Page 38 of Becoming Monsterous

"No, no, and no—though I'd feel better if you had a sword..." She sighs, shaking her golden hair. "It's best to wait until you're all here. I'm not sure that I can explain it twice."

Thankfully Morpheus and Aleron arrive quickly, since their rooms are nearby. Morpheus strides in the room, paces over to me, and looks at me with a sly, knowing expression.

Aleron is slower to enter. His hair is messy, like an ink smudge around his head. Red floats in the green of his irises. He walks cautiously into my room, staring down at the dirty sheets with a thin-lipped expression.

Angus trails after them and closes the door. He doesn't seem to notice anything off at all—or if he does, he doesn't care.

I knew that it would be an issue when I hadsexsex with one of my men. Sure, we've done things with each other, but penetration is... different. Especially with someone like Angus.

I almost feel bow-legged at the thought of what went inside me last night.

But I straighten up and refuse to let myself feel shame. Even though it's hard not to be a little embarrassed, especially since Angus barely got dressed before he went to fetch the others. In his black briefs, there's no hiding his morning wood.

I catch myself staring at it and have to jerk my eyes away. There are bigger problems, I remind myself. Lise is clearly worried about something for a reason.

Morpheus leans down towards me, his lips brushing against my ear. "My time will come, little Ellie. I'll show you what the King of Dreams can do to you when you let him come inside."

Scarlet streaks across my cheeks. I glance anxiously to Aleron, worried he'll lose it. He does look a little jealous, and he's eyeing Morpheus with slight hostility, though that is histypicalexpression. But he moves closer to me and doesn't say anything at all, which is an improvement.

He'll get his chance with me, especially now that he's pulled his head out of his ass. Wealmosthad sex the other day, after all. I have to remind myself that it's not my fault we were interrupted.

We have bigger things to deal with.

"So." Lise spins towards us, wringing her hands, her golden eyes full of worry. "I knew that the Magistrate had something else up his sleeves, and I knew he wasn't going to include me in it. That much is obvious—he's onto me. I only know what little he's let slip because he wanted me to."

Morpheus makes a noise of agreement. "That much is clear. Though I'm surprised it took him this long to figure it out. You haven't exactly hid your affection for Ellie, and he doesn't trust monsters to begin with."

"Yes, well..." Lise colors a little, pulling at the collar of her shirt nervously. "Hedidused to tell me things. That changed recently. We had a little bit of an... affair."

I'm shocked enough to gasp a little, only to realize immediately that it makes a certain amount of sense. Lise always seemed to look at the Magistrate whenever he entered the room, and she would touch Angus or Aleron while making eyes at him, as if trying to make him jealous. I thought she was just being a flirt—that was before I knew her better. After I did, well, I didn't pay much attention to her love life because I was so consumed in mine.

"I cut things off. He wasn't very kind, and he started to demand sex acts in exchange for information, plus he never actually cured me like he promised." She blurts out her explanation quickly. "I thought there were no hard feelings, but he's treating me differently. And I can read him, I knew he was keeping secrets, so... I spied on him. For real this time."

I blink at her. "What did you do? And what did you learn?"

She explains to us in a rush that she managed to hide in the seance room while the Magistrate and a few of the others were in there, including Jean Kincaide. She's gone to enough seances to know the hidden nooks and crannies.

One of them is a hiding place in the ceiling that a spirit told her about—an in-between place, like Occult House itself, that few can sense.

"It's hard to get into, but once you're there, you can see the real world without being seen yourself," she explains. "When they checked the room for strays spirits or magic users they weren't able to find me."

I suck in a breath. "It still sounds risky."

"It was," Lise acknowledges, "but worth it for the information I found out. The Magistrate isn't going to sit around and wait for you to give him Aphrodite's powers. He plans to break your tie to Aphrodite and tie her powers to a different mortal instead."

"Can he do that?" I search inside for Medusa's answer. "Is that even possible?"

I don't know, but if anyone is capable of it, Percy is.

Lise answers, "He seems pretty confident. He even found someone that he knows he can control. Some follower of his named Aaron... someone you're familiar with?"

I grimace. "My ex-boyfriend. I'd almost forgotten he's still alive out there."

Aaron is the reason why I'm in this predicament, but that's easy to forget. It feels like ages ago that he tied to down to a slab of marble and tried to sacrifice me to the gods with his frat bros.

My monstrous men ended that with a good deal of violence. Aaron escaped, but I never found up what he got up to.

It's becoming clearer by the day that I never really knew him. I'm not even sure I loved him, either. Now that I've experienced real love, in all its heartbreaking vulnerability, I feel like what I had with him was nothing but schoolgirl lost and misplaced hope.

---