Page 39 of Monster’s Obsessive Hunger
THORRIN
T he peace we have built is a fragile, beautiful thing.
For weeks, the cave has been a home, the silence filled not with emptiness, but with the soft sounds of Lyssa’s life.
Her humming as she works, the scratch of her knife as she carves figures into scraps of wood, the quiet rustle of pages as she reads to me from her mother’s book by the firelight.
These are the new rhythms of my world, and they have been enough. I have been content.
But the curse is a patient and insidious thing.
Today, the old hunger returns. It is not the sharp, desperate craving for her that I have come to know.
It is the original ache, the deep, cold gnawing in my core that I have carried for centuries.
It is a slow, creeping chill, a reminder of the physical need for blood that I have been willfully ignoring, sustained only by the warmth of her presence.
I try to ignore it. I watch her as she mends my old, tattered cloak with a steady, practiced hand, her brow furrowed in concentration.
The sight of her, so focused and so beautifully domestic in my monstrous lair, should be enough to quiet any ache.
But it is not. The hunger is a cold presence in my gut, a slow, insistent pressure behind my ribs.
I cannot let her see this. I cannot let her see the return of the beast she has worked so hard to soothe. I need to hunt. I need to sate this physical craving with the blood of some forest creature, to prove to myself that I can still control it, that my existence does not depend entirely on her.
I stand, my movement causing her to look up from her work, her eyes full of a soft, trusting light that is a fresh torment. “I am going on patrol,” I say, the lie a rough, unfamiliar stone in my throat. “To check the borders.”
She nods, her smile so full of unblemished faith in me that it is a physical pain. “Be safe,” she says, as if I am the one who needs protection. I am. But not from the dangers of the forest. I need protection from myself.
The forest welcomes me with its familiar, brutal silence.
I move through my territory with a grim purpose, my senses, which have been softened by domesticity, sharpening once again to the hunt.
The need for a kill is a cold, hard knot in my belly.
This is not for pleasure, not for the thrill of the chase.
This is a grim necessity, a maintenance of the monstrous machine that is my body.
The hunt is quick. I find a lone batlaz , a vicious, fox-like pack hunter, separated from its kin.
It is a worthy kill, its muscles coiled with a feral strength that would challenge any lesser predator.
It snarls at my approach, its fangs bared, and pure, simple aggression.
I feel a flicker of something that might be kinship.
We are both predators, bound by our nature.
I do not play with it. I do not savor its fear.
The kill is a swift, mechanical act, my claws finding its throat with a practiced efficiency that feels like a memory from another life.
I feed, the warm, coppery taste of its blood a familiar sensation on my tongue.
I drink deeply, waiting for the familiar, fleeting relief to wash over me, for the cold ache in my gut to subside, for the light inside me to hush. To let me be.
But the relief does not come. The blood is…
hollow. It is a dead, tasteless thing on my tongue, like drinking dust and ash.
It provides no warmth, no strength, no satisfaction.
A cold dread, far more terrifying than the hunger itself, begins to seep into my bones.
The curse has changed. It is no longer just hungry; it is specific.
I pull back from the carcass, a growl of horrified disbelief tearing from my throat.
My body, which should be absorbing the life force of my kill, rejects it.
A wave of nausea, a sensation I have not felt in centuries, convulses through me.
I stumble to my knees in the snow and retch, a thick, black bile pouring from my mouth, the taste of ash and my own failure burning my throat.
The curse no longer accepts substitutes.
My body will not take sustenance from any source but one. It only wants her.
I stumble back to the cave, my body weak, my mind reeling with a new and terrible understanding.
The physical hunger is a raging, unsatisfied fire now, stoked by the failed feeding.
I am a starving man who has just been shown that the only food he can eat is the one thing he has sworn never to touch.
I crash through the entrance of the lair, a creature undone, a monster brought to its knees not by a hunter’s blade, but by the cruel, elegant design of its own curse. Then I see her.
She is standing by the fire, humming a soft tune as she stirs the stew she was making for our meal.
She looks up at my sudden, violent entrance, her expression shifting from surprise to a deep, immediate concern.
She sees the state of me—the weakness in my limbs, the chaotic, furious light in my chest—and she takes a step toward me, her hand outstretched.
“Thorrin?” she says. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
The moment her gaze meets mine, the moment I am back in the warmth and light of her presence, the agonizing, clawing ache in my gut eases .
It does not disappear. But it recedes from a roaring inferno to a manageable fire.
Her presence, her simple existence, is the only medicine that can touch my pain.
I stare at her, this beautiful, impossible human who is both my salvation and my doom. A new and terrifying truth crystallizes in my mind, cold and sharp and absolute. I whisper the words to myself, a final, horrified confession in the quiet of our home.
“I’m losing the ability to want anything else.”
This fragile peace is a lie I tell myself. She is not a balm; she is the banquet, and my starvation is absolute. I look at the elegant line of her throat, the way the skin stretches, so soft and perfect, over the life thrumming within.
The beast inside me doesn't bay; it purrs, a low, predatory rumble of anticipation. There will be no more waiting. There will be the cornering, the possessive hand on her jaw, tilting her head to the side.
There will be the moment her breath catches, a hitch of fear that will taste like nectar on my tongue. And then, the bite.
Not a frenzied attack, but a slow, deliberate claim, my teeth sinking into the sensitive place where her neck meets her shoulder.
A mark. A brand. A final, undeniable statement that she is, and always was, mine to consume.