Page 148 of Marked By His Hunger
The lower halls still murmured with late study sessions and whispered spellwork, but the upper corridors—the older ones, carved before the current age of structure and discipline—belonged to shadow.
To silence.
To things that watched and were not always seen.
I moved through those shadows as I always had.
Unseen.
Unheard.
Unwelcome.
My wings did not manifest within the wards, but I felt them anyway—a phantom weight along my spine, twitching with restless instinct.
The runes embedded in the stone resisted my more primal nature, forcing me into control.
Control.
The word had become a mockery.
Because no matter how tightly I held it—she unraveled it.
Serena Notte.
I watched her from the far end of the corridor as she stepped out of a lecture hall, books clutched to her chest, her brow furrowed in concentration.
Her hair was pulled back loosely, strands escaping to frame her face.
She looked so damned normal.
So fragile.
Too normal for someone who had stood on a cliff and commanded death itself.
For someone who had turned her face up to mine and asked me not to leave.
My throat tightened.
The hunger stirred.
Not the mindless kind.
Not the wild, devouring frenzy that had ruled me for centuries.
No.
This was worse.
This was precise.
Focused.
Refined.
It did not scream for blood.
It snarled and begged for her.
