Page 80 of Mated to the Monster God
She nods against me. “I always wondered if you could. If it felt like music to you too.”
I consider this. “I hear you.”
She laughs—a soft, slow chuckle that vibrates through her chest into mine.
“Sap,” she murmurs.
“Truth,” I reply.
She snorts and splashes me gently with one hand. I let her.
Then she stills again. And for a long while, we drift.
Stars blink overhead, caught in the canopy above, and the moss that lines the spring pulses faint blue beneath the surface like a living heartbeat. I watch it flicker across her spine. A thousand tiny constellations dancing over her damp, flushed skin.
I could die here. If death had any kindness, it would come like this—silent, warm, wrapped in her.
But I am not dying.
I amliving.
And for the first time since awakening in this half-made body, I understand what that means.
We are not defined by what we’ve survived.
We are shaped by who we survivewith.
And she is mine.
Forever, if this world allows.
Or even if it doesn’t.
CHAPTER 25
ESME
It’s strange, how quickly peace settles in the bones.
You’d think after everything—the death, the terror, the sound of metal ripping flesh and screams echoing through cracked corridors—that the quiet would be unbearable.
But it’s not.
It’s healing.
The days after the war bleed into each other like watercolor. Sunrises stretch longer. Shadows aren’t as sharp. People speak softer, laugh easier. Sweetwater breathes again.
Children race past me in the morning, laughing with wild abandon, their bare feet slapping the newly laid planks of the main corridor. Tara’s youngest tugs at a toy drone made of string and wire while Blondie teaches two older boys how to hammer nails straight. They’re building a treehouse in one of the banyans—a treehouse, like they’ve never seen blood on their hands.
It guts me. In the best way.
Sagax works at my side most mornings. Always shirtless, always glistening with sweat before noon, his shoulders catching the light like burnished bronze. He’s building a shelter just beside mine, insists it’s forspace,but neither of us believe that lie. He rarely sleeps there. Most nights he ends up tangled withme in my hammock, legs too long and arms too heavy, snoring like some ancient engine set to low hum.
But I don’t mind. I never have.
We plant crops together in the afternoons, his hands deep in the red-brown soil. He’s shockingly delicate with the seedlings—like they’re glass, like every root is sacred. He hums sometimes while we work, a low melodic tone that vibrates through the soles of my feet and lodges somewhere between my ribs.
“You’re getting good at this,” I tease one day, wiping sweat off my brow with the back of my hand.
