Hunted Predators✔️

CHAPTER EIGHT

Katherine's lost in thought as she walks back to her dorm room. Perhaps that's why she doesn't notice Adelaide is in her room again until after she opens the window. Only this time, Adelaide and Darcy stand feet apart, their arms crossed over their fully clothed chests.

"-to care," Darcy is saying. She's crying; her whole face is pink and puffy. "What do you want me to say?" Adelaide says. "This is the way things are. You knew that when we started."

"I knew I wasn't going to be your girlfriend, but I didn't think I was going to be your dirty little secret."

Wincing, Katherine gently eases the window shut.

"You don't even treat me like I'm a person," Darcy continues, "It's like I'm a toy, used when you're feeling bored, then discarded for another-"

There's a thud. Darcy and Adelaide whip towards the window and find Katherine's face smashed against the glass. "Ow!" Katherine screams angrily. "Mother-!" Then she realizes Darcy and Adelaide are staring at her.

"What the..." Adelaide mutters.

"Hair," Katherine says, pointing at the window. Her head is tilted at a ninety degree angle, and her voice is muffled by the glass. Darcy squints at her. "What?"

"HAIR!"

Darcy runs over to the window, freeing the caught chunk of curls. "Thanks," Katherine says, massaging her scalp. "I was trying to give you some privacy, but I didn't notice my hair was caught in the window, so when I was walking away, my hair-"

"You know how you could have prevented this?" Adelaide says, her arms crossed over her chest.

Katherine blinks. "A brain?" she guesses.

"Knocking," Adelaide says, walking to the door. "See you later, Darcy."

Darcy flinches when the door slams shut, then she just stands there, staring at the closed door in front of her.

"You okay?" Katherine says.

Darcy sniffs, offering Katherine a hand and helping her into their room. "I think Adelaide and I are over."

Katherine nods, ready to climb into bed and let that be that, but Darcy keeps talking. "I can't change her," Darcy says. "She's got it in her head that her family, high society, whatever won't accept her. It's why she's dating-" She cuts herself off, glancing at Katherine. "I wasn't supposed to tell you that."

"She's using Darko," Katherine says.

"Well- so is he. Before the whole... uh, dead brother thing..." Both Darcy and Katherine wince. "He hooked up with a lot of girls. Many, many-"

"I've got the idea."

"Anyways, his dad hated it, so Darko got a steady, respectable girlfriend to please him. And to secretly keep hooking up with girls. It's just, this whole thing with Adelaide and Darko just rubs me the wrong way, aside for obvious reasons. They're so..."

"Fake?" Katherine offers. A funny feeling settles in the pit of her stomach.

"Yeah. Yeah, that's it."

...

"Hand me that shirt, will you?" Darcy says early the next morning. "Which one?" Katherine says. "The K-Pop shirt or the non tacky shirt?"

Darcy makes a face. "You know which one. Rude."

She catches the K-Pop shirt, folds it, and places it in her luggage. Meanwhile, since she packed for the field trip already, Katherine is working on her math homework, half listening to Darcy babble on about the dress she just bought.

"What about you, Katherine? Have you bought a dress yet?"

"Uh, yeah," Katherine says, making a face. Just because she doesn't have as much money as Darcy doesn't mean she can't afford to buy a dress. Wow. She had thought Darcy had managed to escape the rich and asshole correlation but apparently not.

With a glazed look in her eyes and her mouth hanging open, Katherine watches her teacher drone on. The day goes by in a haze. It's surreal. Like she has two different lives: one vampire, one student, and she doesn't know which one is the dream.