Page 52 of King of the Unsightly

It stretched out and contorted as his claws morphed and lengthened into legs.

Feathers collected around his newly constructed back, and his talons expanded and broke into arms as his body turned ... human.

Except for his sharp features and feral eye.

Gren laid there as a man, exposed to all the elements.

I had to blink a couple of times for it to sink in.

It was Gren. He still had his right eye and the evident scar down the other one stopping above his upper lip. He was tall and slender but still looked young and strong as his hair relaxed in waves right below his brows in the same hue as his feathers, ebony to complement his sun-kissed skin.

His eye fluttered open and it was darker than the night sky. Almost listless.

He stood up and leaned back against the tree to gain some equilibrium.

He rolled his muscular shoulders and stretched his arms in bizarre angles.

His mind looked as if occupied by a heavy fog until his eye flickered to mine.

A million thoughts ran through me. What if I summoned a demon? Were demons real? And what if a demon now possessed Gren’s human body?Did I somehow fuck up, again?

I gawked at Gren as he stalked over to the monster—too preoccupied with Kaschel to even notice Gren looming behind it.

Then Gren raised his hands to the beast’s neck and ripped its head clean off.

A grayish blood gushed out everywhere, soaking both Kaschel’s and Gren’s bodies.

Memories

Gren dropped the monster’s corpse on the ground, and a clamorous thud followed.

“That would have been so much more convenient minutes ago,” Kaschel growled as he fell to his feet and rubbed his bruised throat, coughing up blood.

Gren didn’t respond as he turned back around. He spotted me in the dirt struggling to get my body to move.

His deadly silence made my skin crawl. My lungs collapsed with each stride he took. His forbidding aura dimmed the sky.

I wanted to stand up and run, but I also had too many questions.

Gren loomed over me with a detached stare and my breath hitched, but I couldn’t utter a single word.

Gren scooped me up, and I squeaked as he guided us to the front door.

He glanced at me, expressionless. “You’re bound now.”

I opened my mouth, but it just hung there with no clever retort. Gren sighed in frustration and his face clouded with indifference again.

“You’re not old,” I blurted out.

It wasn’t the first thought to run through my mind. I had thousands upon thousands, but the idiotic ones always clawed their way to the surface and pushed the logical ones away.

Gren furrowed his dark brows in confusion as his lip twitched downward; his scar moved with it. “And?”

I mumbled a quicknothingunder my breath. I shifted away from his grim expression to Kaschel who looked like he doused himself in a blood bath, which I guess he kind of did.

I clenched my chest as a strange emptiness ate away at me. I couldn’t quite put it into words, but a numbing coldness consumed me, creating a gaping hole in my chest.

Did I lose something back there?

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