Joseph doesn’t return to his apartment with Peter. Shut in the house, Uncle Luke reads, M knits his endless scarf, and Joseph fidgets restlessly. In the afternoons, Joseph insists they go for a picnic by the pier. M struggles to eat the vegetables. He had “mastered” them at one point, but now he has “forgotten how to like them” (254). He looks hungrily at the pigeons that land nearby and thinks of the different things he has tasted and how hard it is to find words to describe how different they are.

One night, Peter comes over. M can’t hear what he and Joseph say to each other, but afterward Joseph is happy and goes home with Peter. The stump where M’s arm-tail used to be hurts more than usual. He takes off his clothes and examines the hairy stump. He tells Santiago about his arm-tail, saying the boy “would’ve liked it” (255). M reads a story about a man who vomits bunnies while housesitting for a woman. At the end, the man jumps off the balcony, but M doesn’t understand why.

A week after arriving in New York, Magos and Lena come from Berlin, and they all have steaks at Uncle Luke’s house. M focuses on cutting his steak into “tiny bites” and eating slowly. When Magos and Joseph go to the kitchen, M excuses himself to eavesdrop. He hears Magos telling Joseph that the neighbor he ate died. Joseph insists that M will “control” his hunger, but Magos tells him that M ate the neighbor’s cat, too, a creature they both “loved.” The German police issued a warning for a “wild animal” on the loose.

Uncle Luke helps M get a job at a nearby used bookstore. He works with an NYU student called Romy, who thinks M is “rad” and recommends him an endless stream of novels. For lunch, M goes to a kebab shop where he orders extra meat. Magos stays with Lena in New York and sometimes visits M at the bookshop. M has spent hours examining his face for the features he shares with Magos and Joseph, making sure the likeness is “real” and “[n]ot details [he] invented to be their son” (263).

Romy wants to invite M to a party and is surprised to learn that he doesn’t own a phone. Over dinner, M tells his family that he would like to have a phone. Joseph worries that social situations will be too “tempting,” but Magos thinks he will do just fine. She calls him M for the first time, pronouncing it the Spanish way, eme.

M goes to Romy’s party, where he meets a man who reminds him of Thomas. He goes back to the man’s apartment, and they begin to kiss and undress one another. When the man sees M’s stump, he doesn’t kiss it and touch it as Thomas did. M asks the man if he can bite him, but he refuses and asks M to leave.

In Berlin, the neighbor’s cat used to jump through their window and spend the afternoons with him and Magos. In the evening, the neighbor would come to retrieve her, shyly thanking M for returning his pet. However, M never thought of these moments while he was eating him and the cat.

At the bookshop, Romy helps M set up profiles on dating apps, writing in his profile that he likes to bite. Back home, M shows the profiles to Uncle Luke, who warns him not to get caught.

A man messages M and invites him to his apartment. They undress, and M politely asks if he can begin biting. The man tastes like soap, and M has to lick at his thigh before he can find the flavor of his flesh. He bites down, fighting the urge to sink his fangs in and eat the man. His hunger becomes overwhelming, and he flees the apartment before he can devour him. Back home, M eats a package of pork chops raw, even though he can see it makes Joseph “uncomfortable.” Then, he eats a bowl of Fruit Loops, the one food preference he shares with Santiago. It makes him “feel 100 percent human” (273).

M’s stump aches. Joseph sees him rubbing it and asks if he remembers how “joyful” and playful he was as Monstrilio. He tells M that he never calls him Santiago because he is “someone new,” not Santiago or Monstrilio. M confesses that he is “hungry all the time” and wants “to eat people” (274). Joseph assures him that his hunger will subside, but doesn’t have an answer when M asks what happens if it doesn’t, and he eats someone else.

When Santiago was young, Magos and Joseph took him to the zoo with Magos’s cousin and her children. One of Santiago’s cousins smashed his ice cream cone into his chest and laughed at him. In retaliation, Magos knocked the other boy’s ice cream out of his hand. Her cousin shouted that she was “insane,” but both she and Joseph pretended the boy had just dropped the cone. The cousin left, furious, with her children, and Joseph, Magos, and Santiago all held hands. M likes to “steal” this memory from Santiago before he sleeps at night.

M goes on three more dates. He asks his dates if he can eat them, and they laugh like he’s joking. He bites just hard enough to taste blood, “teasing” himself, but keeping his hunger under control. The dates are “thrilled” and “satisfied,” but M is still hungry.

A man named Sam messages M. When he asks how hard M bites, he tells him, “I could eat you” (278). Sam tells him he is “possibly” interested, but then goes offline. A different man messages, inviting M to his apartment that night. When M arrives, he feels out of place in the “stylish” apartment. He serves M whiskey and portions out lines of cocaine on his marble countertop. When M starts biting, the man doesn’t tell him to stop. Overwhelmed by the pleasure of “tasting flesh,” M becomes lost in feeding until the man slaps him away.

The man orders M to stand and hits him again. When M asks him to wait, he reminds M what they are “playing at;” he allowed M to bite him, now it is the man’s turn. The man continues to beat him until M lets his jaw unhinge and shows the man his “huge monster smile” (282). The man runs from him, but returns with a bat that he uses to strike M. M “roars” loud enough to startle the man. He takes advantage of the pause to flee the apartment.

M goes to Lena’s house, where she and Magos insist on taking him to the hospital, making up a story that M was assaulted and robbed. Nothing is broken, so M goes home to Uncle Luke’s house.

The next morning, M wakes up to Joseph beside his bed. He tells M that he is “proud” of him for not eating the man, and M doesn’t tell him that he “would’ve.” Instead, he lets Joseph believe that he is “less hungry” and “more capable of being human” (288).

M comes home from work to find that Uncle Luke has laid out an entire half-cow carcass on the dining table for him. M takes off his clothes to enjoy the feast “flesh to flesh” (291). It lacks the taste of fear and of dreams that seep into human flesh “like a delicious marinade” (291), but M still enjoys the meal. Afterward, his stump itches.

Magos comes by the bookshop to tell M she is going to Valencia to work on a new performance piece. She wants M to come, but he decides to stay in New York. After she says goodbye, he eats a kebab in the basement. He offers a rat a piece of the meat, then eats the rat.

That night, M finally receives a message from Sam, asking to be eaten.

Joseph is angry that Magos is leaving again. He thought she and Lena were happy together, but Lena says their relationship didn’t work, and Magos is free to do as she likes. M thinks about how Magos watched him “transform” from Monstrilio into M. She, Lucía, and Jackie “made [him] a boy” (294). At least, they all “tried.” Magos and M were “alone” together until Magos “found her performances” and was suddenly “far away” (294).

Sam messages M, telling him he is “ready” to be eaten. When M enters his apartment, Sam bows and calls him “Master.” He is confused, but Sam seems “[l]ike he knows what he’s doing” (296). They undress, and M takes his first bite. Sam screams, and tears run down his face, but he tells M to keep eating. After another bite, M forces himself to stop, telling Sam he will leave. However, Sam composes himself and tells him to continue.

After eating Sam, M goes shopping for suits with Joseph. When Joseph suggests they get something to eat, M claims he isn’t hungry. Joseph looks like this is a “victory.”

That night at Uncle Luke’s house, the doorbell rings. M worries it is someone looking for Sam, but it turns out to be Magos. At the airport, she decided not to go to Valencia and spent time in the Catskills instead. Later, M wakes with his stump throbbing. He touches it and feels the tip of a claw poking out.

M remembers when Santiago woke up from a nightmare. He had wet the bed and called out for his parents. They came quickly, soothed him and cleaned him up, and read him a story to fall back asleep. M could save this memory “like a house sitter keeping everything in order for when the original inhabitant comes back” (302). This, however, feels “silly” to M now; he knows that Santiago isn’t coming back.

Magos hosts a family dinner in Uncle Luke’s house and proposes a toast to “[n]o more running away” (303). In the middle of the dinner, Peter announces that a devoured body was found in Bed-Stuy. The man was apparently part of a cult that believed in “an extraterrestrial god consuming people in order to transport them to a new realm” (304), but his body was “actually consumed,” leaving nothing but bones. Magos suggests the body was old and decomposed, and Lena mentions acid. Joseph suggests that the scene was fabricated. Peter tells them that hair was found at the scene, so soon the culprit will be identified.

Uncle Luke pulls M into the kitchen, and M confesses to eating Sam. He takes Uncle Luke to his room, where he shows him Sam’s phone, the water glass he drank from, and a sheet soaked with Sam’s blood. Joseph finds them there, quickly followed by Lena. They are discussing how to get rid of the evidence when Magos comes in. Joseph worries that Peter is now alone and will come to see what they are doing soon. M tells them that “Sam wanted to be eaten” (305). He doesn’t share that Sam had eventually begged him to stop, but he was “too hungry.”

Joseph thought that M was doing better, controlling his hunger more. He tells him he “can never do this again” and “must try harder” (306). M cannot keep apologizing, so he says nothing. Peter calls from downstairs, and they rush to hide the evidence back in M’s backpack before he comes in. Confused, Peter worries he “interrupted something,” but Magos shepherds them all downstairs for dessert. M doesn’t like sweet food, only Fruit Loops, and he is even beginning to lose his taste for those.

When Peter announces it is time to head home, Joseph tells him to go without him. Once Peter is gone, the family turns their attention back to destroying the evidence of M’s transgression. They smash the phone with a hammer, then find the SIM card and cut it in half. M chews up the pieces and swallows them. They also smash the glass from Sam’s apartment. They bleach the sheets and cut them into pieces, then divide all the evidence into two garbage bags.

They drive to the river, planning to throw the bags into the water, but find the way to the waterfront blocked by a brick factory. They are confronted by a security guard. M tries to attack him, but Joseph restrains him. Magos pretends they were looking for a secret party and leads the group off. M is hungry. Joseph insists they will “figure out a diet that satisfies [him],” but M “know[s] what [he] want[s] to eat” (312). Joseph weighs down the trash bags and flings them in the river.

They head back toward the car, and for a moment, M wonders if they will leave without him. Lena stays behind, and M shows her his stump, saying he thinks his arm-tail is growing back. He asks if he is turning back into Monstrilio. Lena asks if that is what he wants, and M just smiles.

As Joseph and Peter’s wedding approaches, M stump continues changing. It hurts him, and more claws emerge, making it harder to hide under his clothing.

Romy is graduating soon, and suggests that she and M open their own bookstore. M thinks of his first day working at the galley with Thomas. The whole day, he waited for Thomas to realize he was an “imposter,” but it never happened. At the end of the day, he buys as many books as he can afford from the shop and goes home.

Uncle Luke and Magos show M a newspaper article about Sam. The hairs at the scene were identified as “nonhuman,” and officials have concluded that an animal killed the man. That night, M’s stump keeps him awake with pain and itching. He paces, growls, and lets his jaw unhinge until he falls asleep.

Peter and Joseph’s wedding will take place at the upstate estate where Santiago died. Magos shows M the dogwood tree and describes how much Santiago loved it. The house is full of activity in preparation for the wedding, and the family eats pizza for dinner. After eating, M falls asleep on the couch. He wakes up with Magos and Joseph asleep on either side of him. They are breathing in sync, and M doesn’t want to disturb them. However, his stomach growls, and Magos and Joseph’s stomachs rumble in reply. M laughs and sneaks outside to have a “very human” cigarette.

M goes up to Santiago’s old room, which he shares with Uncle Luke. Luke wakes up, hugs M, and grunts to him. Next, M goes to Lena’s room. He shows her his stump and tells her he is leaving. She understands that he needs to “give the wildlife a try” (322).

Back downstairs, M wakes Magos. She, too, knows that he is leaving. M remarks that they look alike, and M tells him that she “made [him],” then hugs and kisses him. Together, they wake Joseph, who tries to reason with M, telling him they will “figure out [his] hunger” (323), but M is sure. The three of them spend the rest of the night sitting together outside, holding one another.

At dawn, Magos, Joseph, Luke, and Lena watch as M removes his clothes and neatly folds them under the dogwood tree. He turns toward the dark woods, knowing they will “swallow” him. He unhinges his jaw, letting go of the panic that “is not [his] to carry anymore” (324). His fur is already regrowing to protect him from the cold. As the sun begins to rise, he moves forward.