POV: Evan
Three hours of shit.
We walked through tunnels that smelled of death and chemical drainage until my lungs burned. Ayla didn't complain once. She walked ahead, seeing in total darkness, guiding me through the underground maze with a predatory ease that made my skin crawl.
We surfaced five kilometers from the precinct, in a ghost residential neighborhood — one of those half-built areas the banks foreclosed.
I knew where to go. House 402 on Oak Street. It was a "blind spot" rookies used to nap in on the night shift. Water and gas tapped in illegally.
Now it was my hideout.
I smashed the back window with my elbow wrapped in my jacket and climbed in. The house was empty, cold, and smelled of stagnant dust.
"The bathroom's at the back," I said without looking at her. I didn't want to see the shine in her eyes in the dim light. "Take off those clothes. We stink."
Ayla sniffed the sleeve of the jacket. She made a face, wrinkling her nose and showing a little of her teeth. A totally animal gesture.
"The shit smell masks my trail," she growled. "But it's… annoying. It stings."
While she went into the bathroom, I went to the kitchen.
My hands trembled—not from the cold, but from adrenaline crashing down. I had just flushed my life down the toilet. I was a fugitive. And I was locked in an abandoned house with… her.
I needed to do something normal. I needed to anchor myself to reality before I went insane.
I opened the pantry.
An opened pack of pasta. A dented can of tomato sauce. Garlic powder.
Enough.
I lit the gas burner. The click-click of the lighter and then the blue flame were the most comforting sounds in the world.
I put water on to boil.
I started to cook. Not because I was hungry. I cooked because if I stopped moving my hands I'd start screaming.
The sound of water hitting the shower stopped.
A minute later I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise. There were no footsteps. Her presence simply filled the room.
I turned.
Ayla stood in the kitchen doorway. She wore one of my spare T-shirts that hung on her like a short dress. Her hair was wet, which made her features look sharper, more angular. Her eyes were fixed on me, then slid to the pot with predatory curiosity.
She didn't blink.
She moved toward me. She didn't walk; she glided silently. In one fluid, effortless leap she climbed onto the counter and squatted, bare feet on the cold marble, leaning into the steam.
"What are you doing?" she asked. Her voice was hoarse, deep.
"Spaghetti," I said, stirring the sauce with an old wooden spoon, keeping my distance. "Food. Fuel."
She brought her face close to the boiling sauce—too close. She inhaled deeply, flaring her nostrils to the limit.
"It smells… strong," she murmured, eyes narrowing. "It stings the throat. It's aggressive."
"It's garlic." I handed her a plate. "Here. Careful, it's hot."
---
POV: Ayla
The human offers me a hot ceramic bowl.
I look at the red substance and the white strands of pasta. It's nothing I've eaten before. In the Hive, sustenance is a gray paste—efficient, flavorless, designed only to sustain aggression and repair tissue. The burgers of this world were fat and salt.
This is… different. It smells like hot earth and acid blood.
Evan leans against the sink, eating straight from the pot. He watches me from the corner of his eye, body tense, ready to flee.
He smells of fear. His fear is constant, a background buzz that's almost comforting. It means he knows his place in the food chain.
But it feeds me.
A fascinating contradiction. He's the prey, but he's caring for me.
I stick my fingers into the plate.
Evan makes a disgusted noise.
"Use the fork, Ayla. For God's sake."
I ignore his stupid utensil. I grab a handful of hot, red pasta. The heat sears my fingertips, but my hunger is stronger.
I bring it to my mouth.
The heat explodes on my tongue.
It's a shock. My senses, used to the blandness of space, are overwhelmed. First it's the pain from temperature. Then… it's a flood.
The tomato's acid makes me salivate violently. The salt, the sharpness of the garlic… it's too much. Chaotic. An assault on my nervous system.
I close my eyes, shaken by a spasm of pleasure and pain.
"Is it bad?" he asks, voice trembling.
I chew slowly, licking sauce from my lips. I feel the heat travel down my throat, setting my stomach on fire like I've swallowed embers. It's a potent drug.
"It's… overwhelming," I say, opening my eyes. I feel my pupils dilate to the max. "Too many stimuli at once. It's violent."
"'Violent,'" Evan lets out a nervous laugh. "Such a culinary review."
I watch him eat.
I study the line of his neck where the carotid artery pulses. It's so fragile. I could crush it with one hand while I eat with the other.
But he used fire to create this intense energy for me.
Useful. Mine.
I climb down from the counter. My movements are fluid.
I close in on him until I invade his space. I like seeing him tense, how his breathing quickens when I'm near.
I take the fork from his hand. I spear a piece of meat from his pot and eat it, staring him in the eyes, marking my territory.
"More," I order. My voice comes out more guttural than I intend.
He stands frozen, holding the pot like an offering.
"All yours," he whispers.
It's not gratitude I feel. It's possession.
The human cooks for me. Therefore, the human belongs to me.
---
POV: Evan
Ayla ate three plates.
She didn't eat with human pleasure. She ate with a fierce, almost desperate voracity, like she'd never tasted something with real flavor in her life. She got messy, licked the bowl, growled softly if I came too close while she ate.
It was hypnotic and terrifying at once. I was watching a wild animal discover cooked meat for the first time.
When she finished, exhaustion hit her suddenly. Her body, tense and lethal a minute ago, simply shut down.
She went to the living room without a word and curled up on the old sofa under a filthy sheet, making herself a small compact ball.
I sat on the floor, back against the opposite wall, my gun in my lap. The house creaked with the wind. I checked my watch. 4:00 AM. In a few hours my face would be on the news.
My eyelids grew heavy. Ayla seemed asleep. Or so I thought. Her breathing was slow, too deep.
I closed my eyes for a moment. Just a moment.
"Kral' tuh…"
The sound jerked me awake.
It wasn't a cry. It was a murmur, but it sounded like metal scraping on bone. Something that shouldn't come from a human throat.
I looked at the sofa. Ayla moved beneath the sheet. She was sweating. Her hands gripped the fabric so hard I heard the old material tear.
"Kral' tuh… zeka… Evan…"
I went cold.
She said my name. But the rest… the rest wasn't any Earth language. It was clicks, hisses, and deep growls.
I rose slowly and approached, gun in hand by habit.
"Ayla?"
She snapped her head around like an exorcism. Her eyes were shut, but her eyelids trembled violently.
"No… la cosecha aún no…" she murmured, switching to Spanish, but in a distorted, doubled voice, as if two beings spoke at once. "The harvest… not yet… the report… the world isn't ready…"
She convulsed, arching her back unnaturally over the sofa.
"The asset is mine," she growled. This time it was clear. Fierce. Possessive. "Do not touch. My camouflage. My pet."
She went still immediately. Her breathing returned to that slow, deep rhythm.
I backed away step by step until I felt the cold plaster of the wall at my back.
"Pet." "Camouflage." "Report."
My heart hammered against my ribs like a hammer.
Graves said she was an "invasive species."
Ayla had just confirmed in her sleep that I wasn't her friend. I was her property.
I stared at the empty pot in the kitchen.
Ten minutes ago, I thought I'd seen something like a connection while we ate. A spark of humanity in how she enjoyed the sauce.
Now, watching her sleep with that inhuman tension, I understood.
We weren't having dinner together.
I was just keeping the tiger fed so it wouldn't decide the main course was me.
I stroked the gun.
"What the hell are you?" I whispered into the cold air.
Ayla didn't answer. She only snored softly, a sound too much like a large dangerous engine winding down.