Page 24 of Mated to the Monster God
And me—hidden in the dark—finally understanding why I ache.
The night pulses with low-frequency danger. Pwarra’s jungle doesn't sleep. It waits. It listens. It breathes with a rhythm that’s older than language and hungrier than silence. I stalk beneath the canopy like a ghost born of evolution and necessity, hyperaware of the Baragon patrols threading between the outer fields of the colony.
I shouldn’t be this close. But something gnaws at my core—a hollow itch that’s not hunger or mission, but something far less explainable. Watching her with her family stirred things I don’t have the vocabulary for. Not yet.
A shriek snaps through the trees.
Not Esme.
But human.
I bolt toward the sound, my limbs moving in perfect silence. Every step a whisper, every breath measured. A single heart thrashes in the night like a trapped animal—young, panicked, not yet consumed. I crest a ridge and find the scene unfolding in dim bioluminescent glow: a boy—eighteen, maybe—running for his life. Pale skin slicked with sweat, eyes wide and unfocused. He’s got a sliver of scrap metal for a blade, swinging it like it might make a difference.
It won’t.
The Baragon chasing him is already winding up its kill strike, serrated gauntlet gleaming, servo-motors whirring with practiced menace. This one’s armor is new. Fast-grown. He hasn’t died yet. He’spristine.
I don’t think.
Imove.
The Baragon hears the impact a millisecond before my claws rip through its rib plate. The armor resists—smart polymer memory layers flexing under my grip—but I’m stronger. Faster. Fueled by something no clone in a vat could replicate.
The Baragon slashes across my chest with its free arm. Metal scrapes scale. I grab its wrist and twist. Bone and metal separate with a wet crack. The thing doesn’t scream—its face has no mouth, just mirrored glass—but I hear its pain in the psychic ripple of the hivemind.
I don’t stop.
My claws bury in its torso. I tear upward, through spine and synth-core. It drops in pieces, sparking and twitching, still trying to crawl toward the boy as I kick its helmet across the clearing.
The boy stares.
“You’re safe,” I say.
He bolts.
Trips. Scrambles. Screams. “MONSTER!”
I don’t follow.
I don't move at all.
His scream fades into the distance, swallowed by the jungle. I stand over the ruined Baragon and feel something colder than blood seep through me.
I saved him. But I’m still the thing to be feared. Still the shadow in the dark. The claws. The fangs. The wrong shape.
Even this body—made from her memories, sculpted by her blood—still isn’t enough. I’m nother. I never will be. And maybe that's what separates me from them. Fromher.
I drag the Baragon’s carcass into the underbrush, strip the armor plates, and cache the pieces beneath a root bundle. Always salvage. Always prepare. But tonight, it feels mechanical. Hollow.
When I return to the ridge near Sweetwater, I don’t watch the colony. I drop into the narrow crevice I’ve claimed as a den and sit with my back against the stone.
My blood still runs hot from the fight. Not from exertion—but from the sting of that boy’s voice echoing in my skull.Monster.
He didn’t see a savior. He didn’t see an ally.
He saw what I am.
Not just the claws and the size. But thedifference.
