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“Blue is good at hunting!”
The eyes of the two cats were bright.
Looking at the place they pointed, there was Blue, who was sitting on a branch holding a bird that was still alive and fluttering.
“Blue!”
I approached Blue and greeted him warmly, but suddenly, Blue cried for a long time in a voice I hadn’t heard before.
“Mrrrraawrr!”
“….?”
It was an unusual cry. Even though I was confident in being able to understand cats’ behaviors to some extent, I had no idea why Blue was behaving this way.
“Wh-why?”
As he glanced at me in bewilderment, this time, Blue cried with a slightly sharper voice, “Mrrrraawrr!” for a long time.
“Did I do something wrong? Did I make a mistake?”
Did I unwittingly make the cat feel uncomfortable? Watching my tearful face, Blue quickly whipped his tail. It meant he was angry.
“Why?”
As the nice, good-natured Blue was mad at me yet I didn’t know why, I was desperate. And after giving me a sense of despair, he jumped off the tree branch and ran haughtily.
“Why is he like that?”
When I asked Coco and Sasha if they could get a hint, Coco tilted his head.
“Angel, did you have a fight with Blue?”
“…Did I? ”
“I think Blue is very upset. It was a very hurtful sound.”
“What? Why?”
Shrugging at my words, Coco gazed at my face worriedly.
“But seeing Angel’s face, I’m also upset as well. How did this happen? Why didn’t you treat it with your ability?”
“Oh, um, this is…”
I evaded the answer before glancing in the direction where Blue had disappeared.
‘What was wrong…’
ﾟ· : * ✧ * :· ﾟ
Dimitri spat out the bird he had caught to teach the young cats to hunt and walked aimlessly. The bird luckily survived, lost its energy, and couldn’t fly so it ran away and disappeared into the grass.
“….”
He held a fallen branch and laid down on his back, clutching it tightly with his front paws and hitting it with his hind foot. It was a temperamental bunny kick.
[ T/N: OMG please google cat bunny kick! The best thing I’ve seen today~! ( Tヮ T)♡ ]
‘D*mn it.’
Lying on the grass, he rolled his body around and let go of his anger. Even though it bothered him that he shouted, “Don’t come!” to Rowaine a while ago, still, when he saw her sick face, he was angry and couldn’t help it.
‘She did such a thing without discussing a word with me while talking to her employees and others.’
When he was told later that Cayetana even bowed her head and apologized to Rowaine, he couldn’t believe such a person would lower her head like that. It was a huge incident. As he heard that, he felt like having a party and drinking wine that he didn’t usually drink because it was so exhilarating.
‘But…’
After seeing Rowaine in person, his joy faded, and he wondered why she was so angry. Dimitri’s tail thumped the floor. It was an expression of anger.
Just as a human’s mood was revealed in their facial expressions, a cat’s mood was revealed from its tail.
Still, he was unaware that his tail was moving with involuntary displeasure without realizing it.
His teeth still shuddered when he thought of his memories of being abused by Cayetana as a child and of his mother, who was sadly being beaten by her. He had such a boiling rage that even if he tore her apart, his anger wouldn’t go away. He wanted to trample her by all means.
Nonetheless, he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t so happy when Rowaine did that.
Why.
Why…
Dimitri couldn’t find an answer and circled around in place before coming to a conclusion.
‘As much as Rowaine was sick, Cayetana should be worse so it could be better.’
An apology alone wasn’t enough.
‘I can’t just let it end with words.’
As he thought so, Dimitri narrowed his eyes and searched for a way. His green eyes suddenly flashed, and a wicked smirk painted on his face.
ﾟ· : * ✧ * :· ﾟ
“You know what will happen if you don’t do as you’re told, right?”
Dimitri, perched on a tall branch in the form of a cat, threatened the rat shapeshifters he had just caught. Even though they were called shapeshifters, even when they were in human form, they were as big as only two spans of hand as they knelt in front of him and nodded their heads wildly.
“Squeak, squeeak!”
“Ppeek”
“Squeak, ppeek!”
The rat spoke in their own language, trying hard to explain something to him, even though Dimitri couldn’t understand it. They probably understood what he was asking them to do and would do anything if he would spare them.
“Dig deep inside and give the most agonizing nightmares. You’ll also need to be careful not to wake her up in the middle.”
The rat shapeshifters nodded their heads. Nevertheless, Dimitri still looked incredulous while staring at them and opened his mouth.
“I know how to crush the bodies of the cubs if you play any tricks.”
Saying so, he pointed with his chin to the branch on the other side.
There, Shedim, the servant of Dimitri’s demon Samael, was coiled with a long forked tongue with cracked ends. In the middle of the coil, the baby rats were asleep.
“Go.”
Dimitri, with a villainous face, pointed the window of Cayetana’s room to the rat shapeshifters.
The rat shapeshifters climbed tree branches and approached the window, calling out their nightmares to come next to them before opening the locked window.
The rat shapeshifters lived in the gutter, carried disease, and used dream magic to steal the energy of humans. If others knew that he had let them loose in his own house, they might call him crazy. However, Dimitri hoped that Cayetana would suffer at least a little tonight after carrying out such a crazy matter.
Only then would it seem like the irritation that was seething inside him would be relieved a little.
ﾟ· : * ✧ * :· ﾟ
Early that morning, Cayetana, whose self-esteem had been hurt by the incident with Rowaine and was irritated by her useless maids, drank four glasses of wine and finally fell asleep.
She dreamed.
The first dream was that of her children.
The sight of the children playing in the garden of the beautiful Blois mansion was lovely… However, such peaceful scenery was shattered in a short time. It was because Dimitri strangled her children with a demonic face and swung his sword.
“No! No, my children! No…!”
Cayetana could only shed tears of blood as she watched the terrible sight of her children slaughtered by Dimitri’s sword.
“I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill that cat!”
While wailing, time in her dreams ebbed and flowed.
Before she knew it, she now took on the appearance of an old woman with gray hair. Her majestic figure, commanding Blois, was nowhere to be seen. Her body was now frail and skinny as she curled up on an old chair while being abused by a maid.
“Do you still think you’re the Duchess? You look like a senile hag!”
She trembled at the maid’s insult.
How did she become like this? What happened…
At that moment, light entered the shabby space like a hut. It seemed that someone had opened the door and entered.
“You can’t die. You won’t be able to die and will live in this hell for the rest of your life.”
It was Dimitri’s voice.
Cayetana struggled with her body. She wanted to grab Dimitri and beat him. However, her doddery body didn’t budge, and she only curled up like a statue.
“Take her out and show her to those who come. Shall we let them see how she’s prolonging her life?”
At his command, someone lifted Cayetana’s body. The next moment, she was locked in a cage. It was the same cage that she once imprisoned young Dimitri.
Surrounding her, many people were watching her crouching in the cage.
“What a good sight. Cayetana Lerida.”
Lerida? That was the last name before marriage.
Cayetana opened her bulging eyes wide.
“Cayetana Lerida!”
As he repeated her name again, Dimitri was now laughing. Not only that he had taken her children from her, but also the Blois’ name.
“I’m Cayetana Blois! It’s Blois!”
She writhed, but her voice dissipated in the back of her throat and faded away.
“Blois is mine. Blois is mine…!”
Grabbing the cage, she shook it wildly and screamed as loud as she could.
…She used to be a presence in Blois.
In despair and pain, Cayetana struggled and sobbed. The voices of taunters pierced sharply and haunted her.
Still, her cruel dreams continued.
In her third dream, she eventually collapsed. Dimitri stood where she had just been, smiling happily with Rowaine and their lovely child.
Love overflowed in the eyes of the two, and they looked like a happy young lover. At the same time, Dimitri was smiling as he embraced all the things that belonged to her in the past. Cayetana had never seen him smile so happily. He was a child who always trembled in fear in front of her.
His smile felt like a hideous demon laughing at her. It seemed as though he was making a mockery of her.
“Unggh… It can’t be like this. Why… why are you laughing…!”
She was frustrated… no, she felt fear beyond her dejection. She lost everything, and her sense of defeat created emptiness. The three dreams were Cayetana’s worst past, future, and present—the thing she couldn’t tolerate the most.
Looking at them, her body shivered from the extreme stress.
As she slept, cold sweat ran down her body. It was a relentless nightmare that she couldn’t wake up from, even if she wanted to.