Marcus POV:
She shouldn't have smelled like that.
I'd spent decades mastering restraint, reigning in the hunger, the demons that slumbered under my skin, the ache for a bond that had been severed long before. Yet one step into the staffroom and I knew—she was here.
Rose Hawthorn.
Her heartbeat thundered through the air, sharp, uneven, flustered. And beneath the clean, practiced perfume she wore, the veil slipped.
Maria.
Or something so akin it made my demons rear their heads and snarl in unison. That bond, that intoxicating pull, the smell of mine.
It was impossible. Maria was centuries gone, her body crumbled to ash, her laughter stolen by time. But Rose's scent—the way her heart stuttered when our eyes caught across the table—it was too familiar. Too real.
Could she be her reincarnation? Was the goddess so cruel, or perhaps so merciful, to give me my beloved again, wrapped in the body of another?
She was the exact replica of my beloved.
