I woke feeling absolutely miserable for what happened during the night.  The guild of hurting Rufus felt like it was eating me from the inside.  I can’t believe I attacked Rufus last night!  I remember I was dreaming about that my asshole ex, and then when I woke to see a male silhouette leaning over me, my instincts just kicked in and I launched myself at him with claws out.  After he caught me and pulled me against him, I finally got a whiff of his scent and realized who it was, but the damage was already done.  When I saw the blood under my fingernails and saw the scratches that I left on him, I sort of lost it. I hurt someone before; I didn’t mean to, but while he knew that it was an accident, he never trusted me again, especially around his cubs.  That incident is what finally caused me to leave my old home and move to Idaho.

I don’t want Rufus to not trust me, and I don’t want to have to leave here, but I would understand if Rufus wanted me to go.  I was a danger to those around me.  Since I always hurt people I care about, it’s better if I just don’t care about anyone.  Actually, I should just do the polite thing and leave.  I shouldn’t make Rufus have to deal with me again.  I don’t want to see him look at me disappointedly.  After all, he spent a lot of money saving me from the auction, I should just go before I cost him anything else. 

With my mind made up, I go to get up, but I stop when I see that Rufus is sitting in the couch opposite of my bed.  He looks up from his phone when he sees me move.  “Morning kitten.  How are you?” He asks me with a look of concern in his eye. 

I think I stare at him for a solid minute before letting out a dry chuckle.  “You are asking how I am?  I’m not the one that got shredded last night.  I should be the one asking how you are?”  I manage to get out.  I think I sound at least a little cocky, which is better than scared out of my mine which is what I am really feeling right now.  I mean, why is he still here?  I was sure that I would have scared him off by now.  Clearly, I am not safe to be around, he should stere clear of me. 

“I’m fine Felix.  The scratches have already almost all closed up. Besides, I am an alpha wolf-shifter, it takes a lot more than a scared kitten to hurt me,” he says with a wink.  “I am asking about you because you seemed a little distraught after you realized what happened.  You even said some crazy things about punishment.  I just want to check how you were doing mentally.  You know you don’t have to be scared of me, right? I would never hurt you or lock you up, but by the fact that you brought those things up, I am guessing that something has happened in the past?  I am not going to push you to talk to me about it, but I do want you to know if you ever need to talk, I can listen.”

By the time he was done talking, I could feel the tears sliding down my cheeks.  No one has ever cared about me like that before.  Everyone who has been nice to me before as always wanted something else in exchange, but Rufus seemed genuine and earnest in his offer to listen to my story and concern about me and my past.  I closed my eyes, trying in vain to stop the flow of tears rolling down my face. Taking a few deep breaths, I looked back up at Rufus.  When I talk, I’m sure that it is barely above a whisper, but with his advanced shifter hearing, I know that he can hear me.  “You have the kindest person that I have ever met.  After last night, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you wanted nothing to do with me and wanted to me to leave your territory at once, you wouldn’t be the first one to do it.  No one has been this nice to me or helped me so much.  I don’t know how I could ever repay you.  While I have only known you for a short time, and I do trust you and want to tell you my story, but I’m just not ready yet.  I need a little bit of time to recover from everything that has happened.”

He just nods his head in understanding before he walks over to the bed and warps me up in his arms.  I don’t know which of up is more surprised when I start bawling into his chest.  I grab tightly onto the front of his shirt and pull my face even closer to his chest as I just sob all my worries out.  “It’s ok kitten, just let it all out.  You’re safe here, and you are welcome to cry out all of your troubles.  I’ll be here for you,” Rufus says while patting my head. 

The tears were finally starting to dry when my stomach rumbled, really loudly.  My hand quickly moved over my stomach to do I don’t know what.  Still leaning into Rufus’ chest, I could feel the soft rumble of his laughter.  “Are you hungry? I can go get you some food really quick if you’d like.”

“Yes please.  Anything would be fine, but if there is any pudding for dessert, I might be forever grateful.” I say looking up at the alpha with a smile.  There are two things that I love most in this life, pudding and catnip.  But since I doubt Rufus will allow me to be getting high on catnip at the moment, I will have to settle for pudding.  I used to love pudding when I was a kid. There wasn’t a kind of pudding I wouldn’t eat happily, but the butterscotch pudding was always my favorite kind.  The one good thing about being in the hospital is that there is usually lots of pudding to be had.  Rufus ruffles my hair before walking out of the room to get some food.  After he’s gone, I carefully get up and use the restroom.  When I am washing my hands, I notice the specks of dried blood under my fingernails again.  I still can’t believe that Rufus won’t be mad at me.  Maybe he won’t punish me right now, but eventually there has to be repercussion for my actions, right? I guess I’ll have to enjoy the attention that he is giving me now but try to get away if he shows signs of getting mad at me.  I don’t think I can go though that again.

I must have been standing at the sink washing my hands for a while, because while I’m still in the restroom, I can here the door open again.  “Felix?” I hear Rufus call out.  “I’m in the bathroom,” I yell back, “I’ll be right out.”  I quickly dry my hands and then head back out into the room.  The look on Rufus’ face tells me that he did not approve of me getting out of bed.  I hang my head in guilt as I trudge back to my bed.  “I know, I probably should have waited until you got back, but I really had to go to the bathroom, and my hands still had your blood on them.  I at least needed to clear up before eating.” 

“What would have happened if you overexerted yourself while I was gone.  What if you collapsed again?  You could have asked before I left to go get your food.  I just don’t want you to get hurt again.  I was going to give you two pudding cups after you ate, but now you only get one.”  I could tell that he was trying to be tough with that threat, but the twitch of a smirk gave him away.  Laughter erupted from me, and as I go back to bed, I was struggling to stand up right because I was laughing so hard.  In the midst of my laughing fit, I felt myself getting picked up and placed on the bed, then I see Rufus lean over me.  My laughter dies off as I look up at him and see this look in his eye that I can’t quite place.  He leans in closer and whispers, “Your laugh is the best thing I have ever heard.  I don’t want you to ever be afraid of laughing.”

Then he got up and walked over to the table that I now see has a platter with some food on it.  He grabs a plate off of it and brings it back over to me.  “Here you are.  I ran into Dr. Greg, and he said that he wants to be eating a balanced diet, so you have to eat at least half of what’s on this plate before you can have any pudding.” That definitely made me pout for a minute, but then I resigned myself to food, and dove right into eating.  I must have been hungrier than I thought, because before I realized it, I had eaten almost the whole plate of food.  Granted, it still was a small portion, but it was the most I have eaten since being captured.  When I finally look up at Rufus, I can only imagine the look on my face.  I’m betting it was somewhere between expectation and desperation.  Luckily, he did not make me wait long, and quickly handed me a pudding cup with a spoon.  It was butterscotch pudding!  I dove right in savoring every bite that I took.  I think I even moaned a couple of time from the pleasure of the delicious taste in my mouth.  After finishing my pudding, I was so stuffed.  I don’t think I could have eaten another bite, even if it was pudding.  I probably was close to overdoing and making myself throw up, but I think I will be ok, as long as I stop now and just let myself digest for a while. 

Eating my pudding must have really distracted me because I didn’t even notice that Rufus had pulled out a computer at some point and was typing away on it.  Deciding that I didn’t want to continue sitting in bed, I carefully got off, and crept over to the couch and sat down next to Rufus.  I must admit, it was quite hilarious to watch him startle when I sat down.  I didn’t exactly mean to sneak up on him, but I’m a cat and I am naturally stealthy, so I can’t help it if the wolf wasn’t paying attention to me. 

“What do you think you are doing?” Rufus says in a near growl.  “You are supposed to stay in bed so that you can continue to be monitored.  I don’t want you passing out on me again.”

“Calm down, I feel just fine.  I just needed to a change of position for a bit, and I was curious as to what you were doing, so I figured I could just come over here and kill two birds with one stone.  Besides, you were here this time for me getting out of bed, so if anything happened you would have probably noticed right away, that is if your computer wasn’t too much of a distraction,” I finish with a smirk.  “So,” I continue before he has a chance to respond, “What are you working on? Pack business?”

“Fine, I guess you can stay, but if you start getting tired or feeling dizzy again, let me know and I’ll get you back in bed and get Dr. Greg,” he agrees with a huff.  I get the feeling that he doesn’t like not being in charge and listened to, which makes me a little too happy inside.  “Yes, I am working on pack business.  It’s really quite boring.  If you’d rather, I could turn on a movie for us to watch.  Perhaps one we both won’t fall asleep in the middle of.”

“Ok, but I want to watch something happy.”  I thought for a second, trying to think of a movie that I wanted to watch. “Oh, I know, have you ever watched Quest for Camelot?  It’s definitely more of a kid’s movie, but I used to watch it all the time to cheer me up, it’s so good!”  I say enthusiastically. I can tell that Rufus is trying not to laugh at my juvenile movie preference, but I don’t care. 

“Sure, we can watch it.  Now I am a little curious to watch it, just to see what kind of movies you like.”  He finds it on this computer, and we start watching it.  I am immediately singing along to all the songs, which earns me a raised eyebrow from Rufus.  What can I say, I have watched it over 20 times, of course I know all the songs by heart.  As the movie plays, I end up scooting closer and closer to Rufus, until we are hip to hip, and I was resting my head on his shoulder.  I will admit the movement was a little unconscious at first, but when he didn’t react, I couldn’t help but want to be closer to him.