Page 49 of Mated to the Monster God
Esme speaks up, voice firm. “We don’t want your slavery disguised as employment.”
He chuckles—artificial, with no warmth. “Call it what you will. You’ll love serving the Combine... once there’s nothing left to serve.”
I feel Esme bristle at that. Behind her jawline, her pulse flares. I want to tear the words from him—tearhimdown—but I steady myself. The bond flickers; I must be her strength, not her loss.
He shifts, pointing at Esme with a chilling precision that slices through the crowd and through my core. All pretense drops. It’s not leverage. It’s predation.
“You, Miss Cruise,” his mechanical grin widens. “I have special designs for you.”
A hush crashes into the crowd. His words wrap chains around hearts.
I taste acid. My claws extend—but they bite into bark, not flesh. I clench them, burning hunger to tear Krenshaw from reality.
But I breathe, tethered by Esme’s gasp, knuckles whitening as she stands her ground.
Tara’s voice rises, breaking the tension. “This is our home. And you’re not taking it.”
Krenshaw scoffs. “Until sunrise, then it’s mine.”
He turns. Clanks to the shuttle. Swiveling metal that remembers how to conquer. The engines whine. The ship lifts, wringing out fear from the bones of the colony.
Everything shakes. The future bends.
I descend from the treetops. Esme meets me with trembling resolve. Her hand slides into mine—not seeking comfort—but forming a silent vow.
Anger blooms in me with green intensity. Krenshaw wants her—not for union or companionship—but for ownership. For control. For something so monstrous it bled the breath from my lungs.
I press my thumb into Esme’s palm. She looks at me, wide-eyed. The fear in her eyes cuts deeper than any wound I’ve ever inflicted.
I lean into her; the bond crackles, fierce and protective.
“I will not let him hurt you,” I vow, voice low, avalanching with fury and love.
She closes her eyes against the roaring silence of the moment.
I don’t know how many lives I’d end to protect her. She doesn’t have to ask.
We turn together, the hive of the colony reshaped by fear and defiance. The night closes in, but inside me, a firestorm roars.
He wants her. I will fight to the end not to give her.
Rain dripsthrough the broken canopy like cold needles, painting the earth in silver trembling lines. The colony stands in the shallow clearing, tense and fractured—like a wound still raw. I linger in the shadows just beyond Tara’s med tent, lean in like a predator made of pure instinct and protective purpose.
The memory of Krenshaw’s offer gnaws at me—cheap promises of survival in exchange for compliance, for surrender. His low, oily voice offered what he called “opportunities”—gun factories, low pay, absolute control over every worker and theirfamilies. Safe passage means shackles with one side clipped off. I taste the metallic disgust in the air around him.
Esme snarled. Something fierce and beautiful caught in her voice as she declared, “We won’t bow.”
A tremor of pride hits me, sharp as blade steel. But pride is a soft thing. Beneath it, something darker coils: jealousy. A need to possess, not as an object to claim, but a soul to shield.
I step from the gloom, rain tracing rivulets across my scales. Esme turns. Her heart’s pulse—erratic, bright, defiance-bent—whirs against my rib. She doesn’t step back. She reaches for me, grasping my wet cloak.
Her hand is warm. My core hums.
I plant one hand on the earth, claws digging into damp moss. I taste the dark promise in the soil, the scent of wetwood and my anger mixing into blistering adrenaline.
“We cannot let him take this,” she says, half-whispering. Rain beads in her hair, on eyelashes, glints like enamel.
“No,” I agree. My voice is half growl, half vow. “And I will make sure he doesn’t.”
