THE BEAST

10: A Calm Before A Storm

"Your food is growing cold," the man told me in a bored tone, pointing his blood stained fingers at the rare, already cold, meat in front of me.

I swallowed down bile and turned my head away. I could feel his eyes on the side of my face but he didn't say anything else. He just went back to eating his kill of the night. I guess I should feel lucky that it wasn't me.

I couldn't forget the look of hurt in his eyes at the fact that I purely drugged him and almost escaped the clutches of such a mad man. In fact, it was hard to picture him as a man after what I have seen him do in the past twenty-four hours. Or was it longer? Shorter? I didn't know how much time has passed since I came into these woods.

Were my Gran and Mother worried? Had they called the police? Surely someone was out looking for me.

"I need to know," I finally said after an hour of silence. I was still sitting at the table while the beast had grown tired of me ignoring him, and moved to sharpen another one of his knives. It didn't matter how many times he took the jagged rock to the blade, it was never going to be sharper than his teeth in his wolf form.

"Need to know what?" He answered, again sounding bored.

If he didn't want me around he should let me go.

"How you know me." The question seemed obvious but apparently there was an inside joke that I was missing. I gritted my teeth as he chuckled. "I don't find this very amusing."

"I do. Because it amuses me greatly how a hauntingly curious little cat like yourself can go through life and never question the missing links."

"I don't have any missing links," I told him. I wrapped the red blanket he had given me tighter around my shoulders. "But you surely appear to." I muttered the last part under my breath but by the puff of air that seemed to blow out like smoke out of his nostrils, I assumed he heard me.

Which would explain a lot. Like how he must have heard me pick those berries while he faced away from me as well as squirt them into his tea. Blame it on the howler's ears.

"I am growing sick and tired of you dodging my questions. What do you plan on doing with me? Baiting me? Killing me? Being your next meal? Just tell me so I can prepare myself for what is to come." I forced the tears to stay at bay. Now wasn't the time to show weakness. I was not a prey.

"You've always had such a temper on you, little flower. Used to scare me a little back in the day but now," he turned and he braced his elbows on the tops of his thighs, narrowing those eyes of his on me, "now I enjoy the redness that dots the top of your chest and how your eyes alight like a forest fire." He bit his bottom lip into his mouth as his eyes roamed towards my chest and I pulled the blanket as well as the green button-down he gave me closer to my body. "It's very amusing indeed."

I grew quiet again because I didn't know what to say after that. Half of me was scared out of my mind and the other half... That half was being it's normal unhelpful self. Call it stockholm syndrome if you must. I tried to ignore the hotness that my body engulfed itself with but it was proving to be harder said than done with him still watching me.