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“Nobody calls her Tally but me,” Cato hisses. Moving so fast, I don’t even see him, Cato drags the monster from his chair and points his finger in his face, and the monster holds up his hands, grinning.
“Sorry, Cato.” He smiles wider, definitely not sorry as he winks at me. “See you around, human.” He slips past an angry Cato and whistles as he walks off. I’m pretty sure he did it just to test Cato, but I roll my lips in and place my hand on a vibrating Cato. He whirls, but when he sees it’s me, he softens as all the fight leaves him.
“Come on, Tally. We need to get you food, and then it’s time to work. We need to figure out what these humans are up to.” I take his hand and let him pull me to my feet. He keeps it as he leads me downstairs to the others, and I find myself grinning at that, despite the fact that he doesn’t belong to me.
I can’t be his Tally. Not forever.
* * *
After eating downstairs with everyone, we excuse ourselves back to the lab, ignoring the knowing looks. They think we are sneaking away to do something else.
Cato dons his lab coat and even brings me one, and then side by side, we start to work and catalogue the research. We won’t have time to go through all of it in a hundred years, but we need to pinpoint what is important and what can help us.
It’s a slow, arduous task, but it sets my mind at ease. There’s no time for worries or questions, and no time to even analyse the strange feelings I have for my lab mate. We just work seamlessly, barely needing to talk, which to some might seem awkward and strange, but I enjoy it. I hate having to repeat myself or dumb down my intellect to work with others, and with him, I don’t have to. He knows what I need or mean, and I do the same for him, understanding his thought process, since it’s very similar to my own.
It’s relaxing, despite the deadline we are under, and I find myself smiling as I work, thoroughly enjoying myself in the lab in a way I haven’t for a long time. I haven’t truly enjoyed myself since my mother and father first took me to theirs and gave me my own desk to conduct experiments. Ever since then, I was always racing—racing to graduate, racing to make a name for myself, racing to be better than the men around me.
The truth is, I already was, and if I were born as a man, I would have been promoted many times over and given my own lab before now. It annoys me, because my gender holds me back, and it’s something I couldn’t understand for a long time. Why does being female affect how I should succeed? Why should it put this invisible barrier on anything I can do? It shouldn’t. There was always so much fight and talk for equality among the sexes, yet even now, it still exists. Women still have to fight twice as hard to be at the same, if not lesser, position of a man in the same field.
Our world is broken, meant to keep women down, created and run by men. It always benefits them.
But not here.
Here, there is true equality. Women can be warriors who are just as good, if not better, than men. They can be mothers and work. They can do whatever they want to without judgment or penalisation for being born with a vagina, and maybe that’s the reason I’m starting to fall in love with this forgotten city. Despite the fact everyone thinks these monsters are feral beasts, and they are in some ways, they are more advanced than humans.
Hours later, I sit back, scrubbing at my face in annoyance. “I can’t make sense of half of these notes. It’s so hard to work backwards from the end results.”
“Think it through logically then.” Cato turns to me, patiently ignoring my rapidly deteriorating mood. “What do they want?”
“I don’t know. To create more monsters?” I throw my hands in the air and think that through. “Which, if they do, means they need the original research. Do they want to make more or hide something?” I lean forward, and something seems to click. I look at him, open-mouthed, to see him grinning at me. I narrow my gaze. “What?”
“I just know you can figure this out, Tally. If anyone can, it’s you and your brain.” He shakes his head. “It’s incredible. You were born to do this, to be a scientist and help people.”
I blush and duck my head, not used to praise, but he doesn’t allow me to, pulling my chin up.
“Never be embarrassed about your success or intellect with me. Own it. You are incredible.”
“And you aren’t? Look at you.” He grins shyly, and I glance back at the research, making him laugh.
“Go ahead, talk it out loud. I know you need to because I have to as well.” Cato has been more than happy for me to take the lead on this, bowing to my knowledge on humans and the way they would work. He trusts me to understand it and help his people.
I roll my shoulders back, straightening with purpose. I don’t want to let him down. “I’m making logical assumptions here. It’s almost like they are trying to replicate something, like an original experiment or bond. I’ve never seen genealogy quite like this,” I mutter. “I can understand some, but I need samples to compare them to. It would make sense that some are human and some are monster, so I’m going to draw blood and give myself a baseline to work on, and then we can categorise everything and try to work through the samples. You can take notes, since you were there. How does that sound?”
When I lift my head, he’s watching me, his eyes red with hunger, and then his lips crash onto mine in a blistering kiss before he pulls back. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.” He grins cheekily. “Draw my blood. Everything I have is yours anyways, Tally.”
Something about that feels too serious, too much like a promise of forever, when we know we only have now, so I ignore it, gathering what I need and taking his blood. He watches me intently the entire time. He doesn’t flinch or complain, and when I’m done, he softly takes my hand, leans down, and kisses my jumping pulse, making me gasp.
He draws my blood so softly, it’s almost erotic, and when he’s done, he leans in and licks the little hole. My eyes shoot wide, while his own are still red, and he grins at me wickedly, flashing fangs.
“I love the way you taste, like how I imagine the sun does,” he whispers. “All bright, airy, and perfect.”
I duck my head, pulling away and putting the samples into the testing machines I need, and when I sit back down, I’m flustered, my vagina almost panting for this monster.
“You know I can smell your desire, right, Tally?” he rumbles, and I turn to see his claws ripping into the table as if to keep himself in check. “It’s enough to drive me wild and make me forget everything we should be doing right now. I want to taste that sweet desire that is wrapping around me.”
Shit. I try to calm down, but his words don’t help. They go straight to my throbbing clit, which practically puts up a sign sayingyes please.
Not mine, not mine, I remind myself, but when he leans in, closes his eyes, and inhales, letting out a moan, my traitorous body doesn’t care he’s not supposed to be mine. All it cares is that this monster, this man, excites me in a way no other ever has—not just physically, but intellectually—and I’m done fighting this. I should, but part of me wants to own this, to have him, even for a moment.
