The Huntress

Chapter 17

As the story of my life seemed to be going recently, I was once again avoiding Jared, but I found it extremely difficult. I could constantly feel his gaze on me and I always wanted to look back at him.

I had kept quiet about this whole thing around my dad. What was I supposed to say to him? Oh by the way, Jared actually is a werewolf. You just didn't find it because he was turned and he's the only one in his family. Also, surprise! I'm his soulmate.

No, there was no way I could say that. I didn't fully believe this, and I didn't understand it in the least. If I didn't understand it, he would be even less understanding. He had taught me everything I knew about the paranormal, and his parents had taught him an so on. The Jaeger family had been following The Organization's code, keeping their knowledge of the secret world and passing it down the line. He knew what everyone else knew.

Was it possible that the entire organization actually knew nothing about these creatures? Was it possible that not all of them were the evil creatures we believed them to be? That was the question I was having a hard time with.

Jared had kept his distance as well, but I wasn't sure if it was to respect my space, or if he was as disturbed with me as I was with him. I killed people like him after all, and I wasn't sure how much of what had happened in the alley he had seen. I knew how I could look sometimes, I'd seen it in other hunters before and it could be scary. The way we lost ourselves in the hunt, especially when we had to do something like decapitate or remove a heart, could be disturbing to those who didn't follow the same lifestyle we did.

What I had done in the alley had been justified though. I had stepped in to save that woman who had been attacked. I had caught the vampire in the act of killing. As I'd admitted though, if I'd just heard that there was a vampire in the area, I would have gone and killed it. They didn't have to be in the process of attacking someone. They didn't have show any signs of aggression, because we just knew they were aggressive. They were vampires, they were werewolves, and they killed and turned humans into their kind.

Jared himself had been one of those people.

People who had been turned into vampires were lost a lost cause. They had died and come back, their souls long gone, they were no longer the same people. But werewolves, they were still living and breathing. Were they the same as vampires? My training told me they were, but I was less sure now.

Jared and I had been holding each other's gazes the entire lunch period. I could see that staying away was working just as well for him as it was for me, meaning not well at all. Jen and Stacey had been trying to unleash the twenty questions on me because they had heard, albeit late, that Jared had been to my house. How were they even hearing this stuff?

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket and I broke eye contact with Jared to look at it.

It was a text from him.

We need to talk.

I looked back up with enough time to see him dumping his tray. I went to follow him and Dennis stood up, blocking my path.

"So what? You just forget about all of us who have been here for you, the people who actually care about you, so you can run off with the new guy? For what reason? Because he's something you haven't seen before? Don't think that we haven't seen the way you've been looking at him, we all know."

"That's not fair, and that's not what's going on. Now I suggest you step out of my way if you want to keep this civil," I said keeping my voice as steady as possible.

I looked past Dennis, as Jared was getting ready to leave. I didn't bother saying anything more and I dumped my tray, following after him.

He kept walking, maneuvering his way through the halls. I said nothing, only following after, a ways behind him. I could guess where we were going, about the only area it was guarenteed to be quiet for at least the next fifteen minutes, the same place we'd talked before.