, trying to focus. Pain is everywhere. But nothing is stronger than gravity of my love for her.
I lunge again. Bone blade claws flash. I tear into metal plating. Sparks bloom and rain down like Scarlet fireworks. Acrid burn licks my nose.
He collapses forward, caught off guard by primal savagery. I slam knee into spine. He splats face-first on the slab next to Esme. Circuit cracks under weight.
