HUNTED

Cassius blinked before sighing and pulled his hand back out from the man\'s chest, wiping it on the handkerchief he took out from his pocket.

He became too excited and made the hunter\'s death quicker than he wanted. His favourite move was to pull the heart out still beating and show it to the person it belonged to before it dropped to the ground. Licking his lips, he grimaced at the taste of their blood on his tongue and wiped his mouth with the handkerchief. Every time he helped Aila, he was drinking such poor blood; the only thing he could say about it was that they stayed in good shape, making it taste better than most humans.

It is true what the humans say. You are what you eat. He could tell from the taste of their blood what a human\'s life choices were. It made the blood taste different, and after years of living, he could differentiate between who he liked to drink from the most. As long as it was fresh, though, he shouldn\'t really complain. This time he only grimaced because the man had a beer not too long beforehand, making his blood taste odd.

Throwing his handkerchief on the ground, he straightened his suit out and snarled irritably as he held out the bottom part of his suit jacket. There was a hole in it. He managed not to get blood down himself this time, but that jerk shot a hole in his suit!

He whipped his head to the side, and with it, his hair became dishevelled.

Gunshots were firing now from Aila\'s direction. Cassius clicked his tongue from the sound and glanced at the remaining man still alive on the ground. His brows raised at the hunter, who still pressed his hand on his throat. 

He was impressed. The human was still alive and even delayed his death by pressing on his wound in the hopes of clotting the blood. Cassius smirked. Poor sod. 

The only thing it did was slow down his death. That artery was the main one that sent oxygen to the brain. It was also one of his favourites to drink from, along with the femoral artery in the groin. But that was only when he drank from a beautiful woman in his bed.

Within a blink of an eye, Cassius suddenly stood next to him, making the man glance at him a second too late as he yanked his hand away from the wound and watched the remaining seconds of him bleed out. The vampire licked his lips at the waste, but he would dine on something fancier in the evening. He stood back up again, flicked his hair behind him, straightened his suit once more, and was reminded again when he felt the frayed fabric on his highly expensive suit. 

With his mood dwindling to pure annoyance, Cassius marched over to the other side of the van and ripped the door from its hinges, flicking it to the side as though it weighed as light as a feather. There inside of it was the boy or man named Chase. The stupid human that caused Aila not once but twice to go to the hunters. 

He honestly couldn\'t understand how she would trade her life for his. Surely, her instinct should be to save herself first before anyone else\'s, but she was raised as a human, brought up with a conscience, and even then, if she was brought up in a pack, he didn\'t expect anything less. Aila really wasn\'t Amelia, and he was still trying to decide if he liked that or not. At least with Aila, he knew she had a heart. He couldn\'t quite locate Amelia\'s. 

Cassius glanced at Chase\'s face. He had long passed out, he didn\'t even move his head from the sounds of the gunshots going off, nor the door pulled off from the van. His heart beat steadily as he slept off the beating from the hunters. Cassius searched the van, finding tools used for torture lying on the ground of the van, ready for the young hunter. He swiftly got in next to him and yanked the chains away from Chase\' wrists and ankles. 

With a sigh, Cassius looked down at his suit and back to one of the SUV\'s. Within seconds he had removed his jacket, placed it in the car, turned the ignition on, returned to Chase, picked him up and flung him across the back seat. He assessed Chase\'s torso and the knife wounds; his eyes then narrowed when he saw the hunter\'s tattoo on his wrist. 

It was still there, but the skin had been burned. The flesh was left with a newly untreated burn that made the emblem of the hunters association smeared and nearly unrecognisable. But it was recognisable to those who knew what it looked like. 

With another sigh leaving the vampire\'s lips, he rolled his eyes at what Aila was making him do and bit into his hand before letting a few drops of his blood fall into Chase\'s mouth.

"Enjoy the high. It\'s the purest form of vampire blood," Cassius muttered before slamming the car door behind him. His hand was already healed as he leaned against the car, impatiently waiting as he tapped his shoe on the ground. He listened to the sounds of the fighting on the other side of the mountain.

He looked back into the car with a bored and unimpressed expression as Chase started to splutter and gasp. The cuts on his chest healed up nicely, his complexion slowly came back to life, the burn on his wrist disappeared, and the young hunter was left with the blissful high of Cassius\' vampire blood in his system. A smirk formed on the vampire\'s face as he watched Chase\'s eyes flicker from side to side under his closed eyelids and his mouth gape open. 

If he had a regular vampire\'s blood in his system, it wouldn\'t affect him as much, but Cassius was not an ordinary vampire; he was a pure-blood, and not any pure-blooded vampire but one of the highest calibre. So, Chase did not need more than three drops of his blood to help heal him or send him off his rocker for a few hours. 

Cassius began to pace and listened out for any signs of Aila. The gunshots and wolves fighting them sounded more urgent, making him think about returning to her. But he wasn\'t a hero, and he never tried pretending to be one, nor should she think of him as one.

The hunters would never hurt her because of her blood and the monsters they wanted to create from it. So Cassius leaned against the car again and waited with his blazing thoughts and the rain that pelted down. 

He finished his task in less than five minutes, and now, it wouldn\'t be long until he had Aila in his grasp and he could set his plan in motion.