🖤Kisses That Wake The Dead🖤

CHAPTER 2: "The First Rule"

The lecture hall was colder than it had any right to be.

Angel slid into a seat near the back, shivering as she pulled her hoodie tighter. Something about the whole building felt… off. The walls were too quiet. The lights are a little too dim. And her skin? Covered in goosebumps that had nothing to do with the temperature.

She tried to shake it off. New place nerves, she told herself. It's totally normal.

Still, she couldn’t forget him.

Ash — the man at the steps.

There was something about him that had settled into her blood like static. Something ancient and terrifyingly familiar.

She opened her notebook and flipped to a blank page.

“Welcome,” a voice said at the front of the room.

Deep. Cold. Unmistakable.

Her pen slipped from her fingers.

He stood behind the desk — black dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, silver eyes scanning the room like he could see through skin and bone.

Ash.

He met her gaze, just for a second. No smile. No recognition. Just that same piercing look.

And then — like nothing had happened — he turned back to the board and wrote:

> The Psychology of Obsession

Professor A. Morrigan

Angel blinked.

He’s my professor?

Of course he was.

Of course, the only person who’d made her heart stutter since she got here also happened to be completely off-limits.

She should’ve looked away. Paid attention to the syllabus he was handing out. Anything.

But instead, she watched him move — graceful. Too graceful. Like he wasn’t just walking, but gliding through shadows.

Not normal, her instincts whispered.

Not safe.

She didn’t care.

---

Ash knew she was staring.

He could feel her eyes like heat against his skin.

He didn’t look at her again — he couldn’t. Not here. Not now.

He had made a promise the last time he lost her:

> If I find her again, I will not take her.

No matter how much the monster inside him ached.

But she smelled the same. Like sunlight wrapped in sin.

And when she had smiled at him on those steps… he almost broke.

He turned back to the class.

“There are three rules in this course,” he said, voice sharp and final.

“Number one: No distractions.

Number two: No questions about my past.

And number three…”

His gaze landed on Angel again.

A beat. A pause. A dare.

> “Don’t fall in love with me.”

The class laughed nervously.

Angel didn’t.

Because in that moment — in the way his jaw clenched, in the flicker of darkness behind those silver eyes — she realized something terrifying:

> That warning wasn’t for the class.

It was for her.