Page 98 of Monster Daddies

“Lium, I?—”

“Of course, we’re lucky that we can blend in. But our homes can’t, and sometimes people stumble over them. So it?—”

“Lium!” she snapped his name louder this time.

He stopped short. “Yes?”

“Can-can you switch back to the other you?” There was a desperate plea in her voice. Looking at him was making her queasy. It was something about the way he kept blurring.

“Fuck. Sorry, Ellie. I forgot. Don’t worry, the nausea will go away once you’ve gotten used to it. Your mind just has to adjust to seeing past the filter. It can take a few times before you get the hang of it.”

She wasn’t at all sure shewantedto get the hang of it. Ellie hadn’t felt so confused and disoriented since the time she’d tried acid in college. Her head was spinning and her stomach kept lurching in an unpleasant way. “Why do I feel sick?” she whined. Closing her eyes helped almost immediately, and she kept them shut.

“Part of it is just the concealment trying to work. The rest is… well, humans work really hard at not seeing anything preternatural. Anything that’s out of the normal realm, you just refuse to see it. So, when you’re confronted head-on, it does a number on you.”

She heard him moving closer to her as he talked, but she kept her eyes shut. “You keep saying ‘human’ as if you aren’t. But you looked…” She trailed off and shook her head.

“That’s my disguise, but Ellie… you need to understand that I’mnothuman. At least not entirely. Here… feel.” He wasdirectly in front of her now, and he leaned down to take her hand and guide it toward him.

Her palm pressed against something supple and warm, and when she stroked her fingers over it, she was reminded of an old suede jacket she used to love. It wasn’t his chest, it lacked the musculature for that, but she was afraid to open her eyes and look. “What am I touching?”

“My wing.”

She didn’t even question it. “It’s so soft…” Ellie’s science side pushed her to look. She cracked one eye, waiting for the vertigo to attack again, when it didn’t, she risked opening a little more, but continued to focus on the wing. He was easier to take in small pieces.

At first, the wing hung in heavy folds in front of her, and looked a bit like black leather, but it was softer than that. He stretched it out, and she startled, but relaxed as soon as she realized he was just letting her get a better look. What she’d thought was a solid black, turned out to be a gradient.

The inside panels were thin enough that she could see the veins underneath, where the light illuminated them. Closer to the joints it thickened, until it was completely opaque and a deeper color.

It was closer to a bat’s wing than an insect’s, but it was shaped differently. The bone structure didn’t match any winged animal she’d studied, but there were the obvious similarities that could be found in most flying mammals. She traced one of the long finger bones to the joint, noticing that his breathing grew ragged as she did. His body was suddenly tense, though he didn’t move away from her touch.

Hehadsaid the wings were sensitive, but now she wondered ifsensitivewas a euphemism for something a little more… stimulating. She dropped her hands with reluctance. “I thought it would feel powdery or something.”

“Like a moth? I know. We have creation stories that involve being a moth/human hybrid, but logically that’s unlikely. We share some characteristics with moths, but I think it’s probably coincidental. The more science-minded of us have always felt like we’re an offshoot branch of humanity, who just happened to develop differently. The fact that we can breed makes that likely.”

“Oh.” The biologist in her was very interested to know more about that. She wondered if there was a way to test their DNA without raising any red flags in a lab. It would be fascinating to study?—

“Ellie?”

She shelved that train of thought for a later time. “Yes?”

“Are you ready to see a little more?”

A shiver rolled down her back, but she found herself nodding anyway. He sank down on the stool in front of her until she was staring at his chest. What she could see didn’t look out of the ordinary. Except for the thick fur that covered it, she could have believed he was human, but it was too dense to be chest hair. It was a pelt.

Her fingers itched to stroke the fur, to see if it was as soft as it looked. She reached out, but didn’t quite dare.

“Go ahead. It’s fine.” His voice was gentle, encouraging, so she let her hand sink into the fur.

There was something satisfying about digging her fingers into the silky dense curls. It reminded her vaguely of an angora rabbit she’d held once. She was tempted to press her cheek to him and feel that softness on her face. “You’re not what I expected Mothman to be.”

His chest rumbled under her hand as he laughed. “Well, ‘Mothman’ is a legend started by four horny teenagers and I’m real. They were never entirely sure what they saw, and all of them reported something different, which is how the camouflageworks. One of them described him as an angel and I can assure you he isn’t an angel, and neither am I.”

Even she had to laugh at that. “Wait… can you change how you look? How people see you? That would be a neat superpower.”

“Nope. Unfortunately, no shapeshifting here. I’m just me and I appear the way your mind interprets me. I am told that you could have some control over how you see me. It takes practice.”

Huh. “So I could see you as human all the time if I wanted?”