Wonderland Ch. 08A

Thatcher blinked before breaking out into a smirk.

"Good."

My anger fizzled slightly. "Good?" I repeated breathlessly.

"I'm glad," Thatcher tagged on, uncrossing his arms. "Keep that line of thinking and you'll give Tze'sic quite a wakeup call."

I watched his procession towards the bedroom door, completely flabbergasted. "Wait. You aren't going to tell me that submission is easier or I'm wasting my time?" I asked in surprise, following after him.

Thatcher turned at the door, his smirk still in place. "You wouldn't be a mate worth having if you caved in to every request made of you." Thatcher gently reached out and pinched my chin, winking slightly. "Only the strongest survive. Only the most cunning can keep their claim to rule. Remember that, Kitten."

In that moment, mom called up the stairs for lunch and Thatcher left the room without another word.

I shook my head as I stared at his retreating back. What in the fudge had just happened?

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I pulled myself back to the present, nearly a month in the future. I eyed Thatcher again and saw his eyes were closed. The TV was still on commercial break, the jingle for kitty litter filling up the echoes of the empty home.

I bit my lip as I brought the blankets up higher so they could wrap around my face.

Ever since that day, Thatcher had never stayed the night. I don't know where he goes or what he does once he leaves my house, but he always leaves right on the dot just as the sun sets. We don't ever escape to my room, but instead remain within the perimeters of my parents. Not once did he bring up Tze'sic or the war. Over time, he didn't bring up anything at all. My parents had noted our relationship was strained and mom blamed herself for part of it, which was stupid, because I knew it wasn't anything she had done.

Something I had said must've gotten to him. Or maybe, like Thatcher had said, he just had a lot on his mind. Whatever the reason for our distance, I had come to realize that being on bad terms with Thatcher left me as lonely as ever. Going from having someone to talk to everyday, to someone who couldn't even look at me let alone speak to me was rough. In a moment of weakness, I had gone outside in the freezing weather still wet from the shower, knowing that I would become ill. As soon as Thatcher had discovered I was sick the next morning, he began talking to me again, and even though I felt like crap, I was happy to have some semblance of how things used to be.

And that scared the hell out of me.

Not for the first time in the past couple of weeks, I asked myself the same question that I never found an answer to; just what had I gotten myself into?

"Hey."

I looked over at Thatcher, surprised by the croak in his tone. Was he the one getting sick now?

He swallowed and gestured with his chin at something over my head. "The snow stopped falling. Want to take a look around with me?"

I eyed Thatcher carefully, unable to help but wonder if maybe he was trying to make up for his behavior. I followed his gaze and looked out the kitchen windows to find that he was right.

As cold as it was outside, being cooped up in this house any longer was going to drive me insane. Maybe that's where his thoughts were headed too.

"Let me get my coat," I told him, undoing the blankets from their python wrap around me and stumbled to the coat peg. I slipped on another sweater and my jacket, hurriedly tugging on my gloves and boots before I followed Thatcher outside.

I smiled up at the iron grey sky as I walked out into my front yard, taking in the silent world around me. It was both unnerving and hauntingly beautiful, a definite contradiction I know.

I watched as Thatcher brushed the snow off his car, revealing the thin layer of ice that covered the windshield.

"Like I thought," he muttered, turning towards the forest and the hills behind my house now. "We'll have to be careful," he told me as he strode on long legs towards the forest.

I chuckled as I followed him, knowing he was just as excited as me to get out of the house. I rushed to catch up with him, scooping up snow every once in awhile as we went. When we reached the edge of the forest, I decided now was as good time as any.

"Thatcher!" I called out when he was a few feet ahead.

He turned – and neatly dodged my snowball.

Pulling his hands out of his coat pockets with a smile, he revealed two rounded handfuls of snow, a smile crossing his lips.

"Oh fudge," I muttered as he took a step forward.

"NO FAIR!" I yelled over my shoulder as I ran, darting through the trees. One snowball cuffed my shoulder, but the other smacked a tree just beside my head. I swore under my breath as I nearly tumbled trying to get a handful of snow, dropping most of it when another ball of snow hit me smack dab on the right thigh, Thatcher's laugh filling the air around me.

I ducked around a tree and ripped the snow from the low-hanging branches before turning and tossing the load right into Thatcher's face. He gasped and turned away, leaving me an opening. I ran again, picking up more snow, my fingers frozen and stinging through my thick gloves, pulsing in painful stabs in time with my toes.

"You'll pay for that!" Thatcher called out to me.

"You have to catch me first!" I called back breathlessly, laughing when his scarf got tangled in a low-lying branch.

My lungs begged for a break as I kept going north, the trees growing closer together and providing more cover – and snow – than ever. I looked over my shoulder and saw Thatcher's coat and scarf through the trees not too far behind. Cursing again, I faced the front and gasped as I jumped last-second over a fallen tree and landed hard on the snow...before the ground fell out from beneath me.

A scream escaped my throat as I tumbled down into the darkness. I threw out my hands to grab something – anything – and had the wind knocked out of me as I landed on something soft and warm and kind of squishy, snow and ice falling around me as I slid off to the side and to the ground.

Tossing my hair out of my face, I hesitantly looked around me, trying to fill up my lungs with the stale-smelling air as I grew accustomed to the darkness. Looking over my shoulder, another scream built up but I caught it just in time.

I had fallen on the largest rat I had ever seen in my entire life.

Somehow, despite my fall and the crashing snow, the thing stayed asleep. Its heavy snores echoed in the earthy confines of the small burrow, and despite its twitching tail and back feet, it didn't move.

Slowly, I came to my feet, leaning back against the burrow walls as I did so.

From this angle, I couldn't see beyond the rat's stomach and hindquarters, its body so large and out-of-place in the small burrow that it was almost comical. The rat snored again and twitched, though this time its tail thrashed so hard that it knocked into me with a resounding smack.

I collided hard into the muddy wall before collapsing to the ground floor, wheezing for air. I closed my eyes briefly, blinking away white sparkles as I waited for the world around me to stop spinning. A few seconds later, the world righted itself and I slowly sat up...as did the rat.

It slowly shifted its weight, as though injured, its heavy black body rising inch by inch to its full menacing height. I swallowed another scream at the mere size of the thing, unable to believe how a rat could get this huge.

Slowly, the rat turned, and the air whooshed from my lungs for the third time in two minutes.

Glowing red eyes, like those of Thatcher's, locked onto me.

In that moment, I realized with astounding clarity that this wasn't an ordinary overgrown sewer rat that I was locking gazes with.

It was a Raspan, evolved and under Fuyher's complete control.

And hungry.

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