Cats In the Cradle

25. Daniel

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Probably just going to be one update today. 😭 I'm a mother and a baker, and I have a huge order to complete for a party tomorrow. Maybe I'll be able to get in one more update tonight or tomorrow evening.

Thank you all so much for reading! 800 reads in a week! 🙏🏽🙏🏽

And I love reading your comments, even if I don't reply to all of them. Don't wanna give too much away.

But they make me smile. 🥰

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I cried myself to sleep that night.

The plan to make Orion believe that I finally bought into this bullshit was still on, but the chances of me escaping without getting Emma pregnant or irreversibly fucking up both of our lives was getting slimmer by the minute.

He wanted me to brand her.

Like she's a fucking cow.

Or get my name tattooed on her, like she was my property.

But apparently most men around here preferred to brand their wives over the tattoo option, because why the fuck not? Quick, easy and totally painless.

For the men.

I really hoped my mom would understand the message I'd slipped into our conversation and that help would be on the way soon.

...And I hoped that Emma wouldn't be pregnant by the time help arrived.

I woke up feeling like utter garbage the next morning. I really just wanted to stay in bed and feel sorry for myself, but I had no real way of knowing whether my family would understand that I immediately needed help.

And even if they did somehow manage to rescue me and Emma, what was I going to do about Orion's evidence that I'd had sex with a minor? What if he convinced her parents to press charges? For all I knew, every marriage in this community—except mine—was actually legal, and Orion had covered all of his tracks.

I needed to cover mine, too.

For all I knew, he was only trying to blackmail me to keep me from running, and everyone else was just too brainwashed to even question his authority.

I wished my family could just rent an army tank and plow through the gates surrounding the community. Then everyone could make a run for it. Or they could get a SWAT team in here. Maybe they'd accidentally-on-purpose shoot Orion, and then the church would collapse.

I really didn't know much about how things worked around here, or if anyone even wanted to escape. Emma was convinced that everyone outside of the community was evil. They thought Orion was a calm, soft spoken saint and that marrying an adult man to an underage girl was perfectly fine. And I didn't even want to know what happened at the community ceremonies.

Did they realize they were captives? Did they want to be free?

My head was starting to hurt again; a combination of stress, a lack of food, and most likely too much tea yesterday.

So around 10 AM, I finally dragged myself out of bed and took a shower, brushed my teeth and got dressed.

Time to play house.

I headed into the kitchen to see if Orion had actually brought food, or if he was going to make us starve until I "properly fucked" Emma.

She was already sitting at the massive dining room table when I walked out of my room. And to my relief, there was a decent amount of food in front of her. Not a ton, but enough to last for at least two days. Enough to be able to delay having to "breed" her.