Page 22 of Mated to the Monster God
I watch him breathe. Every exhale echoes in moonsilver around us. I run a finger along the ridge of his forearm—the scales are cool, firm, strangely soothing through my glove. They catch moonlight and glow dimly, like embers buried in coal. The texture is not smooth, but ridged in a way that makes it feel ancient, like worn metal from a bygone civilization.
The jungle around us hums. Crickets tick in synchronized pulses, frogs croak in thick voices, and above it all, the distant hum of repair engines and frantic voices from below filter up. The scent of starfire smoke drifts up from Sweetwater: burned fuel, scorched earth, and the acrid sting of ozone.
Sagax’s voice coils around the silence, precise yet gentle. “This is not just your home now, Esme.”
I breathe in hollowly. His words stretch across the night, wrapping around me.
“It’s mine too,” he continues. “I will defend it with my life.”
His voice dangles between us, hung by the thread of moonlight. Every syllable pulses: protect—claim—bond.
My throat tightens. The earth beneath me thrums, root and rock alive with tension. I dare to look at him. His jawline is a shadowed cliff. His eyes—gold and molten—finally swing toward mine and soften.
“I know,” I whisper, barely more than a breeze. “I know.”
The air warms where he shifts closer, and something feral stirs in my veins. Not fear. Not lust, exactly—but something jagged and raw. A question. Do you trust me? If yes, I’ll let it show.
I lean into him, enough that our arms brush. When his hand finds mine, there’s a spark—a charge that razes across my skin from palm to spine. His fingers close around mine, deliberatepressure that speaks louder than words. The strength in his grip is not iron. It’s something subtler, rooted in certainty, in territory, in promise.
We don’t speak again.
We don’t need to.
We watch the distant flicker of lights—mostly lamplight, some faint sparks of welding, a barrier’s glow rising, built by trembling hands in a stand of desperation. The colony pulses with life, with movement, with unyielding hope.
Below, Tara’s voice cuts through the hum. Sharp. Directed. Protective, like a knife scraping against stone—but warm enough to let me know she’s still there, still fighting.
I rest my head lightly against Sagax’s shoulder. His warmth suffuses into me, radiating through coat and skin. Our shadows merge, pressed against the stone, anchored by the shared heartbeat of a world under threat.
“I should go back,” I murmur.
He turns his head, and for a moment, I see exactly how much he aches to follow me back, to cross the boundary and be seen in the light of our home. But he turns back to the colony, the stars, my home.
“Go,” he says, voice low. “You are needed there. This is your life.”
My eyes sting—not from tears or regret, but because being seen meant something raw and beautiful.
I nod, though I want to whisper that he’s needed here too.
We stay like that.
The night coats us with its dark, electric hush.
I squeeze his hand and stand, breath rising in a plume. “Stay sharp,” I say.
His shoulders flex. “Always.”
I step away, swallowed by the moss and roots, but I carry him with me—in the steady burn beneath my skin, in the wayhis scent lingers on mine, in the knowledge that I can never untangle what we’ve become.
CHAPTER 6
SAGAX
The scent of plasma residue clings to the colony’s walls like burnt honey, acrid and electric. I crouch beneath a lattice of half-grown creepers near the eastern barricade, my skin adjusted to absorb and redirect thermal readings. One shift of my muscle mass and I’m just another pattern in the night. Just another smudge in the corner of a blinking sensor.
Sweetwater’s perimeter has become a patchwork of desperation. Coils of scavenged wire, loose panels nailed with aggression instead of precision, and old survey drones propped up like scarecrows. Functional? Barely. Defensible? Not for long.
But the people… they move like currents under pressure. Rigid, flaring, determined.
