Page 10 of Mated to the Monster God
There are too many.
Baragon soldiers fan out from the trees, sleek silver bodies gleaming under the canopy’s filtered light. Their armor glints like glass over muscle. No words. No sound. Just motion—like machines pre-programmed for slaughter. Their weapons are already raised.
They’ve got me.
Sagax is gone.
And I amalone.
“No,” I whisper, but my voice is too small, too fragile. “No, no, no…”
They close in. I back up until bark scrapes my shoulders. There’s nowhere left to go. No miracle. No last-minute escape plan. Just the taste of my own blood in my mouth from biting my tongue too hard, and a scream crawling up my throat.
I draw the plasma pistol—but I know it’s useless. I can’t even take one of them with me. The tremor in my fingers makes the barrel wobble. My eyes blur.
One steps forward, arm cocked to fire.
I squeeze the trigger.
But then the airexplodes.
It’s like a star goes nova just behind them.
A body slams into the Baragon from the right—a green flash of muscle and scale. The nearest soldier goes flying—helmet cracking open like an egg as it smashes against a boulder with enough force toimplode.
Another Baragon raises its weapon, but the green blur is already there. A tail—long, striped with black—sweeps out andscythesthe soldier in half at the waist. There’s no blood. Just metal and a puff of blue gas. Like it’s not even human under there.
I duck down instinctively, heart trying to burst through my ribs. I don't breathe. I can't.
The thing ismassive.
Seven feet tall, at least. Shoulders like a boulder rolled into a V, tapered waist, long limbs built for tearing apart lesser creatures. And every inch of him gleams with wet green scales that shimmer when he moves. They catch the light like oil—dark, iridescent, hungry.
Baragon soldiers swarm him.
Hedancesthrough them.
Graceful. Lethal. Nothing wasted. He doesn’t dodge—heflows. Every strike is calculated, brutal. One Baragon’s neck twists with a sickening crunch. Another is flung ten meters through the air, crashing into the ship’s outer ramp with a screech of buckling metal.
My mind can't keep up.
Is it a protector? A monster?
He turns.
His eyes meet mine.
Golden. Bright as a harvest sun, with irises that shift and shimmer, complex andalive. I can't breathe. He steps over the broken remains of one of the Baragon, chest rising and falling like a living furnace.
“Esme.”
My knees nearly buckle.
Because Iknowthat voice.
Ifeelit.
Sagax.
