The Run

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter 18

We sat in a clearing in the forest, normally I hate being out here so late at night, especially at this time of the year. The cicadas are doing their mating thing. Some people find the noise comforting, but I think that the screeching noise they make it just horrible. It reminds me of the violin theme from that old movie Psycho. I’m probably just over reacting though.

The clearing was beautiful, it was lighted by fireflies. The grass had small daisies growing all of the way through it, we never had places like this back in the dry parts of Western Australia that I came from. A waterfall splashed relaxingly to our left.

“How did you find this place?” I asked him, as I snuggled into his warm body, the two of us wrapped together in a tangle of limbs on the soft grass.

“After you left, I started spending a lot more time out here before I… Well, before I started drinking away the pain. It was a place of solitude for me, to relax.” He replied, not sounding upset in the slightest. Maybe he had really forgiven me for being gone for so long.

“But I brought you out here for a reason… I was hoping that I’d get to share this place with you when you came back, and I figured that it would be even better for me to share it like this.” He removed himself from my grasp, and couldn’t help the sad moan that came from my mouth when my warm pillow was removed.

I know I was humanoid, but the fact remains. If it’s warm, it’s for sleeps.

I looked at him in confused as he started to rummage through his left pocket, his eyes never leaving my face. He was giving me such an intense look that I was finding hard to understand. He had looked at me like this before, in fact he normally did. I guess it just wasn’t intense enough for me to really think about it pointedly.

It was a mixture of adoration, lust and need. He really wanted me around, no matter what I thought about him or what I thought about his feelings. Tonight really made that clear for me. People say and do things that they don’t mean when they’re upset. You can’t take everything that they say into account unless they’re calm and thoughtful about it.

He finally stopped moving through his pockets, his hands wrapped around themselves in a little cocoon to hide what was inside them. I leant back on my hands, feeling them dig into the soft ground below as he got up, onto one knee. The classical position for proposing to someone.

Wait, proposing?

“Cerys, will you do the honour of being mine forever. I know that this is a human tradition, and neither of us are exactly human. But that doesn’t make this any different in how I feel about you. I’ll wait for as long as you want me to wait, and I’ll take you anywhere on this globe just to take your hand in marriage.” His eyes looked into mine earnestly, and his hands opened up like a clam in water.

There was a gold ring in his hand, it looked as though it would be the perfect size for my small, thin fingers. It had a diamond in the centre of it, cut into a circular shape, with two smaller ones either side of it. It wasn’t a huge ring but I felt that it really didn’t have to be. But was I really ready to do this?

I lifted my eyes from the ring, and onto his face instead. I felt them fill with hot tears but I knew that I couldn’t do anything to stop them. What was this feeling? A mixture of shock, happiness and fear. I wanted to marry him but I just… I wasn’t entirely sure what was stopping me. I knew that it would be in the best interests of the pack, Zee and the children to follow. But was in the best interests for me?

“Oratio… I-I” I stammered, lost for words. “What would this mean, for us?” I lowered my eyes to the floor, feeling small and inexperienced.

“It would mean whatever we want it to mean, I would wait forever. But I want you to be mine, and not just because of the link we have as mates.” So he felt the same way that I did, but I still couldn’t bring myself to look into his eyes. Almost losing him last night had made me realize how much he really meant to me. I didn’t want to be alone forever, but I didn’t want to rush this either.

I glanced upwards, and looked him straight in the eye, my stomach clenching as I made my decision.

“Yes, Oreo” his face broke into a smile and I felt mine mirror his exactly “I will marry you, but if you upset me, I will punch you.”

~*~*~*~* Megan’s POV ~*~*~*~*

I glared through the trees at the place that used to be my home, before that bitch came along and ruined everything. She stole my man and stole my path to power. Everything was working out for me, even though father had disowned me after I had been caught selling mother’s old jewellery for drugs. That’s how I had ended up in the pack house to begin with.

I wasn’t upset about being kicked out of my parents though. It had of course brought me closer to Oratio. Then she had come along and ruined all of my plans. I would have been the Alpha female, all of the other weak wolves would have bowed down to me, and all of the pack money would have been at my disposal.

I would get my revenge though, and not just on the cat. I would get my revenge on the entire pack for turning their backs on me and allowing a CAT of all things, into the pack instead of me. It was a disgrace to all werewolves, and I would make them see that. I would make them regret turning me into an enemy.

I snarled, before shifting into my wolf form. I was a rather small and puny wolf, even for a female. Not that it mattered, I wouldn’t have had to fight anyway after Oratio had mated with me. Everyone would have been fighting over the right to defend their proper, rightful Alpha female. Me.

I bounded away in the opposite direction, letting anger fuel my limbs. Soon the old pack territory was miles and miles behind me, and I was steadily getting closer to my destination. There was only one logical place for me to go, of course.

To the people that I had things in common with. I laughed maliciously through my snout, the sound coming out garbled and even more monstrous then it would have through my human mouth. Oratio was wrong to close that ugly thing instead of ME.

I was perfect in every way. But nothing he could say to me would convince me to forgive him and come back, oh no. He was going to get what was coming to him for disrespecting me. All of them would.

My vision flashed red, and I found myself tumbling into a large river. That didn’t matter. Where I wanted to be was on the other side of the water anyway. I powered through the water, my small legs quickly becoming tired against the black, fast running water. I was probably lucky that I was so angry, or I probably wouldn’t have been able to get across the stream at all.

I soon found myself in front of a large cave, at a glance it would look as though it was a natural cave, but at the back of it was a door. A large door with a huge handle carved out of rock. Drawn all over the walls, in a paint that the residents had mixed themselves from the berries and plants in the forest, were signs of death, doom and torture.

Oh, this was exactly where I wanted to be.

Sorry for the short chapter guys! I needed it to be this way, I kind of ran out of things to write for Cerys, plus being mean and leaving a chapter like this is what I do best ;)