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CAM

It took longer than usual to come down after we collapsed against each other. Cam and I rushed to get dressed, and I had to force myself to not get distracted by him again. Especially once he was dressed. His tailored pants fit his ass perfectly. The crisp white undershirt looked even whiter against his blue skin. The black of the jacket made his eyes glow so bright that I could still see them as we walked across the dark campus.

The blood moon brought monsters out of my peers.

It was an interesting thing to see. There was a giant tree walking with their date. I wasn’t quite sure what gender the tree was until we passed and I heard the trees deep voice. I grinned to myself as we passed a few students who looked a lot fuzzier than they did in the daytime. I linked my arm through Cam’s and noticed the way his face was visibly relaxed, and the way it relaxed further every time we passed another shifted student.

“I thought cats and dogs weren’t supposed to like each other,” he leaned in and whispered as we passed two shifters walking hand in hand.

“I guess they missed the memo,” I whispered back, making him laugh. The sound assured me that no matter how nervous he’d been about not being able to control his shift (or control himself during his shift), he was going to be okay.

We pointed out other monster pairings and the few human/monster pairings we saw to one another, giggling like children at the other’s commentary. I felt that thing again, deep in my gut. I felt it in my heart, the way he affected me. It came with a certainty. It was no longer something that I thought. I didn’t just think I was falling in love with Cam; I knew that I was. The words danced on the tip of my tongue before I swallowed them down. It wasn’t the right time. It was too soon.

Or maybe I was just a coward.

We made it across campus to the ball. Teachers checked our student IDs before they allowed us inside.

The ballroom was decorated to the nines. Candelabras hung in the air. The entire room was decorated like a Halloween wonderland, all orange and black. Several tables lined the walls, loaded down with snacks, appetizers, and drinks. There was a sign over a door, advertising blood food for those who wanted it. Music played over the speakers and Dean Yaga stood talking to a member of faculty I didn’t recognize. Which wasn’t difficult, as the staff member Dean Yaga was talking to was over seven feet tall and green. I was pretty sure I’d have noticed that person around campus, even if I didn’t have them as a teacher, had I seen them before.

I pushed him out of my mind as Cam lead me to a table where Mallory was sitting with a blonde girl, both staring open mouthed at the various monsters in the room. Mallory looked at Cam for a moment before realization dawned on her. “Of course you’re blue,” she laughed. “At least you’re still recognizable. We’re playing a game of guess our classmates. Join in?”

“No, because I’m going to feel like an idiot when I get it wrong,” I answered, sliding into one of the seats.

“Besides, some shifters can get really insecure about their monster forms. Especially in mixed company,” Cam pointed out. I squeezed his leg under the cover, attempting to give him some kind of subtle support. Because I knew that he wasn’t just advocating for our classmates, he was talking about himself. He was the one that was insecure about his monstrous form in mixed company.

Mallory looked down at the black tablecloth before looking back up to Cam. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that.”

Cam grinned. His smile was exactly the same, even in his full incubus glory. “It’s okay. It’s not like you’re used to this, right?”

“Yeah,” Mallory agreed. She looked at Cam again. “So you have horns. I feel like there’s an incubus joke in there. Something about them always being—”

“Don’t,” Cam warned. “Penn’s already made that joke. More than once.”

I didn’t even pretend to look ashamed. “You’re not wrong.”

“Can I touch them?”

“No,” Cam and I said in unison. I didn’t need Mallory stroking his horns and getting him going in the middle of the dance. Besides, now that I knew that they were an erogenous zone for him, there was no way I was going to sit there and watch someone else rub them.

That was my special bit of knowledge.

We made small talk with Mallory and the blonde, her roommate Carly. She was a sweet girl from town, a freshman who had grown up with a monstrous best friend who now attended a different college across the country. Carly had chosen to come to Creelin because she wanted to one day go on to work with the OME. They had a few human liaison officers, and Carly wanted to become one after graduation.

I admired her immediately for that, for wanting to better the relationships between humans and monsters.

Small talk eventually tapered, and Mallory and Carly left the table to go talk to a few of their friends from another class. That left me and Cam sitting alone at the the table, listening to the music and watching our peers cut it up on the dance floor. I kept stealing glances at Cam, wondering if I should ask him to dance.

“Want to dance?” Cam asked when the music shifted to a slower song. Once again, he’d read my mind. It would never not surprise me when he did that.

I nodded and stood, offering him my hand.

We walked together to the dance floor. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him in close. His arms wrapped around my neck, and we began to sway in time to the music. It was a perfect moment, his body pressed against mine. There were a few other monster and human pairing dancing nearby. I fought the urge to get closer to them, to ask them questions or to give them my email so I could get information about their relationships for my series.

The only thing that stopped me was the perfect moment with Cam. There was nothing that could ruin this moment.

When Cam looked up at me, I fell harder for him. The admiration on his face, the trust—it was like nothing that I’d ever thought was possible for me. When I’d started at Creelin months ago, I didn’t think that I’d fall in love there. I just thought I’d get a chance to learn more about monsters. I thought I’d make a few new friends.

I didn’t expect to find someone that felt like my person. Monster? No, I didn’t like that. I didn’t like the idea that he was my monster. I liked person better, because no matter what he looked like or what he was, he was my person. He was the best person I’d ever known.

“I love you.”

The words left my lips without my permission. I hadn’t been able to swallow them down this time, but as they settled between us, I knew they were true. I wasn’t just falling for him. I was fully in love with this man.

“What?” Cam sounded breathless and shocked.

Had it been too soon?

I couldn’t take the words back. I didn’t want to. They were true, the truest words I’d ever spoken. It had only taken a few months, but I was completely in love with him. It happened faster than I thought was possible. “I love you,” I repeated. “I’m in love with you, Cam Wilde. You don’t have to say it back. I know it’s fast, but that doesn’t matter to me.”

It didn’t matter that there was a chance that the speed and depth of the love I felt for him was influenced by the fact that he fed off of me, that it made things deeper faster. Because we knew the truth. We knew that it didn’t grow from nothing. It only fertilized seeds that were already there, growing into something beautiful. And this thing I had with Cam? It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever experienced.

Cam looked thoughtful as the words settled over him. I couldn’t read him as easily as he read me. I couldn’t see what was going on in his head, other than the fact that wheels were turning up there. I wanted push, to prod, to ask questions. Instead, I fought my natural instincts and forced myself to just have patience. I couldn’t journalist my way through this.

“I love you too,” he said after a few quiet moments.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I leaned in and kissed him as the music shifted into something more up tempo. We kept slow dancing, a calm spot on the frenzied dance floor. I could feel his heart beating in his chest. I could see the peace on his face. It had been fast, but it was everything.

Eventually, we began dancing in time with the music. We stayed on the floor through the next slow song, and once again, I felt more at home with his arms around me than I’d ever felt in any one place before. I’d been scared coming to Creepin U, but it had been the right choice.

It lead me to him.

Mallory and Carly found us when the ball came to an end. They had found dance partners by the end of the evening. Mallory was with a human I vaguely recognized from our Intro to Monsterkind class. I thought his name was Stephen or Stefan or something. Carly was on the arm of a shifter who was apparently in her Human-Monster Relations class, a girl named Jules who looked at Carly the same way I used to look at Cam before I got to know him.

“I know you two probably want to get back to the dorm, but we had an alternative suggestion,” Mallory chirped with a big grin. Cam and I exchanged a look. Was she about to suggest some kind of after party? I’d heard rumor of a few on Greek row, but I didn’t have any kind of desire to check them out. I was ready to shoot her down when she told us her idea. “We could all head over to that diner off campus and gorge on greasy breakfast food?”

“You think they’ll have an issue with us?” Cam asked, motioning between him and Julia. “Pretty sure it’s a human run establishment.”

“Well, it is Halloween. Maybe they’ll think it’s just a really convincing costume.” Mallory shrugged.

“Or they can get the hell over it,” Carly countered. “They live in a town with a college geared toward monsters. If they have any kind of monster-phobia, then they should move somewhere else. Close up shop. Besides, I’ve heard a rumor that the owner’s a witch, and that’s why the food is so good.”

“Wait, really?” I hadn’t heard that. That really did feel like something I should have heard about if it were true.

“That’s the rumor,” Carly confirmed. “I don’t know if it’s true, but we could go find out. If she’s some kind of monster and she’s there, she wouldn’t really be able to hide it tonight.”

I looked over at Cam who grinned. “You really want to go, huh?” I nodded. I was hungry, despite the food that had been served at the ball. It had been too fancy. Most of it I hadn’t even been able to identify by sight, meaning I didn’t try it. I had a rule about eating foods I couldn’t identify, especially if it wasn’t labeled. It had always served me well. “Then I guess we’re going.”

Mallory clapped her hands together in delight and lead us out of the dance.

Our late night dinner at the diner hadn’t yielded any answers on if the owner was or was not a witch. She apparently only worked day shift. None of the wait staff seemed bothered at all about the two monsters in our party—or any of the other tables of monsters from campus around us. In fact, our server had pink skin, red eyes with slit like pupils, and white wings. I didn’t know what she was and it felt rude to ask. After all, she didn’t ask anyone at our table what they were.

Once we paid, we all walked back to campus, splitting up when we got to the student residences. Cam and I paused at the entrance to the dorm. “My room or yours?” he asked, lacing his fingers into mine.

“Yours,” I answered immediately.

“Want to hide me from your roommates?”

“No,” I assured him. “They’re starting to like you. I just wanted to go to your room because your roommates don’t make comments when they hear us hooking up. My roommates give me hell for it. Thin walls and all.”

He laughed, shaking his head. “Just you?”

“Oh, absolutely not. We all give Coop shit for his phone calls with his girlfriend too.”

Cam laughed at the revelation before leaning in and kissing me.

It was the perfect ending of the perfect night, and the perfect beginning to something that I hoped would last a long time.

Maybe forever.