Chapter 25-Serena
The days seemed to pass one after the other in rapid succession.
Too fast.
Too full.
Too bright.
The time I spent on my studies was mostly counting down the seconds until I could be with him again.
Raven.
The Draugr.
My mate.
Even thinking it sent a pulse of heat through my chest, like something deep inside me responded to his name before my brain could catch up.
The bond never really quieted—it stretched, bent, softened sometimes—but it was always there.
Pulsing within me.
Watching.
Waiting.
Raven was in advanced studies, so I did not have any classes with him.
We saw each other in the halls, careful glances and stolen touches, and at meals sometimes.
And afterward?
Afterward, I slipped away.
Up stairwells that whispered secrets.
Through corridors that shifted just slightly when I wasn’t paying attention.
To his rooftop sanctuary where the wind howled like something ancient mourning the world below.
That was where I belonged.
With him.
My roommates teased me about it endlessly.
But I didn’t mind.
Ursula, Sapphire, Emery—they were good people.
Good Witches.
And in a place like the Asgarheim Runevald Institute, where Monsters and magic coexisted in uneasy balance, that mattered more than I ever thought it would.
Thank God for Ursula.
Seriously.
If it weren’t for her, Professor Calderwood, the potions master, would have kicked me out already.
I kinda sorta wasn’t paying attention during his class. Or the Herbology one after.
Okay, I wasn’t paying attention at all.
We were cultivating night-blooming roots—rare, sensitive, magically reactive—and I clipped the damn thing straight to the root like a complete idiot.
Oops.
The plant shrieked.
Yes.
Shrieked.
Ursula dove in, muttering under her breath, hands glowing faintly green as she worked to salvage it.
I just stood there, holding the shears like a criminal caught mid-act.
Because I hadn’t been thinking about plants.
I’d been thinking about Raven.
About the way he looked at me.
The way he said Unnasta Minn like it meant something deeper than just a word.
I finally looked it up for myself.
Old Norse.
Sweetheart. My darling.
But when I told him?
He’d tilted his head, that quiet intensity settling over him.
“It means more to the Draugen,” he’d said.
My heart had practically exploded.
Because the second I learned about fated mates in class—really learned about them—it clicked.
Not a maybe.
Not a possibility.
A certainty.
Whatever else I learned here at the Asgarheim Runevald Institute…
Raven was mine.
And I was his.
The bond didn’t just say it.
It demanded it.
With him, I felt better than I ever had before.
Stronger.
Clearer.
Alive in a way that made everything before feel like I’d been walking half-asleep.
And the sex?
Yeah.
Fantastic didn’t even begin to cover it.
The fact that he had been a virgin before me?
Complete bullshit.
There was no way.
Raven knew my body better than I did.
Not in a creepy way.
Not in a practiced way.
Instinct.
Pure, terrifying instinct.
Like he could feel what I needed before I did.
Which—
Okay.
He probably could.
Because the bond?
It didn’t just connect us.
It blurred us.
Yes, he fed from me.
Blood was vital to him.
And I—God.
I liked it.
I liked knowing I could give him something no one else could.
That I could sustain him.
That I could touch the part of him everyone else feared.
He was dangerous.
Powerful.
Monstrous in a way that made people step aside when he walked past.
And I loved every part of him.
I was sleeping better.
Breathing easier.
And maybe most importantly—
I hadn’t seen a ghost in days.
That should have worried me.
It didn’t.
It felt like freedom.
Like something inside me had finally settled.
Like everything was falling into place.
Which, in hindsight, should have been the warning.