Guilt (A Zero Spin-Off)

BONUS ** Zero POV Scene **

Two weeks. It had been two weeks and I still wanted to throw up over the whole thing. And it had nothing to do with the morning sickness and everything to do with the reason behind it. I wanted to throw up because I wanted to throw up. Because there was little creature growing inside of me.

And no one knew it.

No one but me.

Well, Kyle had his suspicions, I was sure and he'd likely filled in Ella on that. But neither had asked or brought up anything regarding the little errand I asked him to run for me.

Which was good. I think.

But I had to tell someone.

Not just someone. Hunter.

He was my soul. I don't mean soul mate. I mean that without him, I survive. I protect. I do well enough to get by. But there's no light in my eyes. No hope. Without him, I am not me. At least not the me that I want to be. But Hunter, he makes me... feel like myself. Not the me I was before we met. Not the me that I don't remember. A mix, maybe. Someone happy and strong. He's my soul.

As if that weren't reason enough, he's the co-creator of the tiny creature inside me.

Hunter deserves to know. He deserved to know two weeks ago when I peed on that stupid little stick... three of them.

But I haven't been able to force the damn words from my lips. Hell, I haven't even mustered up the courage to think the b-word and have stuck to only referring to it as a tiny creature. As if some rodent has taken up a spot in my body.

He's going to be thrilled.

But I'm not sure that I'm thrilled. And I don't know if I can take his excitement... or his disappointment to realize that we don't share in the excitement.

And then he's going to want to take so much. He's going to want to wrap me in blankets and styrofoam and fifteen layers of bubblewrap and lock me in a room for the next few months. Forget about guns and knives, Hunter won't want me to slice a potato. And killing creeps? Out of the question.

Maybe it should be. That would be the motherly thing. To give up myself and spend the next several months acting as an incubator. But I'm not sure I can do that.

I've killed so many things—people. Everyone one of them. People. Living or dead, still, people. And now I'm making one of my own? It doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem fair, for some little helpless, innocent thing to be given to me. Me.

I think the me I don't know would have been excited. That's the kind of girl she- I - was. I think. Because some part me, the part of me that I believed was still her, was excited about this.

Most of me was just terrified.

Pushing off the thoughts—I had become good at doing that— I focused on the task. The problem with patrolling in the woods lately though was that there wasn't a whole lot to distract me from my thoughts. From the... The creeps were fewer and fewer and sometimes we'd go days without seeing one. Someone in the back of my mind, I knew that was a good thing. Especially if something loud and tiny and helpless was going to join our group in the next however many months. But right then, I could have really used the distraction.

"Zee."

Off my game from all the thoughts in my head, I jumped at the sound of my name. I attempted to play it off casually as I spun around to face Atlas, but if his expression was any indication, he noticed my more absent-minded temperment as of late.

"Everything okay?"

My head began to move from side to side. No. Everything was not okay. But I couldn't talk about it so I quickly bobbed my head. "Yep," I said and then quickly changed the subject. "What are you doing out here?"