Page 108 of Slayer

I did. The way he spoke about her, I knew he’d love and care for her forever, and it was insanely attractive to me.

“I do.”

She nodded, pulling her hood off and smoothing her hair like she was coming out of a cocoon. “Did he do okay with his marks? I should go see him.”

I nodded, ignoring the slice of jealousy that rushed through me. “He did. He got a lot of powerful ones. He’s a striker.”

She stood, sighing. “Hey, thanks for checking on me. I was in a doom loop.”

I chuckled. “A doom loop?”

She nodded. “My therapist calls it that. When you just loop on all the negative stuff. It’s hard for me to get out of them sometimes.”

I walked with her to her door. “Happy to get you out of your doom loop anytime, Daphne.”

She gave me a genuine smile then. “Thanks.”

That night, Celia came to visit me in my dorm room when I was alone.

I sat at my desk, peering down at my chipped nail polish, hoping to God she wasn’t here to talk about the mark.

“I spoke to Akari. Stella, can I see the shadow mark?” Her voice held hesitation. Like the words were dirty or taboo.

I flinched. She was here for that.

I swallowed hard, peering up at her, and found compassion in her gaze.

With a nod, I pulled up my sleeve, and the compassion turned to fear for a split second before it was gone.

“Akari said not to show people. I don’t know what it means,” I told her.

She nodded, taking one more look at the rune before pulling my sleeve down.

“I think that is wise, Stella.”

It was wise to keep my rune a secret?

“Why?” I asked.

Celia moved to sit at the end of my bed and looked into my eyes. She took in a deep breath, and her shoulders slumped on the exhale. “People fear what they don’t know. Unfortunately, we don’t know a lot about that rune, and what we do know isn’t good.”

Her words scared me. And I wanted so badly to tell her everything, to show her the storage unit and my mother’s letter, but something held me back.

The warning in my mom’s letter that I couldn’t trust any hunter with her secret.

Was the secret that my mom was working with vampires? Because that wasn’t something I would support or be proud of. Or was the secret somehow tied to this mark?

All these questions kept me up well into the night, and I wasn’t excited about the days of training ahead.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

Over the next three months, I threw myself into my studies, the one thing I felt good at. I read as much as I could about vampires and the history of Veil Haven. My mother’s ancestors, Klara and Victor Sinclair, were some of the founding members of Veil Haven. They were both arcanists and had the idea to create the portals with overlapping runes. They studied how the vampires portaled on the shadows and inverted it. They had linked up with nine other arcanists in an attempt to create a permanent portal from Los Angeles to New York City and found Veil Haven by accident. A safe realm with sunlight, water, oxygen, and, most importantly, no vampires. It seemed like it was a gift given from God. They moved the Veil Stone here, emptied their mortal schools, and began to build at once.

It was all so fascinating. Harper and Luna were teaching me to read runes. Luna obviously had a special affinity for them, but I still hadn’t shown them my forbidden one. The shadow mark. I was scared it would change how they looked at me. Like Akari and Asher had looked at me differently when they’d seen it. Celia too, even if just for a second.

These thoughts circled my head, but I pushed them away and focused on my training. Now that I had hunter marks, my physical training was different. The marks began to tingle and glow when I practiced sparring, and slowly I felt my body respond. My hits were harder and I was faster. The people I was sparring with were starting to get hurt, and they kept moving me to another person until finally I was paired with Asher.