The first time she met him, his laughter had been a balm. His words, smooth as wine, had melted her defenses. He knew exactly how to look at her, how to touch her hand at the right moment. A gentleman, she thought. At last, a man who wasn’t cruel.

But the charm had worn thin like cheap paint. Beneath the smile was something ravenous. She saw it in how his eyes lingered too long, not with love, but with hunger. She saw it when his hand tightened on her wrist, not in passion, but in possession.

He stopped being the suitor. He became the Hunter. And she, the prey.

The house told her this. The way he locked the doors at night. The way the blinds stayed drawn. The way her phone “accidentally” drowned in spilled coffee. All neat little snares, like a spider circling silk around its chosen meal.

But she was not down for that.

On the night it broke, he came home carrying something wrapped in burlap. Heavy. Stained dark. He smiled at her like a wolf who knows the lamb has nowhere to run.

“I brought something for us,” he said.

She had already learned to play her part. Smile, nod, keep the fear low enough that he mistook it for devotion. She kissed his cheek, inhaling the stench of iron clinging to him. “Of course, darling.”

That night, when he fell asleep with his back to her, she finally moved. She slipped from bed, careful, silent. The burlap bag lay in the corner, leaking faintly onto the floorboards. She didn’t open it. She didn’t need to. She had seen enough of his trophies to know.

Instead, she opened the drawer where she had hidden what he overlooked: a hammer. A simple claw hammer, left behind by a careless contractor weeks ago. He had laughed when she kept it. “What’s a delicate little thing like you going to do with that?”

Now she knew.

She stood over him. For a moment, doubt clawed her throat. He looked so human in sleep, the mask restored by dreams. The man who had once whispered love into her ear. The man who had promised her forever.

But she remembered the locks. The phone. The burlap bag.

And she swung.

The sound was wet, final, nothing like the heroic crack she had imagined. His body jerked once, then stilled.

Her hands trembled, but not from regret. From release. From survival.

In the silence, the house changed. No longer a cage, but a hollow carcass. She dropped the hammer. It landed with a dull thud beside his ruined skull.

She thought she might scream, but instead, she laughed. A thin, wild sound that startled even her.

She was no prey. She had never been prey.

As dawn bled into the blinds, she wiped her hands on the burlap sack, unlocked the front door, and stepped outside. The air tasted different. Sharp, clean.

Behind her, the Hunter lay dead.

And the Huntress walked free.