She would immediately die if she stopped running.

With that motivation alone, even if her legs feel like they are falling off, Hitomi doesn’t stop running. She won’t.

At least, until she can’t hear the rapid footsteps behind her.

How many hours has it been? Hitomi can no longer count. All she knows is that her lungs have given up on supplying adequate oxygen all over her body and she is now curling on the ground, clutching her broken legs with hot tears streaming down her scars-covered cheeks.

The trap the Hunters set up near the borders of the Hunting Ground. There is no mistaking it. The Hunters purposefully chases her near a certain area where the trap is set up. Thankfully, even if Hitomi is a Prey, she has lived a life of a Hunter until her coming-of-age—and only because of that she is perhaps the last Prey for this month.

Still, perhaps it was better for her to die because of the trap instead of being paralyzed from the waist down.

It doesn’t take a full ten minutes before she hears the rustles of the leaves from the bushes behind her. Her acute senses picked up that the creature passing through the bushes is only one. Whatever that is, it’s either a Hunter or a dangerous animal. No other.

Hitomi takes a sharp intake of breath, her eyes fluttering close as she slumps against the tree.

She has lived a life full of fear of being found.

Her family her—they wasted no time