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CHAPTER 1

REN

Ugh,why am I even bothering?

I open up the Bewitch’d app on my phone with a sigh, checking to see if there are any new matches. It’s an exercise in futility. There’s never anything there to find.

No messages.

No matches.

No hope of finding a date.

I scrunch my eye shut, rubbing at my temple as I close the app. Just because there’s never anything there doesn’t make it hurt any less.

Listen, I’m not stupid. Sometimes my friends act like I am because I’m not always the best at reading social cues and I’ve spent most of my life pretty sheltered. But I understand the realities of my situation. I know the chances of finding a mate are slim to none.

After all, I’m not exactly a catch.

I’m a monster. A cyclops, to be precise, so not even one of the hot kinds. Nope, I’ve got one big, dopey eye that makes me look somehow terrifying and naïve at the same time. At least my eyelashes are nice. Someone generous would say I’ve got the whole big and strong thing going for me, but for most, my size is a deal breaker. Even the most adventurous monsters would balk at trying to take on my giant ass.

Can’t say I blame them. No one wants to worry about getting crushed while they’re trying to make out or get off.

To say monster dating hasn’t panned out would be underselling how bad it’s been. I went on exactly one disastrous date with a gargoyle who only asked me out because he wanted to ask if he could take a video of me sitting on a cake. Still not quite sure what that was about. While I may be hard up for companionship, I declined. Why would you sit on a perfectly good cake when you could eat it?

There’s a bit more time left to kill before the stream starts, so I open up the MeetCupid app next. I installed it a few months back when it became abundantly clear my monster dating prospects were non-existent.

Too bad I’ve fared even worse on human dating apps.

There’s a handful of new matches today, which should excite me. The problem is that every time I get to the point where it’s time to arrange a date with ahuman, I panic. If I go out with them in my human glamor, that’s a form of catfishing, right? Yes, I could look like a human all the time if I had to, but after a while it feels uncomfortable—like too tight underwear smashing your junk.

With humans, there’s even less of a chance they’d be interested if they saw me without my glamor. It goes far beyond the fact that most humans don’t even know monsters exist. I’ve seen how tiny my monster friends’ human mates are and there’s justno wayit could work. Wesley’s a minotaur and he has to use magic so he wouldn’t hurt his partner when he tried to…fit.

A human would run screaming if I showed them my true form, and all the considerable size that comes with it.

That doesn’t keep me from having perverted fantasies about finding one that would let me try it out. A human that would beg me to stretch them open, then scream out in ecstasy as I filled them past the limits their much smaller, delicate bodies could handle.

Shit, I’m getting hard thinking about it.

I close the app without checking the new matches and groan.

I’m a deviant. My family would be ashamed of my unnatural desires. They already think I’m tarnishing the clan name by spending so much time outside of giant society. For choosing a job that has me spending most ofmy time in front of a computer screen instead of performing manual labor.

Last time I begrudgingly called my parents, Dad spent the entire time going on about how it was time to think about an arranged marriage. Time to stop messing around with my “silly hobbies” and carry on the family legacy by mating and breeding with a giantess.

And they wonder why I left home in the first place.

I have nothing against my fellow giants. Hell, I still have the Giant Gazongas porno magazine I stole from my brother that got me through the horniest years of my puberty. But giant kin don’t like me. Especially not other cyclopses. I’m too shy and weird. I’d rather paint my miniatures than go for a hike. I like cuddles much more than wrestling for dominance. I’m soft. Weak. Maybe not physically, because I’m still a giant, but inside I’m a marshmallow.

The good thing is, I like the way I am, softness and all. I’m just being realistic when I rule out most giants as a dating possibilities. So I’m left trying to either convince the monsters that live in the Moonvale area that I’m not an aggressive meathead like the majority of my brethren, or testing my luck on human dating apps.

Neither of which are working.

I wish my friends’ human mates could introduce me to an eligible human who they could ease into the concept of monsters being real. But whenever I’ve tried to bring it up during our monster support groupmeetings, Susan immediately says I’m being “cringe” and shuts me down.

Pardon me for not wanting to be alone. Sure, I have Mango, my precious orange cat with zero brain cells who is the snuggliest girl ever, but she’s not exactly a replacement for a partner. I want romance and passion. I wantlove.

I sigh at the thought, the fluttery feeling I get whenever I think about a mate out there somewhere waiting for me to find them, swelling inside me.