Lor (Monstrous, #7)

by Lily Mayne

I was still wearing the robe. The one the blue monster with beads in his hair had given me before letting me go. For some reason, I didn’t want to take it off.

I stared at his mouth as it moved rapidly, not understanding a word of what he said but still utterly enthralled.

Even though I desperately wished to understand him, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t in that moment. I still would have gladly listened to him speak for hours.

He looked… so inhuman, his deep blue skin gleaming, the jewelled piercings winking in his huge, pointed ears. But he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

He felt like a gift. A treasure. I wanted to show him off to the entire fiefdom, to show them how lucky we were that out of the many, many people in his world—five billion of them—it had been Jugs who’d stumbled through the void to come here. But at the same time, I wanted to keep him hidden away, safe from the council and any others who wouldn’t understand. Just him and me, in our own new little world that we had forged with pieces of the different places we came from.

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

I’d spend the rest of my life travelling back and forth through the void if I had to.

I didn’t ever want to leave.

I was besotted. I hadn’t known I could feel like this about another person. I finally understood.

The idea of going a single day without seeing Jugs—without touching him or kissing him or hearing his wonderful voice, just being near him—was unthinkable.

But when Jugs said it, I truly felt it, like he was actually seeing me, Lor, not just my royal heritage and immaculate clothing and perfectly groomed hair. He thought I was beautiful as a person. And I thought the same of him.

I wanted to be with Lor. I wanted to curl up in bed with him and breathe in his scent and be with someone who… who loved me. We hadn’t said it, and maybe it was way too early, but… it felt like he loved me. I loved him.

“You are everything to me. I won’t survive it, not as I am now. I won’t.” Releasing his hand, I splayed my trembling fingers over his chest. “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,”

“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.”

They weren’t words that vints generally said, but I could hear—and feel—the meaning behind them. They were special. So I got enough control over my...

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

The Mabs had already taken so much from us both, they wouldn’t take us from each other. They just wouldn’t. Life wasn’t that cruel. Even after all these years, after everything, I had to believe it. Because if I didn’t, I would shatter.

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

“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.”

I’d been asleep, unconscious, unaware of anything, but some part of me had still missed him.

Lor hadn’t given up, and he had spent the last thirty years just waiting, hoping I would wake up. No one had ever cared about me that much.

It almost scared me how much I loved him, and I had never, ever seen anyone look at me the way he was looking at me right then—like he couldn’t believe I was really here, awake. Like he was terrified that if he moved, I’d disappear.

“I love you,” he whispered back, raising a trembling hand between us to press his fingertips against my bare chest. “I have been so empty without you, Jugs. But you kept my heart safe in here.”

“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.”

“If you’d never gotten better, I would still have spent the rest of my life by your side.” He kissed my fingertips. “There is no one else for me, Jugs.”

“But you said that human was handsome.” “Objectively, sure.” I grinned at him and slid my hands down his lean back to squeeze his ass. “But you’re perfect. And you’re mine. I could never want anyone else.”

My life was here now. With him. I didn’t need anything else.

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 waited for me.

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