So much hate in her voice, but what did I care? I was almost free, and whatever the monsters wanted in exchange for all of this, it had to be worth it.
Didn’t it?
Zane had answers two days later.
“My cousin applied,” he said, breathless as he burst into my room while I was packing. We had a lease now, ready to be signed in five days. I had a small inheritance to pay the rent for a while, and Zane had a job.
My heart skipped a beat as I turned to him. “Tell me everything.”
He was pink at the tips of his ears as he sat, his hands twisting together restlessly between his spread knees. He didn’t meet my gaze.
“It’s not…a breeding thing,” he said. That had been one of the conspiracy theories floating around web forums. “But it’s close. They need us. They need…” He bit his lip. “No one has been able to give exact details, but he says that it’s more than a pleasure thing. They need it to survive.”
I swallowed heavily as that hit me. I didn’t know much about that. I was a house-bound virgin, after all. But that was going to change. I still had three more years before I was old enough to apply, but I had made my mind up long before Zane told me what he knew.
And now, I was even more ready.
I waited, practically holding my breath until the clock ticked over to midnight and my personal internet profile unlocked. I was eighteen now. The parental controls were null and void.
I half-expected a knock at my door, that my aunt and uncle were going to burst into my room to make one last attempt to control me. But there was only silence as I began to scroll, and while they had both insisted there wasn’t any real information on what the monsters wanted or what they were asking for, it was no surprise to learn they had been lying.
The Vyastil hadn’t come with plans of war and domination, but they were master negotiators. They didn’t want to fight us, they didn’t want to occupy us, they just wanted a way into the human world.
They had a craving. They had aneed.
And at first, it really had been just an agreement to let them travel between worlds freely without their movements beingcontrolled, but a year after they appeared, they came to the government tables with a new request.
The real reason they wanted entrance to our world.
And in order to continue with the technology that we had come to rely on, they wanted something in return.
They wanted access to human semen.They need to suck, as people had been describing it, a need to consume what some human bodies produced.
And, whelp, as a virgin with intact balls and an average-sized cock, I supposed I was on that list.
one
EVEREST
As I sit at the kitchen table, Zane suddenly peers over my shoulder, scaring the shit out of me. He’s fresh from the shower, smelling like his lavender body wash that he always uses right before we head off to the gym.
I’ve never understood why he does that, considering we’re about to get all sweaty and gross, but I’ve stopped wondering about his odd little idiosyncrasies.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
I shrug and gesture at the cover of the orientation pamphlet.
I’ve been looking over the New Beginnings registration information all morning, preparing myself for what’s to come. I turned twenty-one last night, so I was able to fill out all my registration paperwork for monster service, and now I have my first appointment.
My palms are slightly sweaty with nerves, but I don’t want him to know that. From the look on his face, I can tell he knows what I’m reading and he disapproves.
“Shit. Is that what I think it is?” He sounds…not quite disgusted, but not happy, either.
I shift the paper under my water glass and brush the questioning off as I stand up to put my now-empty bowl of oatmeal in the sink.
Zane is such a drama queen most days. He’s known I’ve been excited to register since the monsters first appeared in our world, so I don’t know why he seems so surprised to see the paperwork now that, as of yesterday, I’m of age.
There are ways to get out of service, of course, though most people under the age of thirty don’t succeed at getting more than an extension. Usually, after a few sessions, you can appeal for a permanent exception, though. And as long as there are enough volunteers, most people’s appeals are granted.
