All Chapters of Blood Oath Academy : Chapter 1 - Chapter 4

The mark appeared the night the sky split open.Virelle Noctra did not feel it at first. There was no burning, no pain, no dramatic shift in the air as the stories claimed. It began as nothing more than a faint shimmer beneath her skin, just above her collarbone, like light trying to break through something that refused to let it.She only noticed it because the mirror flickered; her reflection lagged half a second behind her movement. Virelle stilled. That was wrong, the room was quiet, too quiet, the kind of silence that pressed against your ears until you could hear your own pulse. She slowly lifted her hand and touched the glass.Her reflection didn’t; her breath caught then, all at once, it moved—but not the same way she did. It tilted its head in a slow, deliberate motion, watching her. Virelle stepped back sharply, her heart slamming against her ribs. The mirror returned to normal instantly, her reflection snapping back into place as if nothing had happened.But the mark was th

No one told Virelle where to look. But every instinct in her body told her not to look down.Not at the glowing sigil beneath her feet. Not at the silver-veined stone that still hummed with the aftershock of whatever had awakened below the academy. Not at the mark on her collarbone, which had finally dimmed from a blinding flare into a slow, dangerous pulse.Instead, she forced herself to look up at the people surrounding her, at the vampires watching with cold fascination, at the wolves watching with sharpened distrust. The ancient man stood before them all as if the entire chamber belonged to him. Maybe it did.The silence stretched too long. It curled around the room like a live thing, thick with tension and expectation. Virelle’s heart had not slowed since she crashed into this place, but now it beat with a new rhythm, not just fear, but awareness.Every eye in the chamber was on her, not glancing, not curious, but locked. She could feel their attention like hands pressing into he