Mating monsters i s s, p.1
Mating Monsters (I.S.S.), page 1
Mating Monsters
ISS Universe Novel
M. Sinclair
Lost & Bound Publishing
Mating Monsters
Copyright © 2022 by M. Sinclair in USA
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced/transmitted/distributed in any form. No part of this publication shall be shared by any means including photocopying, recording, or any electronic/mechanical method, or the Internet, without prior written consent of the author. Cases of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law are the exception. The unauthorized reproduction/transmitting of this work is illegal. This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are products of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Created with Vellum
The Union of Love & Madness
Contents
Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Dranos
Chapter 18
Epilogue 1
Epilogue 2
Institutum Sequuntur Somnia
Nightmare Classification
M. Sinclair
Published Works
Description
My monsters had found me… and they weren’t letting me go.
The institute, also known as ISS, housed the most terrifying nightmares that existed in this world…but the true monster was the one that tortured me day in and day out. The one that made me feel worthless and question if I could even call myself a monster. My mother.
I knew I would never escape her. She was everywhere, and two nights before my planned escape, she threatened everything.
Somehow she found out my secret. Somehow she found out about them. My monsters. The only nightmares I could call my own. And when she threatened their very lives? I decided to run, leaving with a severed heart, realizing that they would wake the next morning to find that I was long gone.
They would hate me for it… Or so I thought.
But what happens when they hunt me down? What happens when they show up right when I truly need them? What happens when I realize that the men who chased me halfway across the globe…are actually my mates?
Mating Monsters is a standalone reverse harem novel that features possessive, territorial, and psychotic monsters that will do anything to keep their mate safe… even if it means hunting her halfway around the world. This book is filled with all the monster steam, terrifying creatures with a sweet streak for their girl, and an absolutely guaranteed HEA.
Warnings: This novel includes violence, parental physical and verbal abuse, PTSD, flashbacks of mentioned abuse, swearing, and sexual content for +18.
Chapter One
Isla
I had never felt this alone.
This helpless.
It was a sickening feeling that I knew wouldn’t go away anytime soon… I was trapped. Until my birthday in less than forty-eight hours, when I would officially age up, I was absolutely confined to the rules of this damn institution.
Vulnerable. Powerless. Especially to those who would take advantage of my situation… Namely one individual that had always taken advantage of my situation.
Our home housed nightmares, the most vicious of monsters across the realm, but the only one I wanted to escape was the one living under the same roof as myself. I didn’t often wish to be human, especially considering how horrible they could be towards our kind, but if I was… The rules of ISS wouldn’t matter. I could escape my home and never look back.
Instead, I was caged to the institute by a metal cuff on my wrist, one that signified I was an underaged nightmare and not able to leave the grounds of the estate for my own safety. That I was under the protection of the much scarier creatures that lived here.
Although protection was never what I received.
The worst part? The metal cuff wasn’t something that was needed in most cases. Partly because the institute as a whole didn’t have many underaged nightmares living here, but also because most didn’t try to leave… Unlike me.
After my fourth or fifth attempt to run, my mother had requested that I be cuffed to the confines of this property…and considering her ‘in’ with security, they not only saw me as a problem but handed over the cuff like it was nothing.
So I was very literally trapped here until…
My brow furrowed. What time was it even? I examined the rainy sky and let out a tired sigh. Maybe eight? Nine? Either way, it was twenty-four hours and then some until I was free. That small amount of time seemed extremely overwhelming to think about considering I knew what she was capable of in much less. It was a suffocating sensation, this anxiety about what she could do before I had a chance to leave. It felt like her anger, her punishments, her hatred towards me had only grown stronger over the past few months.
It was terrifying.
Sometimes when I looked into her eyes, I saw the truth. She wanted me gone. If I continued to live side by side with my tormentor, she would kill me. It wasn’t a matter of if but when. Wasn’t your home supposed to be an escape? A safe haven? Instead, it felt like a portal into a prolonged period of torture that never ended. Sometimes, when she really hurt me, I would lose hours, even days. Considering I’d been counting down to my birthday, I had been thankful for those moments because despite being unconscious, it meant that she wouldn’t hurt me any more until I woke up. Not because she was concerned or anything like that; I think she just preferred me awake when she tortured me.
I squeezed my eyes shut as hot tears escaped down my cheeks. Instead of using my power to shield myself from the onslaught of cold rain pouring from the sky, I pulled it in, burying it under layers and layers of control. Something I’d become a master at after the unfortunate time I’d used my small defense measures against my mother. That…that had not gone well at all.
I shivered under the assault of the rain hammering down from the sky, my clothes completely soaked and drenching me in a chill that seeped down to the bone. It felt oddly cleansing—like I could forget about all the bad for the moment and instead let the earth itself absorb me.
At least I was a tad safer out here. She would never come out in the storm to find me. I could just lay here as my magic rebuilt in power. Something that would no doubt take time since my entire body was zapped of energy from trying to heal myself. My magic, at its core, was water-based and had the potential to be at least somewhat powerful… But because of this cuff, which also served to restrain my magic, I had almost nothing. Although, I suppose it didn’t matter because even my best power was nothing compared to my mother’s. Maybe I would have to fall asleep out here—it was no doubt the safest option for me at the moment.
There had been moments in my life when I’d considered telling someone what was going on—hell, I’d been tempted to go to the director of the institute, Director McCroy. But I hadn’t. The main reason was that I wasn’t positive he would care. The director ran all of Institutum Sequuntur Somnia and no doubt had larger concerns than some little nightmare who was constantly being beat on by her mother. After all, there were nightmares being held in captivity by humans. Literal captivity.
So yeah, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he found my issues unconcerning.
A secondary and more significant reason I hadn’t told anyone was due to fear. I had an ingrained sense of terror associated with the concept of doing anything I knew would upset my mother. I couldn’t trust that if I went to Director McCroy, and he ended up caring about the situation, that he wouldn’t go and confront my mother about her behavior, or worse, tell her that I was being forcibly removed from her.
I had no doubt she would make me pay for that. In fact, I wasn’t positive I would survive that particular situation.
If the woman had meant to scare me when she threatened to boil my blood if I ever told anyone about our situation, it had worked. She had also threatened to drain me dry of all the water left in my body. So yeah, I was a bit hesitant to do anything like that… Although, nothing truly compared to the actual blows she landed.
I had to get out of here—it was my only real option anymore.
The most ironic part? ISS was supposed to be a safe haven for nightmares. It was more than that as well, but for lower-level nightmares, it was supposed to be a place to escape the persecution of humans and nightmares alike.
Our world was a dark place, filled with malicious humans that posed a far greater threat than one would imagine. It wasn’t a power-based threat either. When the ‘fall of the veil’ occurred and humans learned that the nightmares that lived in the shadows of their minds, the dark figures they thought they saw while falling asleep at night, were real, everything changed.
Over the course of the forty-something years since, nightmares had gained enough ground to have their own communities, gated and completely self-isolated, as well as institutions like the one I lived at. One that trained nightmares to handle problems and housed nightmares that couldn’t adhere to keeping the peace with humans.
Not that the humans tried to keep the peace.
No, there were actual militia groups that were created to not only persecute nightmares but to also kill them, so we took action and surrounded ourselves with our own kind and high security. Some nightmares in ISS even went on special missions to rescue those who’d found themselves in the clutches of the humans.
In theory, we could’ve wiped the humans out because unless they were in large numbers, humans weren’t a physical threat. But we left them alone. Nightmares fed off humans in some form or another, usually through fear. So if the humans went away, we’d all suffer. Which left us in a position to keep other nightmares from hurting humans—humans that actively wanted to kill us—in order to not mess up the delicate ecosystem.
So yeah… It was pretty damn bad at home for me to want to be any part of that.
I should have been safe here, but I wasn’t. Because of that, I was willing to give the outside world a chance. It was possible that it would be a horrible choice and I’d only place myself in a more dangerous situation, but out there, I would be able to hide. There was no hiding from my mother here.
My mother had worked here her entire life, so I had known nothing else, and I worried that Director McCroy’s loyalty would be towards her as an employee and member of this community. I feared him either dismissing me or going to her. I would rather suffer quietly for less than two more days than to risk that.
There wasn’t any point in poking the metaphorical beast. After all, there was a chance that I could successfully avoid her for the next day or so… Probably.
But where would I go after? Would I really leave these high-security fences and the gorgeous gothic estate that housed the teams of nightmares it trained? Would I walk away from the acres of land that ISS featured, homes nestled throughout for families? I loved this place. I didn’t love who I lived with, but I didn’t want to leave, yet I knew my life was in danger if I stayed. She would literally drain the life out of me.
I only had so much of myself to give, and she was stealing every single ounce of life and joy from me. A sob lodged itself in my throat but never came out, my body sinking further in the mud. I didn’t care, and I didn’t think anyone would be walking out into the storm to see me like this.
No, everyone was inside the main institute complex or cozied up in their homes. It was the middle of the night, and despite loving the dark, most wouldn’t subject themselves to this type of weather. Hell, I had water-based magic and I still wasn’t a fan. It was better than being with my mother, but this was far from ideal.
I frowned slightly. Maybe I would ask to move into the institute building—that wouldn’t seem weird, right? It was gorgeous in there, the warmly lit rooms designed to make nightmares comfortable.
I wanted to feel that way. Desperately.
Eventually, when the rain slowed to a drizzle, I felt a noticeable shift in the air. One that caused a chill to roll over my skin and my cheeks to flush in a weird contradiction. I tried to sit up, my instincts pushing me into action…but my arms had lost feeling long ago.
I let out a small whimper as I fell back onto the ground, closing my eyes as mud splashed around me. Wonderful. My nightmare instincts told me that there was a threat, a predator, someone scarier and far more powerful than me nearby. But because it wasn’t my mother? I felt far less fear than I should have.
I squeezed my eyes closed harder as a dark thought slipped through my head. Maybe they would kill me. Did I want that? Had I really given up to that extent?
My concern for my life was very valid, though. Sometimes nightmares could be extremely aggressive, especially the higher-level ones…in which case they could try to assert dominance and crush my skull in or something equally as terrifying.
The presence grew thicker, and my eyes wrenched open to find a dark form standing over me, shielding me from the rain. I had no idea what to say.
“Get up.”
My body was obeying before I had a chance to overthink it. Unfortunately, my arms didn’t agree and they gave out again, causing me to just give in to it…until I was lifted from the ground. Instantly, a warmth coated my skin, the copper scent of blood filling my senses as I rested my head against the neck of whoever was holding me. At this point I was almost damn positive I was delirious, so I didn’t bother fighting it and instead let out a soft hum at the warmth that covered my body.
I had no idea who this was, but the idea of staying in their arms forever seemed extremely appealing.
My eyes were heavy, and I must have partially fallen asleep for a moment because when I woke up next, I was being placed down on a large couch. I frowned, realizing I was coated in mud and still bleeding, the panic that I would get my filth on the furniture causing me to hyperventilate. I had no idea where I was or who this nightmare was that took me, but if they got mad, I probably wouldn’t survive it.
My eyes darted around wildly before I wrapped my arms around me, examining the home I’d been brought into. Maybe somewhere on the estate? I had no idea, but it was beautiful, far too beautiful for me to be in right now.
The fireplace lit up some of the dark shadows, but the room was low-lit and filled with masculine, comfortable furniture. The only window I could see was large and across the room to my left, the storm lighting up the sky outside. I had no idea how to get out of here, my instincts telling me that I should, but instead… Well, instead I wanted to stay, the space providing me with a bit of comfort I so rarely experienced.
When a low rumble filled the space, I snapped my head towards the sound to find a massive frame crouched in front of me. Oh.
How the hell had I forgotten about my captor? Or savior? Or possible death warden? One of those, but not all of them for sure. How had I landed myself in this situation with this particular nightmare?
Honestly, there were a lot of terrifying nightmares. The ranking system ISS had created, which was adopted by the rest of nightmare culture, was very clear-cut and based upon how much power you had rather than the type of nightmare you were. While some nightmares were powerful enough that their classification was clear at a young age, others like me had to wait until their eighteenth birthday when their power would be fully realized.
Despite my mother being a Class A, I was only a predicted Class C. Which explained why my father wasn’t around.
A Class A mating with a Class D was a death sentence, and clearly he had died…but not before I was created. However, because of my mother, I was very familiar with the strength of Class A nightmares, so I had no doubt I was sitting right in front of one.
Not just a normal Class A, either. No, this one had a particularly strong signature, the scent of blood and bonfire coasting across my skin in an appealing, almost magnetic way, nearly begging me to submit to this individual’s desires. He was a night terror, more specifically, a dhampir.
I was so, so dead. Deader than dead.
“Calm down.” His low, fierce demand had me letting out a strangled sound.
My heart, my pulse, came to a complete halt.
Not stuttered, quickened, or slowed. No, it completely stopped. My blood turned to icy sludge in my veins, my lungs tightened so I couldn’t breathe, and my heart turned heavy like stone.
The room spun, and I heard him curse as his power released me. I let out a gasp as everything kicked back into motion, my body jolting as it returned to its normal rhythm. Two large hands caught me against their chest before I face-planted. I felt sweat break out across my skin, and tears welled in my eyes out of fear, my breathing panicked.
“Focus on me.” The demand was softer this time as I shook my head and let out a whimper.
