A Monster's Affection

One-hundred years ago, a virus tore through the world, claiming millions of lives and leaving humanity permanently changed.
Twenty years later, the survivors began to change.
Some lost body parts. Some grew new ones. Others developed claws, fangs, horns, wings- things no human should have possessed. And the worst of them didn't remain human at all.
They became the Affected.

The Affected had children. Their children inherited their mutations. New species emerged, and with them came a new threat to the world as humanity once knew it.

The Unaffected responded the only way they knew how- with laws, cages.
With hunters.
And eventually, with the Affected Culling Project.

My family helped build it.

As a Thorne, I was born into a legacy of hunting the creatures my ancestors deemed too dangerous to live and propagate. My great-grandfather created the ACP. My parents rule the Unaffected. And when they retire, I am expected to carry their legacy forward.

I am one of the best hunters of my generation.
I know exactly what the Monsters are capable of.
I know why they must be eradicated.

At least, I thought I did, until a routine surveillance mission goes catastrophically wrong and I wake up in the territory of Corvus Nyx, the infamous leader of the largest Affected faction in existence.

The leader of the Monsters- my family's greatest enemy. And my captor.

Corvus should be everything I've been taught to hate. Instead, the longer I remain under his watchful eye, the more the world I knew begins to unravel.
Because the Monsters aren't quite what I was told.
And the most terrifying thing isn't that Corvus might never let me escape.

It's that I might not want to.
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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people or events is coincidental.