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We can't. He's scared of me. Scared of us.

A low whine escaped before I could stop it, and his head jerked in our direction, eyes wide with alarm. I couldn't blame him. The sounds we made were unnatural. Wrong. Meant to confuse and cause fear.

"I-I know you can't understand me, but I'm going to leave the food here, okay?" he said, still watching the trees where we hid. "I'll keep bringing you food, so please don't eat my animals. I'll keep the chickens in their coop, but if the mule escapes, he's not food."

We'd smelled them, and with hunger twisting and gnawing at the marrow of our bones, it was so hard to resist. But they carried his scent, all of them, and so they were safe. We ate the squirrels too stupid to stay away, one rabbit too injured to run, and it was never enough, never enough to satisfy the hunger, but it was safe. No one looked for us here, at his home. Not yet. Venturing further risked us becoming prey.

He glanced up toward the cameras, mounted on poles around the edges of the land that smelled like him. He wanted to see us; that much was obvious. If he left the food there, it would taunt us all night, but the risk was too high.

Maybe he knew. Maybe he guessed that he wasn't dealing with anything he'd ever seen before. Or maybe he was simply a good person. Those existed somewhere, but nowhere I could remember.

Whatever the reason, he stepped forward, closer, coming to where he'd met us yesterday. It was close to the trees, out of the view of the cameras.

"I don't know what you are, so I don't know what you eat, but I hope this is alright." Keeping his eyes locked on the trees, he squatted down and opened a large plastic container. The smell of cooked chicken soaked in its own juices hit us, and I barely restrained the beast from lunging forward.

Our rustling startled the human, and he quickly stood, stumbling back a few steps. The dog at his side growled, and he was as near to darting forward as my beast, but neither made the first move, instead settling into a tense standoff.

"You're not going to come out while I'm here, are you?" The human's lips quirked into a sad almost-smile. I knew better, though. If he saw us, he would wish he'd called the hunters.

He waited a little longer, and my hold on the beast frayed as our belly cramped, desperate for food. I didn't want him to leave, but we needed him to, and finally, with one last lingering look, he did.

Still, we waited, ears perked, until we heard his door closing in the distance. Only then did I let go, and we surged forward. Our claws sank into the cooked meat, ripping it apart and shoving it into our mouth. I tasted blood where our sharp talons cut into our lip, too hungry to be careful.

We ate every single morsel, cracking the bones and sucking out the marrow, then eating the bones whole when bits remained inside, even licking the inside of the container to get any lingering juices.

It still wasn't enough, but it was the most we'd eaten in longer than I could remember. Every day in these woods, we'd been hungry. Before…

The gate in my mind slammed down again, barring the memories, but I knew we'd been hungry Before, too.

Once every bit of the chicken was gone, I carefully closed the container again. Difficult to do with claws, but some part of me knew how to do it. I couldn't remember why I knew or who'd taught me, though.

"You can't leave open containers around, or we'll get bugs."

The words whispered in the back of my mind in a voice I didn't recognize, but knew better than I knew myself. That wasn't a surprise, though, for a monster with no name and no past.

Leaving the container where he'd put it, now sealed up, we slunk back into the woods. Our wing still dragged the ground and our back leg still hurt enough that I should worry, but at least we weren't quite so hungry.

There was no den for us here, not if we wanted to stay in sight of his house, but our skin was tough and we'd dug into the cold, frozen earth, creating a burrow beneath the dense tangle of brambles and bare, broken branches.

We lay down in the dirt, my beast and I, our injured wing draped to the side and our eyes locked on the quiet cabin, watching until exhaustion finally took us.

Chapter 7

Quinn

A plastic container sat on my kitchen table, mocking me.

"Rom? Am I going crazy?"

My dog looked up from the kitchen floor, where he lay splayed on his side with two kittens asleep on his side. Aramis and D'Artagnan were turning out to be the somewhat calm half of the litter. Athos sat down by Rom's tail, swatting at it whenever he moved it, and Porthos was doing his best to climb up my leg as I made coffee, undeterred whenever I detached him and put him down.

Rom's tail thumped against the floor, much to the glee of Athos, and he tilted his head, staring up at me with canine confusion.

"Okay, I know I joke about being crazy a lot and I know I honestly need a therapist, but that's not the point." I sat down at the table, careful not to squash the kitten.

Rom tilted his head the other way, and that was enough of a response for my pre-coffee brain to run with.

"The point is this." I pointed to the container. "I left it open for whatever is in the woods so it could eat, which it clearly did. So tell me why it's closed now?"