Page 23 of Mated to the Monster God
Her people.
Esme’s voice filters through the dark before I see her. “Rick, I swear to all the voidborn stars, if you glue one more power cell to a compost bin, I will strangle you with my own spinal cord.”
Rick lets out a sloppy belch from somewhere behind a half-fused console. “It worked, didn’t it? Itlit up."
“It lit up because it was shorting! You nearly fried half the east wall grid!”
“I’m innovating,” he says with a hiccup. “Necessity is the mother of invention, sweetheart.”
“You’re the mother of fire hazards.”
Another voice pipes up—higher, crackling with too much confidence and too many hormones. “Hey Esme, you ever think maybe he’s just trying to impress you?”
Morty.
The boy’s swagger is audible even before he rounds the corner, carrying something he shouldn’t. A charge dispersal pack, half-loaded, dangling from one careless hand.
“Put that down,” Esme snaps, already marching toward him. “That’s not a toy.”
“Iknowit’s not a toy. I’m just checking the wiring.”
“With what? Yourgenitals?”
Jimmy chokes on a laugh. “Don’t give him ideas.”
“I don’t need ideas,” Morty says, flashing a grin that probably works on someone, somewhere. “I’ve got instincts.”
“Yeah, well, your instincts are about to get you electrocuted. Again.” Esme plucks the device from his grip and holds it up. “Do you see this? Do you see how close you were to overloading the flux coils?”
Morty leans in, undeterred. “Doyousee how close you are to blowing a fuse? You know stress is bad for your skin.”
Jimmy snorts, “Morty, you’ve got the same survival instincts as a blind skyrat.”
“I’vegotsurvival instincts,” Morty says, puffing up, “they’re just... situational.”
“Like when you tried to fix the antenna with chewing gum and a curse word?” Jimmy says.
“Thatworked!”
“For three seconds,” Esme mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose. “And then it caught fire.”
I study every twitch in her fingers, every suppressed smile. Esme’s control isn’t fragile—it’s earned. She navigates this chaos not like a leader, but like the gravity everything else orbits around. Her laughter is sudden, unfiltered. A bark of disbelief at Morty’s idiocy. Her scolding is sharp, but warm. She threatens Rick with electrocution and ribs Jimmy for being too smart for his age.
And in all of it, she shines.
My kind knew mating. Physical drives. Temporary union for propagation. We knew instinct. But this—thisconnection—is different. I feel it in my chest, a clawing ache I can’t metabolize. I don’t want her attention. I want todeserveit.
Her laugh bubbles again, unexpected and bright, when Jimmy manages to trip Morty with a spool of cord.
"That’s karma," she says, pointing as Morty goes sprawling.
And that’s where it lands for me.
Love isn’t just about biology. It’s about this—this firelit tangle of noise and warmth and teeth-baring grins. This family. This pulse.
Esme, laughing with Jimmy.
Scolding Morty.
