Page 20 of Becoming Monsterous

"Who is that?" His horns press up against his hair, and his wings grow darker with each passing second. "Who the hell is Aleron, Ellie?"

I can think of a few adjectives. "Flawed, bitter, angry, but also loyal, intense, and deeply wounded. You've been betrayed... but you still have friends and brothers-in-arms. You'd go to the ends of the earth itself for those you care about, but you wouldn't spit on a stranger on fire. You try to hide it, but you care, underneath it all. If you didn't, you wouldn'thaveto hide how much you care in the first place."

"You think you know me, but that's only because you've never truly seenallof me." The feathers of his wings smooth down, their surface slowly turning leathery and black. "I am darkness, Ellie. I am nightmares and wrath. You may think you love me, but in the end, you'll turn away from me like they all have."

"No I won't," I tell him fiercely, thinking of the dying woman hit by a bus, of Uncle Richard's despair towards the end of his life. "I would never abandon anyone because of their darkness.Never."

"Then look at me," he says, his voice growing deep and animalistic, his eyes turning red. "Try to tell yourself that you love me, darkness at all, while staring at it in unflinching horror."

I raise my chin and stare him down, the snakes of my hair slithering around me, their venom and coldness a part of me just as much as Medusa's strength.

"I know I love you, Aleron. Show me your deepest, darkest depths, and I'll still love you. If I cared about you while you were being anabsolute assholeand trying to push you away, some horns and wings certainly won't stop me from loving you now, darkness and all."

"So be it."

He transforms.

It's a slow process that's somehow fast at the same time. With every second, his wings become darker. Claws grow from the ends of his fingers and replace his nails. The horns sprouting from his widow's peak curl up and back, twisting towards the side of his head like black ram's horns.

His teeth grow too, the canines becoming long, pointed fangs that make it impossible for him to close his lips together. The wings at his back become huge and impossible to fully mantle, their leathery tips dragging the floor, just like they did in the Shadow Realm.

His green eyes are fully red, the whites disappearing as the color of blood overtakes them, only his black pupils remaining. And his pale skin is now covered in pulsing purple veins that crackle, dark oily energy spreading from his body outward. It surges around his wings, horns, and claws, smelling acrid like death.

He is, in fact, the King of Nightmares.

I should draw back from him. Loathe him in this form. But somehow, I understand him better like this.

The gods made him this way, for better or for worse. They needed darkness just like they needed light. So they poured it all into the form of one of their children, a creature only a little bit like a mortal man, twisted and bent with the heaviness of magic and power.

Now he's seen as a dog-eating West Virginian-haunting monster. The kind of beast that older siblings warn their younger siblings about. A tale passed down through the generations, embellished with time.

But I see all of him. The young warrior, desperate for freedom, who fought and was betrayed. The bitter prisoner, kept captive in the darkness for decades, unable to escape his own monstrous body.

He doesn't believe that anyone mortal or even part mortal could love him. Yet he craves that love. Because the monsters may have been first, but the gods replaced them with humans. And he's been trying to figure outwhyever since.

He wants to know why he isn't enough. Good enough, pure enough, strong enough, to be loved. Instead of blaming the gods for their betrayal, he blames humans for being easier to love. Even as he loathes them for hating him, he desperately wants them to see him as who he is: thereluctantKing of Nightmares, a man as well as a beast.

I take a step towards him, and another. His breath rasps past his fangs. It's hard to read his expression beneath his heavy, horn-laden brow and his red eyes. But I can sense the quick beating of his heart.

My snakes flick out their tongues, and I taste his nervousness in the air.

He's afraid that I'll reject him.

But I would never betray my terrible, frightful, bitter king.

"You're made of darkness, yes. That's one of the reasons why I love you so much." Placing my hand against his cheek, I draw close to him, until his breath skims my face. "People—mortals, at least—like to pretend darkness doesn't exist. But it lives inside all of us. I know that more than most people. And I've come to accept it... love it, even. Because it's only when we face that darkness that we can be whole."

"You should be afraid of me." His voice is harsh, but I hear the panic beneath the anger. "I'm not human like you, Ellie. I never will be."

There's so much fear in his chest. I can sense it in the air now.

Maybe that's all the bitterness was this whole time.

"I'm not human anymore either," I point out, pressing my hips forward until our bodies meet. "I don't think I ever wanted to be one of them, if I'm telling the truth. I was always meant for this monstrous world."

His hardness pushes up against my thigh, and he reaches out to brush his claws against my waist, his touch delicate and strangely soft.

"You mean it." There's wonder in his red, blank eyes. "You actually mean it."

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