Overview

Marked from birth, Niko knows his own fate. His eighteenth birthday means his death at the hands of the shape-changing sea-god who marked him, but when things go off the rails, Niko finds a different kind of trouble- and the monster that's supposed to be hunting him has much more interesting aims than eating him alive. Warning: this 16700 word erotic story contains explicit gay sex, shapeshifters, and xenophilia. Excerpt: There’s something like a throne in the center of the room, and it looks more ancient than everything else put together. It’s weirdly organic, more like coral than stone, grown more than built. Gems sit half-submerged inside it like shells at low tide, massive pearls and emeralds and an opal the size of his fist. There’s something wild about it. Something old. He creeps closer and sees the tiny whorls of carvings all along its surface, strange twisting things filled in with charcoal ink and ancient, rust-flaking blood. The walls are covered in the same carvings. The closer he looks the more they stand out. Under the pillows and debris the floor is polished mirror-bright. Another passage slopes up and, presumably, out. He can smell damp earth and growing things carried in on the breeze. This place is a temple gone to seed. This is the house of ever-changing, who once was venerated and now is viewed more as a beast; who once was brought offerings, and now must make do with the ill-born children of distant shores. Niko takes an unsettled step back towards the pool room and his heel bumps the stack of crates. There’s a soft jingle and it’s all the warning he has before he’s being pelted with a stinging rain of gold coins. They crash down all around him with a sound like thunder, every single one of them, and it’s all he can to cover his head to shield himself from the worst of it. When it stops it’s astonishingly silent. Half the floor’s covered in a thin layer of gold. “We have a little thief,” something growls, and a massive clawed hand wraps around Niko’s throat.