Lor (Monstrous, #7)

by Lily Mayne

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.

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

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.

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.

“All your food and drink is stored in such brightly coloured vessels.” He smoothed out the empty chip packet carefully. “I will keep this. Soon I will have a glorious collection of otherworld artifacts.” My chest ached at how sweet he was. “You don’t have to keep it. It’s just trash.” He gasped. “It is not trash! It is from your world, and you gave it to me. Therefore it is precious.”

“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.”

“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 swallowed thickly, gently touching the tiny blue gem on the ring. “You… you got this done even though you didn’t know if I would ever get better?” “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.”

“This is Cat,” Lyri told me proudly, taking the human’s hand and pressing a smacking kiss to the back of it.