Page 7 of Mated to the Monster God

SAGAX

T he scent of plasma residue clings to the colony’s walls like burnt honey, acrid and electric.

I crouch beneath a lattice of half-grown creepers near the eastern barricade, my skin adjusted to absorb and redirect thermal readings.

One shift of my muscle mass and I’m just another pattern in the night.

Just another smudge in the corner of a blinking sensor.

Sweetwater’s perimeter has become a patchwork of desperation. Coils of scavenged wire, loose panels nailed with aggression instead of precision, and old survey drones propped up like scarecrows. Functional? Barely. Defensible? Not for long.

But the people… they move like currents under pressure. Rigid, flaring, determined.

Her people.

Esme’s voice filters through the dark before I see her. “Rick, I swear to all the voidborn stars, if you glue one more power cell to a compost bin, I will strangle you with my own spinal cord.”

Rick lets out a sloppy belch from somewhere behind a half-fused console. “It worked, didn’t it? It lit up. "

“It lit up because it was shorting! You nearly fried half the east wall grid!”

“I’m innovating,” he says with a hiccup. “Necessity is the mother of invention, sweetheart.”

“You’re the mother of fire hazards.”

Another voice pipes up—higher, crackling with too much confidence and too many hormones. “Hey Esme, you ever think maybe he’s just trying to impress you?”

Morty.

The boy’s swagger is audible even before he rounds the corner, carrying something he shouldn’t. A charge dispersal pack, half-loaded, dangling from one careless hand.

“Put that down,” Esme snaps, already marching toward him. “That’s not a toy.”

“I know it’s not a toy. I’m just checking the wiring.”

“With what? Your genitals ?”

Jimmy chokes on a laugh. “Don’t give him ideas.”

“I don’t need ideas,” Morty says, flashing a grin that probably works on someone, somewhere. “I’ve got instincts.”

“Yeah, well, your instincts are about to get you electrocuted. Again.” Esme plucks the device from his grip and holds it up. “Do you see this? Do you see how close you were to overloading the flux coils?”

Morty leans in, undeterred. “Do you see how close you are to blowing a fuse? You know stress is bad for your skin.”

Jimmy snorts, “Morty, you’ve got the same survival instincts as a blind skyrat.”

“I’ve got survival instincts,” Morty says, puffing up, “they’re just... situational.”

“Like when you tried to fix the antenna with chewing gum and a curse word?” Jimmy says.

“That worked! ”

“For three seconds,” Esme mutters, pinching the bridge of her nose. “And then it caught fire.”

I study every twitch in her fingers, every suppressed smile.

Esme’s control isn’t fragile—it’s earned.

She navigates this chaos not like a leader, but like the gravity everything else orbits around.

Her laughter is sudden, unfiltered. A bark of disbelief at Morty’s idiocy.

Her scolding is sharp, but warm. She threatens Rick with electrocution and ribs Jimmy for being too smart for his age.

And in all of it, she shines.

My kind knew mating. Physical drives. Temporary union for propagation. We knew instinct. But this—this connection —is different. I feel it in my chest, a clawing ache I can’t metabolize. I don’t want her attention. I want to deserve it.

Her laugh bubbles again, unexpected and bright, when Jimmy manages to trip Morty with a spool of cord.

"That’s karma," she says, pointing as Morty goes sprawling.

And that’s where it lands for me.

Love isn’t just about biology. It’s about this—this firelit tangle of noise and warmth and teeth-baring grins. This family. This pulse.

Esme, laughing with Jimmy.

Scolding Morty.

And me—hidden in the dark—finally understanding why I ache.

The night pulses with low-frequency danger.

Pwarra’s jungle doesn't sleep. It waits. It listens. It breathes with a rhythm that’s older than language and hungrier than silence.

I stalk beneath the canopy like a ghost born of evolution and necessity, hyperaware of the Baragon patrols threading between the outer fields of the colony.

I shouldn’t be this close. But something gnaws at my core—a hollow itch that’s not hunger or mission, but something far less explainable. Watching her with her family stirred things I don’t have the vocabulary for. Not yet.

A shriek snaps through the trees.

Not Esme.

But human.

I bolt toward the sound, my limbs moving in perfect silence.

Every step a whisper, every breath measured.

A single heart thrashes in the night like a trapped animal—young, panicked, not yet consumed.

I crest a ridge and find the scene unfolding in dim bioluminescent glow: a boy—eighteen, maybe—running for his life.

Pale skin slicked with sweat, eyes wide and unfocused.

He’s got a sliver of scrap metal for a blade, swinging it like it might make a difference.

It won’t.

The Baragon chasing him is already winding up its kill strike, serrated gauntlet gleaming, servo-motors whirring with practiced menace. This one’s armor is new. Fast-grown. He hasn’t died yet. He’s pristine.

I don’t think.

I move .

The Baragon hears the impact a millisecond before my claws rip through its rib plate. The armor resists—smart polymer memory layers flexing under my grip—but I’m stronger. Faster. Fueled by something no clone in a vat could replicate.

The Baragon slashes across my chest with its free arm. Metal scrapes scale. I grab its wrist and twist. Bone and metal separate with a wet crack. The thing doesn’t scream—its face has no mouth, just mirrored glass—but I hear its pain in the psychic ripple of the hivemind.

I don’t stop.

My claws bury in its torso. I tear upward, through spine and synth-core. It drops in pieces, sparking and twitching, still trying to crawl toward the boy as I kick its helmet across the clearing.

The boy stares.

“You’re safe,” I say.

He bolts.

Trips. Scrambles. Screams. “MONSTER!”

I don’t follow.

I don't move at all.

His scream fades into the distance, swallowed by the jungle. I stand over the ruined Baragon and feel something colder than blood seep through me.

I saved him. But I’m still the thing to be feared. Still the shadow in the dark. The claws. The fangs. The wrong shape.

Even this body—made from her memories, sculpted by her blood—still isn’t enough. I’m not her . I never will be. And maybe that's what separates me from them. From her .

I drag the Baragon’s carcass into the underbrush, strip the armor plates, and cache the pieces beneath a root bundle. Always salvage. Always prepare. But tonight, it feels mechanical. Hollow.

When I return to the ridge near Sweetwater, I don’t watch the colony. I drop into the narrow crevice I’ve claimed as a den and sit with my back against the stone.

My blood still runs hot from the fight. Not from exertion—but from the sting of that boy’s voice echoing in my skull. Monster.

He didn’t see a savior. He didn’t see an ally.

He saw what I am.

Not just the claws and the size. But the difference.

I glance at my hands. The scales have hardened into plates across the backs of my knuckles.

My fingers end in subtle talons—retractable now.

Smoothed by intention. My skin can mimic human tones if I focus hard enough, but the shimmer beneath it always returns when I relax.

My pupils can narrow or round out, but they’ll never lose that incandescent orange flare.

And why should they?

I was never meant to be human.

But she makes me want to be.

I don’t know what love is, not completely. I only know that I would die to hear her laugh again. That I crave her voice not because of what she says, but because she’s saying it to me. That I feel hollow when she’s not near, and whole when she brushes my skin with hers—however briefly.

That matters.

More than survival and instinct.

More than the old life crawling through blood and slime at the edge of existence.

I want to be seen by her. Not as a parasite. Not as a mutation. But as something worth keeping close. Worth touching. Worth trusting.

The boy’s voice echoes again. Monster.

I close my eyes and push that word away.

There’s only one voice I care to hear.

When she says my name, it sounds nothing like fear.

The stone at my back has warmed from the residual heat of the day.

It bleeds into my skin, grounding me. I’ve been sitting here for hours, silent, still.

A predator pretending at peace. My thoughts coil and uncoil in loops, too complex for comfort but too raw to ignore.

I keep revisiting that boy’s scream—the one who ran from me like I was death itself.

He may not have been wrong. But it doesn't sit easy in my chest.

The wind shifts.

I smell her before I hear her. That wild blend of sweat, citrus shampoo, and jungle—utterly, infuriatingly hers. I catch the sound of footfalls. Soft, precise. She’s trying not to wake the whole planet sneaking through these ridges, but I could pick out that rhythm anywhere.

“Did you think I wouldn’t find you?” Her voice slices through the quiet, wry and unmistakably smug.

I look up. She stands outlined against the sky, a bundle slung over her shoulder and another in her arms. Her hair’s tied up in a haphazard knot, strands sticking to her forehead with humidity. She's flushed, annoyed, and slightly out of breath.

“Honestly,” she huffs, dropping the larger bundle at my feet, “you really are the worst at being low-profile for a seven-foot neon godzilla lizard man.”

“I was not hiding from you,” I say, watching her drop into a crouch beside me.

“No, you were just brooding dramatically on a rock like some tragic antihero from a trashy netserial.”

I blink. “I do not know that word.”

“Which one?”

“Trashy.”

She snorts, pulls out a wrapped bundle, and shoves it into my hands. “Eat. Then we’ll discuss pop culture.”

The parcel is warm. Something wrapped in flatbread, the scent of spiced root vegetables and seared protein. My mouth waters even though I have no biological need for sustenance at the moment. She watches me expectantly, arms crossed over her knees.

“I’m not sure I know how to...” I trail off, examining the fabric. It’s tied in a way I don’t immediately understand.

She groans and reaches over, her fingers brushing mine as she unties the knot. “You were doing so well until opposable thumbs became your boss fight.”

“You mock me.”

“Relentlessly.” She peels open the flatbread, folding it expertly. “Now open your mouth.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Open.”

I hesitate. Her hand is halfway to my face, the wrap steaming in her grip. I obey. She presses the food gently to my lips and I take a bite, more out of shock than hunger. Flavors explode across my tongue—tangy, earthy, rich with salt and smoke.

She watches me chew like it’s the most interesting science experiment she’s ever seen.

“Well?” she asks.

“It’s... pleasing.”

Her grin widens. “You just tasted Rick’s secret chili paste and lived to tell about it. Color me impressed.”

I chew slower, savoring it now, letting my eyes study her in the flickering light of her small field lantern. Her freckles stand out more tonight. Her smile is easier. But there’s something behind it. Something soft and quiet and cautious.

“You didn’t have to bring me this.”

“I know,” she says.

“I could have foraged.”

“You don’t even know what’s edible.”

“I’ve absorbed some of your knowledge?—”

She raises an eyebrow. “Which still doesn’t explain why you were about to eat what I’m pretty sure was a toxic gutbloom yesterday.”

“That was an experiment.”

“That was a near-death experience.”

We both laugh, and I marvel at how simple it is now. How my body responds to her voice—muscles relaxing, pulse slowing. Her proximity is a balm, one I didn’t know I needed until she handed it to me with a teasing smirk and a home-cooked meal.

She holds another piece of the wrap up. I open my mouth again.

“This is weird, right?” she murmurs, not quite meeting my gaze.

“Yes,” I reply honestly. “But I do not wish it to stop.”

“Good,” she says quietly. “Because I kinda needed this, too.”

Her voice dips at the end, almost lost in the wind. But I hear it. Feel it. The tremor of vulnerability. The slow unwinding of something tightly guarded. She finishes feeding me the last bite and sits back, brushing her hands on her pants.

“I brought a real pack, too. Water, med-strips, spare comm patch, rations, a clean shirt—though I doubt anything in this galaxy fits you.”

I lift the shirt, a pale gray one made of soft, breathable fiber. I hold it up and raise a brow. “It is... small.”

She laughs again, curling her arms around her legs. “Yeah, well. Points for effort.”

We sit in silence for a while, the kind that hums with unspoken things. The jungle rustles in the distance, nocturnal creatures singing, hunting, living. But here, in this carved-out sliver of peace, there’s only her. And me. And something that feels dangerously close to home.

“You’re not alone anymore,” she says softly.

The words strike like a pulse through my chest. I inhale sharply, but my throat tightens around it. No witty comeback rises. No analysis or correction.

Just her voice. And the impossible mercy woven through it.

I drop my gaze. “You say that like it’s simple.”

“It’s not,” she admits. “But it’s true.”

My hands curl on my knees, claws retracting. I breathe in her scent, now tinged with a new layer of warmth and comfort. My vision blurs slightly—not from damage, but from something deeper. Something rising inside me that has no name.

“I do not know what to do with this,” I whisper.

“You don’t have to do anything,” she says. “Just... be here.”