Almost offended.
“Good,” I say faintly. “Strong start.”
“Second,” I continue, because apparently we are doing this. “Are you planning to eat me, experiment on me, ransom me, or otherwise turn me into a subplot in your personal horror narrative.”
“No.”
There’s a pause.
“…No,” he repeats, slower this time, like he’s choosing the word very carefully. “I am not going to hurt you.”
My laugh comes out thin and hysterical.
“I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to forgive me if I do not find that immediately reassuring, given that you look like something that crawled out of a very expensive, very cursed gene lab.”
That almost-smile twitches again.
He shifts his weight, just a little, and I tense so hard my ribs ache.
He notices.
Of course he notices.
He still doesn’t move any closer.
“I know what I look like,” he says quietly. “And I know what I did back there. But I didn’t come for you. I came because they were going to kill you.”
The words land somewhere in my chest and just… sit there.
Uncomfortable.
Heavy.
“Oh,” I say again, because I am having a truly banner day for eloquence.
My gaze drifts, traitorous, to the bone spurs tracing faint ridges beneath the skin of his forearms.
They are not extended.
They look… dormant.
Like claws tucked away.
“What,” I ask slowly, “are you.”
He exhales.
It sounds like it hurts.
“I don’t have a good answer to that,” he says.
Of course he doesn’t.
My heart is still trying to beat its way out of my body, but something else is happening under the fear now, something deeply inconvenient and confusing and irritatingly human.
Curiosity.
“And my restaurant,” I say, because if I don’t say it out loud I might actually start screaming. “Is it?—”
