Page 76 of Devour

“He wants me to choose him over me eating him. I know that much. That he hopes I’m going to get to a point where I admit I can’t live without him and I don’t want to, so I will choose by myself not to eat him.”

“What will you do if he actually agrees to you eating him?”

“I… have not considered that. Until now, his free will was his consent. He knows how he can get out of it, and he hasn’t tried. He’s like one step away from total acceptance.”

Gaia clucked her tongue. “He really wants you to change your mind.”

“Could I do that?”

“Of course. Contracts benefit you, and hold him to his word, not the other way around.”

“Except now he wants to eat me. That part isn’t going to go away. By sheer luck alone, he won’t realize he can before his next birthday and even then, if I agree not to eat him, he can still eat me at any time.”

“He got you good.” She smiled. “Kind of impressive, really. This guy’s been working you since day one and now that you’re at the finish line, the odds have shifted in his favor. He’s got the upper hand, finally.”

I slumped my head onto the table. So fucked. So incredibly fucked.

“Do you even want to eat him still?”

Oof. That one hurt. “I don’t know. And I think it would be less terrifying if I at least knew one way or the other, but I don’t. Feels like a lose-lose scenario now. I eat him, I risk my life and lose him. And if I don’t eat him, I still risk my life unless I leave him, which means losing him.”

“Well, the way I see it, you either need to lie low until the opportune moment or… agree to let him eat you and see what happens.”

“Yeah, ironically, still not appealing to me.”

“You might survive. You’re a cockroach and he’s a widdle baby.”

“Not betting on those odds.”

“If you agree… he might decline. Slim chance, but he might.”

“Or he could eat me.”

“He could.” Gaia smirked. “Maybe he won’t.”

“Honestly, has any of this ever happened to you, or anyone?” I asked, rubbing my brow.

“Nope, you’re our only dumbfuck. It’s part of your charm.”

“Okay but… all of this has me thinking: can you even remember back to before? Living differently?”

“Humans can’t remember being born.” She shrugged. “Same concept, I suppose. When you stick around over millennia, the earliest memories disappear first.”

“But when was the last time any of us stumbled across a freshly made one of us?”

Gaia’s brows furrowed. “Maybe not ever. We do our own thing and bump into each other by sheer chance. It can take years, if it even happens at all.”

“This is so outside my realm of knowledge and experience, I don’t even know what to think anymore,” I muttered.

“To be fair, I warned you. This is the textbook definition of creating your own problems. I said to stop fixating, and that feeding off him so much would affect him long term. Didn’t think this would be the outcome, but…” Gaia’s fingers folded while her arms rested on the table. “What’s that expression? You made your bed and now you need to lie in it.”

How fitting.

“There is one other option you’re forgetting.”

“I’d love to hear it.” I sighed and drained my cup of coffee.

A waiter came over for a refill, and Gaia resumed once he stepped away from our table.

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