She couldn't hear him scream but she felt it, the savage force of his shout vibrating the forest floor around her ash sodden boots as she made her way toward the mess of the boy who had sunken to his knees before her. She didn't feel anything. She didn't deserve to. She had known what she'd gotten herself into the minute that she found out what he was. When he told her his biggest secret and she kept hers all the more concealed The minute that he trusted her was the second he died. He just didn't know that yet.
She took heavy steps toward him, long knife clenched tight in her hand as the sound of his sobs rolled into her ears, splitting the empty echo that she'd encased herself in and she prepared herself for what she had to do. She squeezed the handle willing it to break. She held her breath waiting for her lungs to her collapse and her body to give up before she did something that would haunt her for the rest of her life. But it didn't stop her from moving forward. She had purpose, her body was filled with the purpose that her father had drilled into her despite her mother's wishes. She was a hunter. She was supposed to destroy the things that stalked the night. What she had done was right. She had started the fire. She watched them burn and not felt a single thing, so why was one kid tearing her to pieces?
She was right behind him. She took a breath just as he choked on his, the sound breaking her in a small way that was big enough to startle a reaction out of her and make her drop the knife, the sound alerting him to her presence. He spun around, eyes glowing blue, fangs extended, but she made no move to fend him off. He softened at her. He weakened. His eyes fell back into his mask of sorrow, his fangs gone. If there was ever a time to kill him it was now, but she couldn't. Not today. Not like this. "Kate…" he breathed and fell into her. His face in her stomach, clutching onto her shirt for dear life. She held him, running a hand thought his hair and shushing him, the same hand that laced his home with kerosene and threw down the matches. But these killer hands were the ones that would comfort him. As she sank to her own knees and let him cry into her neck she knew that the day he trusted her was the day that she fell in love. And the day that she knew he would end her.