“Hey, Leema. How you doing?” Notto asks.
Leema stares at me for a minute, and I get the distinct impression that they don’t like me. Kaida feels it too. She lies across my lap, facing Leema with her hackles raised.
“Fine,” Leema says. “You?”
“I’m okay. This is our… friend, Rainer. He thinks that monsters are the only ones capable of cruelty since they’re the ones who brought the human race to near-extinction.”
Leema snorts. “Really?” they say, and before my eyes, their scales, fins, and tail sink into their body until I’m left staring at a woman covered in scars.
“He’s angry that humans are fighting for survival in a nasty world while monsters are living the dream,” Notto continues.
Leema’s eyes bore into mine, and yep, I can feel hostility radiating from her. Kaida lets out a low warning growl.
“Do you see my scars, human?” she asks, getting to her feet and making a slow revolution in front of me. “Can you count how many I have?”
I swallow, shaking my head.
“A monster didn’t do this to me. Humans did.” My entire body turns cold. “I was a child, only ten years old, when three men accosted me on my way home from school. Theyput me in a bagand flung me into the back of a van. I was taken to a prison where they kept other monsters they’d captured in cages. Cells. Rooms where they performed unspeakable experiments on them. I didn’t end up in a cage, which would have been the preferable outcome. Instead, I ended up in a room where, daily, they tortured meto see how I’m put together.”
Chills race over my body.
“This isn’t an isolated situation. At ORKA’s peak, thesehumanshad over 4,000 agents hunting monsters. They used magic they’d stolen from the monster community against monsters. There were more than a thousand facilities like this around the world with more than 100,000 monsters kept within their walls. Monsters were tortured, experimented on, abused, and raped. All because humans thought that they had the right to treat us like animals becausewe’re not human.”
I can feel the disgust in her voice, but I don’t blame her. I’m disgusted too.
“Do you think that I should want to live with humans?”
I shake my head. “No,” I whisper.
She turns and walks off the side of the rock, disappearing under the surface of the water with barely a splash.
“I can’t believe you brought him here to meet Leema,” Iska says, laughing.
“He thinks that monsters are theonlymonsters to exist. I needed to prove him wrong,” Notto says, shrugging. “It’s important that he knows his race aren’t the only victims of disgusting crimes. Even now, there are still humans who do unspeakable things to monsters when they get the chance. After all,you’rehunting monsters.”
“They killed my parents,” I hiss.
“I’m not saying your reason isn’t just.This time.But don’t pretend that if you ran into us under different circumstances that your first reaction wouldn’t have been to kill us as cruelly as your parents were murdered. Meanwhile, we aren’t associated in any way with the monsters who killed your parents. We’re the group of monsters who stopped your species from being completely annihilated. We’re the monsters hunting the pods who continue to hurt humans and monsters alike, yet, like Leema, you would lump us in with those of the pod.”
The fight, the anger that I harbored, rushes out of me on my next inhale.
“Don’t be so quick to judge what you don’t understand,” Notto says.
“For the record, humans are welcome here,” Iska says. “They’re welcome on all the bases. That’s why the doors are always left wide open.”
I… I don’t know what to think right now.
NOTTO
Know when you can’t win a fight. There’s nothing stupider than rushing in when you know you’re going to be slaughtered. You deserve that death if you’re that self-righteous.
B“Do you know why the libraries are beast-free and always stocked with basic necessities to live?” I ask Rainer.
He gives me a wary look. “No.”
“Because we,monsters, know that humans are distrustful of us. Most won’t go near the bases where their chances of survival are greatest, so we created neutral spots and keep them stocked with what you need to live another day.”
He doesn’t like it when I tell him all the ways that monsters are trying to keep humans alive. I go one further and add, “It’s fae magic that keeps the beasts out and witch magic that keeps the ill-intended out, meaning monsters who would use these spots to hunt humans or vice versa.”
