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He freezes before moving so fast, I fall back to my hands as his face is pushed into mine. He’s bent before me with a snarl tipping up his lips and his horns almost catching in my hair. “You will not ever be hungry with me, understood?”
I nod meekly, and he pulls back.
“Good.”
“Why?” I whisper. “Why do you care when humans don’t even? They could see me starving and would step over my body like I was nothing… So why?” I find myself asking.
“Why?” He seems confused. “Why would I leave you hungry when I can feed you?”
“My own people don’t care, so why should a monster?” I ask bluntly.
He blinks as if he doesn’t understand the question. “The question you should ask, human, is why your people don’t care but a monster does?” With that, he turns and moves around the room, muttering to himself about human sustenance as I watch him, pondering what he said.
He’s right—how could they not care, but someone they deemed a creature, a monster, does?
Are we the fucked-up ones?
Are we really the monsters here?
After a few minutes of me thinking about everything, he elegantly sits cross-legged opposite me with his knees touching mine. His tail is draped across his lap, and the contrast between his red skin and my pale complexion has me staring for a moment…as does the fact I’m more comforted by his presence than scared.
“Here,” he murmurs, handing me food. There’s some wrapped sweets, a bottle of water, cheese, and a tin of fruit. I blink in shock, and he mistakes it for hesitation. He rips up the bread and lifts his huge, red hand to my mouth.
“Bite,” he instructs patiently.
My mouth automatically opens, and I take a bite, the flavour of the bread snapping me out of my stupor, so I quickly chew and swallow before taking another bite. He slowly feeds me bite after bite, seemingly happy as I eat. When we are on the chocolate, I finally realise how close we are. My hand is on his, holding it still as I wrap my mouth around his fingers. For a moment, we freeze and stare at each other.
Something pulses through me.
Something…foreign.
“It’s okay,” I promise, breaking the moment as I take the food. Unable to take the intimacy anymore, I avert my eyes. “I can feed myself the rest.”
He seems unhappy but hands it over and stands.
As I finish eating, he moves around the room, gathering something as I watch. I nibble on the food for the sake of it, not really hungry anymore but unable to turn a free meal down. When he starts putting it all together between the door and me, and I realise what he’s doing…
He’s building a bed for the tiger, piling up old clothes, blankets, and things he’s collected, and forming it into a comfy little bed for him. He eyes it warily, moving things until he’s happy, and then he steps back as I watch.
“Here.” He nods at the beast, who narrows his eyes but wanders closer, swatting him as he goes past. My monster hisses at him but watches as the tiger circles it before curling up, his eyes locked on me in approval. The monster nods like he’s happy and looks back to see me watching him, and then he shrugs in an almost humanlike gesture.
“He might as well be comfortable, then he will be less likely to kill me.”
“Don’t you need to eat?” I finally ask as I draw my knees up and rest my chin on them.
He watches the movement before hesitating. “Yes, but I do not want to scare you.”
“You won’t scare me. Eat, please,” I urge, not wanting him to starve himself simply for my human sensibilities. I was not, however, prepared for what he does, though I should have been.
He opens a freezer chest I didn’t see to the side and pulls out raw meat. With his eyes on me, like a test to see how I’ll react, he tears into it. Blood runs across his teeth and lips and even drips down his chin.
I swallow the bile that surges up my throat and look away for a second before looking back. I need to handle it. After all, I did some stuff I’m not proud of to survive. The things I ate…it would make him sick, and besides, this is who he is. I stiffen my spine and harden my stomach and watch him eat. He even throws some to the tiger, who gratefully rips into it, holding it between his paws.
Between them, the scent of blood and meat fills the air, making the food in my stomach churn, but I force it down, not wanting to seem weak. At least he didn’t try to feed me that.
“You shared your meal, you’re a softy,” I tease, distracting myself from the sick feeling in my stomach and the odour in the air.
He snorts before coming back over and sitting with me. “Don’t let my people hear you say that.”
