Page 132 of Monster Daddies

“I have the same strength but I don’t know where the loss of mass goes. That’s not my specialty. We hit the top of the human height charts like this, but no, I won’t get stuck. It’s itchy, though. Like my skin is too tight.” I could do it for short periods of time but looking human was very odd. “It’s a magical evolutionary adaptation.”

Again, magical science wasn’t my strong suit, so I didn’t try to go into detail about how it worked. “From what we’ve been able to figure out, it helped us blend in when the Earth had a variety of different human-looking species and we kept it when the humans were down to just the modern branch we have today.”

For some reason their branch had just developed without accessing any of the magic that others could feel so easily. There were probably magic users and scientists trying to figure out why, but I wasn’t concerned with it.

“Can… Can I touch you?” Alton’s expression was flashing between worry and confusion, but he was naturally too curious to stay back for long. When I nodded, he reached out but his hand paused before it made contact with my chest. “I won’t hurt you?”

“Yes, you can touch me, and no, you won’t hurt me. We have a group of us living in Fairbanks, Alaska right now that come across as humans nearly full time and they’re on the local hockeyteam. They’re technically of Russian descent, so everyone is just using that to ignore the height difference.”

I wasn’t sure how that was believable at all but humans were fascinating in what they could talk themselves into.

“That’s…” Alton’s voice trailed off as one finger reached out and poked my chest. “Oh.”

That did not sound like grown-up Alton.

“You’re hard and big.”

Definitely not grown-up Alton.

Chapter Seven

Alton

Daddy was wrong.

No.

That would be mean.

“You… you’re still pretty, Daddy.” Yes. His colors were still pretty. That was more important than being wrong or not matching anymore. “You’re… you look nice as a human.”

He was big like that too.

And he wasn’t ugly.

He just wasn’t Daddy.

“Thank you.” Daddy looked down at his body and frowned. “I don’t use this much but I can change it if you’d like.”

Oh.

That’s.

“No.” Shaking my head, I tried to be nice. “That’s weird.”

Daddy laughed. “I can see how it would be weird from your perspective. Think of it like my human costume.”

“You’re not a bug, Daddy.” That’d been a big bug in the alien movie, but Daddy wasn’t like that. “I… I like your human costume.”

It was like playing pretend.

Yes.

“I like playing pretend.”

I could play pretend with Daddy.

Poke.