Page 79 of Mated to the Monster God
I kiss her again, desperate and tender, and she wraps around me like I am home.
We stay like that, bathed in sweat and light and the sound of two hearts beating as one.
I am not a weapon. I am not a thing.
I amSagax.
The jungle hums with a sound older than time—wet leaves rustling, night insects singing in chorus, distant beasts calling to one another like spirits in the dark.
We drift.
The spring we found lies hidden beneath an outcrop of stone, a shallow basin fed by a small waterfall that trickles down smooth black rock like liquid moonlight. The water glows faintly, phosphorescent with the minerals that seep from the mountain, illuminating Esme’s skin like she’s carved from starlight and blood.
I float on my back, body weightless, the heated spring soothing sore muscles and old scars. Esme lies atop me, her head resting against my chest, her limbs tangled with mine beneath the water. Her breath ghosts against my ribs.
I do not speak.
I do not move.
Even my thoughts seem to still in her presence.
Her hair drapes across my chest like silk, fanning over my shoulder, damp and fragrant. She smells like rain and salt and something entirely her own. I inhale, slow and deliberate, and hold it until my lungs ache from wanting more.
I listen to her heartbeat, tucked beneath the wet velvet of her skin. And beneath it… my own. Two hearts. Two rhythms. Not quite the same, not quite different. Sometimes in sync, sometimes in echo. They don’t compete. They harmonize.
We are one now.
Protean and human. Weapon and woman. Alien and wild, and impossibly—irreversibly—entwined.
The water slips over us like silk, warm and living, cupping our bodies in silence. Her legs shift, curling tighter around mine, and I shift my hand beneath the surface to cradle the back of her head.
She sighs. Not from fatigue. From contentment.
I let myself feel every inch of her—her weight, her heat, the subtle rise and fall of her chest as she breathes. The small, almost imperceptible flutter of her fingers against my side. A gesture. A reassurance. A claim.
She doesn’t speak. Neither do I.
There are no words adequate for this moment.
The jungle sings for us. That’s enough.
Time does not pass here—not the way it does in the colony, measured by pain and survival and loss. Here, there is only now. The now where she is mine and I am hers and nothing else matters.
I feel her shift slightly, and the water ripples. Her lips brush my chest, just over my heart, and she hums—a low, lazy sound that melts into the dark.
I crack one eye open. “You are content.”
She hums again. “Beyond.”
Her voice is raspy, worn thin from use, but there’s a smile in it. She stretches a little, pressing her cheek tighter against my skin.
“You hear that?” she asks after a while.
I tilt my head.
The jungle answers with its eternal lullaby. Frogs croak in rhythm. Cicadas thrum like background static. Wind hisses through ferns, carrying the scent of wild ginger and wet bark.
“I hear it.”
