Lor (Monstrous, #7)

by Lily Mayne

Being the Moric made life fairly dull.

“Do not sneak back in here and poke it with something. Especially not your bloody finger again.”

It was just a speck.

“Remember the legends about the salyik chieftain’s strange mate? The unknown creature that appeared from nowhere? They had to have come from somewhere. Why not some… other world?”

“There’s nothing on the other side. It’s just a… void. A strange anomaly. It will probably go away on its own.”

Lyri was the only person in the world who actually walked by my side—even

There were still rumours to this day that one had survived whatever fate befell them that day. Travelling folk insisted on seeing a lone isdernuc wandering the lands, sometimes in the company of one of the telyths—the ghoulish creatures from a forgotten age.

Honestly, sometimes I swore the council called these meetings in an attempt to bore me to death and nothing more.

And its ears were tiny. Rounded at the top. I eyed them in alarm. Had someone maimed it? How cruel.

were these aliens? Had they portalled me out of the forest to abduct me and experiment on me? Was that why they were looking at my dick? Were they going to experiment on my dick?

This is a weird spaceship, I vacantly thought, but then two werewolves walked in, and I passed out.

No, you tell me! I wanted to shout. Don’t make me decide!

At least she had gotten to see Lyri shape his body into the man he had always been. She had immediately called for the royal healthkeeper when he finally told her, years after he had told me, his hand sweating in mine the night we had gone to her chamber for him to finally tell her that he was her son, not her daughter.

“He was an intelligent being. He has a life. Family. We cannot just spirit him away from his home because we are intrigued by him.”

“Lyri!” I placed a palm on my forehead, feeling faint. “You are giving me palpitations.”

His name was Juhgz. What an odd name—so unusual and exotic. I wondered if it held any special meaning in his world, in his language. Maybe it was a noble name, like mine.

The look he gave me was filled with such fragile hope that my chest burned with the urge to send an army of baregh through the void to hunt down any humans who had made him feel like his desires were wrong or unnatural.

Sow those wild oats, you know? Or, I mean, not so wild, if you’re in a committed relationship. Sow those committed oats, my man.”

Lyri was right. I was smitten. Completely, utterly smitten.

Oh my god, I deserved a freaking medal for lasting this long when I was fucking the hottest, most beautiful creature in the entire universe.

“If I could keep you here forever, I would.”

“I want you too, more than anything. I miss you every moment you are not here. I dream of you after you leave. I spend my days wishing you were beside me, wishing that I could have you here with me always.”

got dressed and grabbed my keys and backpack. Then I left the apartment and got into my car, not wanting to be here anymore. There was no point being here. Lor wasn’t here.

I stared back in silence, the mask he had taught me to wear firmly in place. But inside, I was seething with grief-fuelled fury. I wanted to murder him.

“I love you,” he said tearfully. “I want you to be happy after this.”

“My heart is in here now. Not with me. I will be empty without you.”

“I haven’t really achieved much, but making the decision to come back here, to meet you properly, is the thing I’m most proud of in my life,” he told me quietly. “I love you, Lor. I don’t regret any of it. And that… that helps. It helps me accept what”—his breath shuddered out of him—“what’s going to happen. It was all worth it. I love you.”

“And we still have a bit more time,” he said as he pulled back, smoothing my hair from my damp face. “Let’s do something fun tomorrow. Well, as fun as it can get in this room.” He chuckled. “We’ll do whatever you want,” I whispered, twining our fingers together on the pillow between us and kissing his knuckles. “Anything. We will spend the whole day together.” He smiled back drowsily, eyes already slipping shut, face lined with exhaustion after his emotional onslaught. “Sounds nice.” The next morning, he didn’t wake up.

“Please.” Sinking to my knees, I clutched her hand, pressing my forehead to the back of it. It was something the Moric should never, ever do—the lowliest form of supplication. “Please don’t let him be taken from me. Please.”

I was going to make Jugs proud of me, even if he wasn’t here to see it.

I was the Moric, truly now for the first time, doing right by the people in my fiefdom and slowly chipping away at the inequality that had been rife under the former council’s rule. But it had cost me everything else.

But it wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough. The more time that passed, the less alive I felt.

“Because it feels like I will die if I let myself feel anything.”

“No need to apologise. And it’s… it’s nice to actually see you feeling something. Even if it is fury toward me.”

“You haven’t lost me,” Seis rumbled, pulling back to smile at me. “And you haven’t lost Jugs. The cure works, Lor. He’s going to wake up.”

“I would wait my whole life for you,” he said quietly, trying to steady his voice even as tears continued to stream freely down his cheeks. He pressed his lips to my hand again. “I would wait forever for you, Jugs.”

But Lor had. Lor hadn’t given up, and he had spent the last thirty years just waiting, hoping I would wake up.

He’d waited for me all this time. In that moment, nothing else mattered.

“This means that I will never want anyone else. My mouth will never touch another. I will never speak ill of you. Your name is the first thing I want to pass my lips every morning and the last thing I say every night.”

but I loved it. I loved him—everything about him. He was my person. The one I was always meant to be with, even though we were from different worlds. Even though we’d been torn apart for so long.

He’d been unfailingly clear in his devotion. He’d waited for me for thirty fucking years. He hadn’t given up.

“From the moment we met, you have had me.”