The Run

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter 15

I woke up to find Zeno jumping up at down on me, the bed barely shaking under his tiny body.

“Urgh, kitten stop. Mummy’s awake now, see?” I opened my eyes abnormally wide to prove my point to him. He immediately stops jumping to stare at me, his large brown eyes innocently searching my own. “I promise I’m awake. Mummy doesn’t open her eyes and sleep talk… Does she?” I gave him a quizzical look as a smile spread across his little face. “Okay. Let’s go see daddy and get breakfast!” He ordered me, overly excited.

He obviously knew I had almost completely had it with this pack. I forced myself to look calm as I smiled down at my little kitten, he jumped off the bed and headed to the door, morphing his cat ears out of his head. “The mean lady isn’t there, I can’t hear her.” He nodded at me.

I couldn’t help but look at my little kitten in surprise. He was barely five years old, and small for his age. His little blue transformer pyjamas seeming way too large for him. We never had a lot of money, so when I brought him things, they would always be too large. They’d last longer that way, he’d have time to grow into them.

He was so small, so innocent and yet he understood exactly what was going on and why I needed him to be close to me again. He was starting to go through the ‘I’m a big kid now and I don’t want mummy to always be around me’ stage. It just wasn’t safe for him to be alone yet.

Oratio hadn’t come to be last night, and Megan had soon stopped crying and yelling about how much she hated me and why I didn’t belong in the pack. I couldn’t help but think that he spent the night with her, instead of us. The thoughts in my head were only confirmed when I left the room to get a glass of water and found them cuddled together in her room. I could have died, then and there, the pain practically tore out my heart and left it lying on the floor in pieces,

I tried convincing myself, but I knew that no matter how hard I tried, I would always feel pain around Oratio. I might have run away at first, but being away for so long only made me realize that he really is my mate. He was meant to be mine, no matter what. I know that he wouldn’t have waited for me or this long, but did he really have to do that in front of me, do they care at all?

The smile on my face became more forced as the deep sadness settled into a pit in my stomach. Who am I kidding? He was never mine and he never will be, but he has a connection to my kitten. And that is precisely why I’m here.

As we walked into the kitchen to see him hunched over on the bench top, I decided that I would deal with one problem at a time. I had another two months before the cycle would begin again, and I already had enough to mope about at the present time. One problem at a time, step by step.

I’ll do this for my baby. I mentally nodded to myself as I ignored Oratio. “What do you want for breakfast baby?” I smiled at Zeno and he smiled back at me, obviously deciding to ignore his daddy too. I know that he loves his dad, but my baby is also smart enough to understand that what that man did was wrong, and he needs to apologise for it.

“Can I have cereal mummy? They have lots of types of cereal here!” He laughed up at me, once again talkative. I watched as Oratio turned around, staring at us i disbelief. It’s going to take more than that to get me to leave again. He stared with wide eyes as Zeno’s cat ears flicked once, my little kitten’s eyes watching me in anticipation as I brought him a bowl of fruit loops.

It was the only cereal I could recognise amongst all of the other American ones. I sighed contentedly as I watched him eat, before starting on a breakfast of my own. We sat far away from Oratio at the bench bar, completely ignoring him as we both ate our breakfast in silence.