The Hunter and the Hunted ✔️

~•7•~

Dinner was awkward. There was no Zach to break the silence, no dad to crack jokes, no mom to brighten up the mood, and no sister to argue with. It was just me, a brooding brother, a messy two year old, and two Aussies.

Dinner was silent. Cold. And the tension in the air was thicker than concrete mix.

I cleared my throat, unable to deal with the aching silence. "So, Kora... I came upon something in my readings today." I started, ready to bring a subject that could quite possibly make this the most exciting dinner or the shortest.

She tilted her head. "Is that right? What is it?"

I pursed my lip. "Well it was talking about an occurrence in Moscow where a vampire went Atrax. What is that?"

Dallas dropped his silverware and Kora choked on her drink, coughing as she wiped her mouth and struggled to breath. Even Noah seemed to freeze and turn to me with wild eyes, and he's newer to this world than I am.

"Where in bloody hell did you hear that word!?" She asked, not angry but definitely perturbed. She was on the edge of her seat, shaking.

I looked from Dallas to Noah, silently begging them for help as Kora slowly stood up, intimidation clouding her features like fog. "Uh... I told you. I was reading." I tried.

She shook her head, pointing a finger at me sternly. "No. You weren't." She growled lowly. "We all have a different word for it and that is a slur only Hunteds use. It's a weapon of mass destruction to them. It's a cursed word and us Hunters don't use it! Only type of book that word is written in is Vampire books, which we don't have. We burned all the ones we could. SO WHERE THE HELL DID YOU HEAR THAT WORD!?" She asked, striding to me and making my heart pound in my chest.

I was about as likely to take her down as I was Kasparov. Her and Kas train together all the time, and she can take him down if it's a good enough fight. Only person I've seen do it.

"My rea—" I tried to continue on with my lie but Kora wasn't having it.

She kicked my chair out from under me with her heel, sending me to the ground. She pressed me to the cold hardwood floor by pressing her heel into my back.

Somewhere in the background a baby started crying, to which Noah must have noticed because he was saying calming words while this attack played out.

"Hey, she just asked a question, you don't have to att—" Dallas started to intervene but Kora must have given him a bad look.

"Dallas, she didn't hear that word from us." She pressed me harder to the ground. "Cut the crap! Tell me, where did you hear it?"

I took in a deep breath. "The night I killed Colin, he called his dad and said he was close to going Atrax but he got me down. I didn't—"

Kora sighed heavily and rolled off of me, helping me up. "You scared me, Everly. I thought you were in cahoots with the vamps or something and you felt out of the loop with them."

I'm not in cahoots with them... I'm in liking with one. And I feel left out of info here. Not with him.

"What is it?" I ask. "What do you mean we all have different words for it?"

Kora sat down in her chair and began angrily cutting at her chicken, eating it like she would rather be anywhere else but here.

I rubbed my elbow which had hit the floor hard, and sat back down. But I didn't attempt to eat. My appetite was gone.

"They call it going... Atrax... Latin for savage. It means that they lose all control, their animalistic side goes all whack." She sighs. "Atraxes have killed a lot of good Hunters, Everly. They're dangerous and... WOTS made a lot of them go Atrax and never come back. It happens if you stay Atrax too long."