Page 104 of Monster. Me.

A wave of terror crashes over me as I realize they’re shooting at him with live ammunition, not rubber bullets.

"No!" I scream. "Stop! Stop shooting him!"

It can’t be, no, no!

They want to kill him like a beast, the way they see him. They want to slaughter him right here in front of me, hunt the monster, destroy this unique being…

I throw myself toward Fenn and wrap my arms around him, wanting them to stop shooting, hoping they’ll decide he’s no longer a viable target because I’m a civilian.

"Move aside!" someone shouts through a megaphone.

Unexpectedly, I feel Rupert grab me from behind and start pulling me the other way.

"Let him go!" Drax snarls. "Marlow is everything to me!"

But Rupert pushes himself to the limit of his strength. He locks something like a chokehold around my neck, cutting off my ability to breathe, and starts dragging me backward.

For a short moment he pulls me away from Fenn, and then more rounds hit him…

He falls onto his side, blood creating a red pool on the floor…

A horrifying scream tears from my throat, but then something begins to change.

His body starts growing, jerking. Oh my dear Fate, Fenn Drax is taking on his true form, the one he talked about so many times, saying nobody wanted to see it…

"Oh, fuck. What the fuck is that?" Rupert mutters, dragging me even farther away.

The police keep shooting at him, but this time the rounds bounce off his hard, insect-like body.

What Fenn has transformed into is nothing like what I imagined in my wildest dreams.

I thought maybe he was some kind of bear, or a yeti, or maybe a giant wolf.

But this is something far more terrifying.

He resembles a gigantic praying mantis standing on massive black legs, with enormous prismatic, faceted eyes similar to those of the cat-eyed mantis species, the outer edges of his eyes rising upward like two horns. On top of that, he has simply magnificent wings. Their lower halves shimmer with iridescent colors, shifting along the sides with an almost luminescent sheen, while the upper portions fade into a pattern resembling enormous, ominous eyes staring directly at whoever stands before him. Their surface gleams like nacre, and the edges are so delicate and translucent, like an ethereal veil of lace. What an extraordinary marvel of nature!

Fenn is huge now, so huge that he towers a good sixteen feet above the ground… Wow.

Similarly to a praying mantis, he has gigantic spiked forelimbs.

The police bullets stop having any effect on him. They bounce harmlessly off his black-and-purple insectoid exoskeleton.

I look at him, straight into those bizarre eyes that seem to follow my every movement.

And then I remember that moment when I stood before him after my shift and he accepted me.

And this is the moment when I owe him exactly the same thing.

So I move toward him, shoving Rupert away with all my strength.

The mantis lowers itself slightly as if it wants to get a closer look at me, tilting its bizarre head a little.

And I don’t hesitate; I wrap my arms around the armored neck of the creature, even though I know that with a single movement of those forelimbs it could tear me in half.

But it doesn’t.

And I whisper, "I choose you, Fenn. I choose you!"