Page 40 of Marked By His Hunger
A claim I had never allowed.
I stilled.
And for the first time since the curse took me—I was afraid.
Not of blood.
Not of losing control.
But of wanting what could destroy me.
The Draugr does not love.
The Draugr does not hope.
The Draugr does not choose joy.
And yet, somewhere inside the rune-lit halls, she walked—carrying death and something far worse.
Temptation.
And here—inside me—the storm didn’t break.
It gathered.
Because this would not end in control.
It would end in ruin.
Chapter 4-Serena
“What the hell is with this weather? Three days and I think it’s rained for every single one of them.”
The words left my mouth in a shaky exhale as I stood at the tall, arched window of my dorm room at the Asgarheim Runevald Institute.
The glass trembled beneath the assault of wind and rain, and lightning forked across a sky that wasn’t quite the same color as the one I’d grown up beneath.
The sky here bled green and violet through storm clouds—aurora light threading through darkness like veins beneath skin.
It was beautiful.
It was ominous.
It was nothing like home.
And I didn’t know if that was good or bad.
I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to steady my stomach, grateful that I’d finally stopped dry heaving.
The second I had stepped through the doorway hidden in the Pine Barrens—the access point to Asgarheim located in New Jersey, with magic that warded it against human perception—my insides had revolted.
Traveling to a parallel dimension via magical portal was, in a word, trippy.
The forest had folded.
The sky inverted.
The air tasted metallic.
