Leech

Dead.
He's dead.
It echoes in my head like a waking nightmare.
Shadows in Bloom was my fresh start. All the baggage I've carried around background noise that feeds the songs we play on stage each night. Sweat-soaked and trauma ridden, we found ourselves in each other's beds more nights than not.
Blood stains my hands, my cheeks, my clothes.
Hell, it's probably stained my soul with how tightly I hold his lifeless body to mine.
This isn't how my story was supposed to go. Our story. The start of the one unbroken thing in my life.
He's dead.
Legend says there's a creature in the woods made of bark and vines who preys on the desperate and lonely.
Maybe, just maybe if I lay here long enough the creature will come for me.
Maybe they'll devour me whole.
Encase me in a cocoon of endless darkness.
I hum into the void.
Fade into the pain until it's all that I am.
Until a voice rasps into my ear,
"Mine, silly human. You've always been mine."

Leech is a full-length MM monster romance centered around grief, healing, and the lengths a manipulative little plant creature will go to to own his favorite human. This novel is part of the Mayhem Manuscripts Cryptids shared world collaboration.