Litecoln
In a city where monsters are regulated, hidden, and never meant to desire humans, the human's life changes in the most humiliating way possible: standing in a grocery store aisle with dark green slime suddenly smeared across their face.
No one sees where it came from. People stare. Whisper. Laugh. Mortified and panicking, the human bolts for the exit, convinced it's some bizarre accident, some chemical spill, some cosmic joke meant only for them.
It isn't.
The slime is a mark-a claiming. Somewhere nearby, unseen and already breaking every rule, a monster has chosen them.
The monster knows what the mark means. The human doesn't. They just know it keeps happening: the lingering sense of being watched, the way the mark returns, the feeling of being recognized in a way that's deeply uncomfortable and strangely comforting. When they finally meet, it's not romantic or smooth. It's tense, awkward, and full of half-truths.
Society forbids what's forming between them. Monsters are not allowed to choose humans, and humans are not allowed to belong to monsters. To cross that line is to invite exile, capture, or worse.
But the human has never fit neatly into the world of rules, and the monster has already broken the most important one. What begins with embarrassment and fear grows into something dangerous: attachment, trust, and a bond that refuses to be erased.
A story about being chosen without understanding why, about love that begins as a mistake, and about two beings who were never supposed to belong to anyone-least of all each other.