Page 6 of Mated to the Monster God
“I can help you survive,” I tell her. “I know this jungle. I know its rhythms, its predators, its poisons. I have absorbed the knowledge of every creature I have ever tasted. And now—thanks to you—I have access to knowledge far beyond instinct.”
Her green eyes narrow. Suspicion glows in them like bioluminescence.
“What do youwant?”
“To live. To grow. To… understand.”
I reach, delicately, deeper into her consciousness. She’s guarded, but not immune. Her curiosity is a chink in the armor.
I show her what I see: a vast web of sensory data, filtered through alien perceptions. Heat trails. Pheromone clouds. Electromagnetic hums. I share the taste of bark rot that means venom nearby, the tremor in the air that signals a Baragon drop-pod miles off. My world is not her world—but I can make ithers, if she lets me.
She gasps. Clutches her arm where I still cling.
“I’m not your damn science experiment,” she growls.
“No. You are my host. I can enhance you—guide your chemistry to burn fuel more efficiently, sharpen your reflexes, increase endurance. Small things, at first. But I can keep you alive.”
She looks down at me, and her lip curls. “Why should I trust you?”
I do not have lungs, but I mimic a sigh through the network of thoughts.
“Because I didn’t let you die when you entered the swamp. Because I warned you before you hurt us both. Because I am asking—not taking.”
Silence stretches between us, taut as spider silk.
“You stay in my arm,” she finally says, voice low. “You don’t move without asking. You don’t poke around in my brain unless I say so.”
“I agree,” I answer. “This is mutualism, not domination.”
Her heartbeat steadies. I feel her muscles ease. Not relaxed. Just…lessafraid.
“And if you turn on me,” she says coldly, “I’ll rip you out with my teeth.”
A grin curls through my mind. Not hers. Mine.
“Understood, Esme Cruise. Let us survive.”
She runs like wildfire—fast, unyielding, and devastating in her motion.
I feel every heartbeat pound in her chest, echoing like war drums through the fluid membrane of my being. Her breath is sharp, controlled, but already bordering the edges of fatigue. She has limits. Fragile ones. But I can push them. Adjust. Enhance.
“Let me help,” I whisper into her thoughts, threading my words through the rhythm of her adrenaline.
“Fine,” she mutters aloud between breaths, boots squelching in the muck. “But no weird stuff.”
I focus inward, tapping the biochemical systems I’ve already infiltrated. Her blood pulses through capillaries near my anchor point in her forearm. I siphon micro-doses of epinephrine, increase oxygen uptake, signal vasodilation to her major muscle groups. Her mitochondria ignite like kindling under a flame.
She doesn’t know the names of what I’m doing, not consciously—but shefeelsit.
“Whoa,” she gasps, stumbling for half a step, then surging forward faster than before. “That’s… I could get used to that.”
The terrain is savage. Roots claw from the earth like buried bones. Vines swing low and slick with pollen. In the distance, a cacklingthraskldrowns out the drone of blood gnats. The jungle never quiets. It only waits to consume.
I feel her alertness rise with mine. Danger. Not the Hooknose. Somethingnew.
Just ahead, nestled in the crook of a moss-slick tree, something stirs. Long and low, with heat signature blooming like an ember under its leaf-covered scales. Predator.
Lashcat.
