MALE STALKERS POV
They think they're hunting me.
It's adorable.
They move like frightened animals—skittish, wide-eyed, trembling behind forced bravado—yet they convince themselves they're gathering clues, unmasking a threat, piecing together a monster from the scraps they barely dare to touch.
They don't understand monsters.
They don't understand me, nor her.
We are not a mystery they can solve.
We are the storm that already swallowed them whole.
I know every step they're taking.
I know every theory they whisper behind locked doors.
I know every panic-soaked heartbeat that thunders in their chests when they uncover something they shouldn't have seen.
I track them with the same precision I use on my prey.
And her?
She is the only one who doesn't stumble in the dark.
She moves like she knows the script.
Like she's memorized the beats of this dance.
She is not surprised by roses, threats, disappearances, or bruises.
She accepts them like a woman welcoming a ghost she has known too intimately to fear.
It excites me.
Infuriates me.
Consumes me.
Because knowing she knows changes everything.
She's not prey.
She's not victim.
She's not trembling under my shadow.
She walks straight into it.
She breathes it.
She feeds it.
Sometimes I think she might be shaping it with her bare hands.
The others—those two loyal satellites orbiting her—they're unraveling faster than they can pretend otherwise. They sift through messages. Compare handwriting. Examine camera footage. They try to connect dots that don't exist while ignoring the constellation glowing right in front of them:
She wants this.
They don't see the way her lips twitch when new notes appear.
They don't see how her pulse settles instead of spikes.
They don't see the serenity that softens her when danger grows teeth.
But I do.
I always do.
I see everything.
She disappears for hours, and they panic.
They think she's running from something.
Running to someone.
Running in fear.
They have no idea she vanishes because she's curious.
Because she's digging too.
Following trails.
Tracing blood.
Observing the killer the news whispers about like he's a bedtime terror meant to frighten children.
She follows him like a scholar studying a masterpiece.
But I've known for years.
He is not first killer she followed.
I know.
Since the first night she returned to the dorm with that sharpness in her eyes.
That subtle shift in her walk.
That lingering scent of alleyway grime clinging to her clothes.
She crossed paths with death and didn't flinch.
I knew.
I felt it in the way she breathed differently.
She thinks she hides it well.
She always did love her secrets like they were jewelry.
But every secret she collects shines through her skin.
I read them the way other men read books.
The others?
They've started to notice things too.
Tiny cracks in her mask.
Strange patterns in her handwriting.
Odd phrasing in her notes.
The glint in her eyes whenever violence becomes headline news.
Her smile after the last body was discovered…
that alone should've terrified them.
But they're so busy fearing shadows that they forget to fear the shadow wearing human skin.
And me?
I'm patient.
I know when to watch.
When to listen.
When to strike.
When to let the world believe it has figured me out.
They forget something critical.
I live inside walls.
Inside vents.
Inside blind spots.
Inside the breath right behind her ear.
I am everywhere they swear they've checked.
The notes they found in her drawer—
I placed some of them.
Not all.
Just enough to push suspicion in the direction I wanted.
Just enough to carve fractures where I need them.
I know exactly what they discovered today.
The papers.
The analysis.
The evidence that shouldn't exist.
I know who found it first.
Riya.
I know how her hands shook.
I know she almost screamed.
And I know she ran to him.
No no. Not me.
Kabir.
The other one.
The one who protects by smothering.
The one who suspects by trembling.
He would break if he ever saw the truth beneath my skin.
But my little flame she wouldn't.
She already knows.
She already sees.
The moment she heard the killer's pattern on the news and smiled.
that was the moment my hunger sharpened enough to cut.
Because it wasn't a smile of fear.
Or relief.
Or curiosity.
It was recognition.
Like someone greeting an old friend.
That serial killer doesn't know he's being stalked by something worse.
He doesn't know he's being analyzed by a girl who writes death more beautifully than he enacts it.
He doesn't know she walks behind him, matching her breaths to his footsteps, studying the texture of his crimes with the mind of a predator who prefers to hide in plain sight.
And she thinks I don't know.
She thinks she can disappear into the city and return with her secrets stitched behind her ribs.
But I follow her too.
Not to stop her.
To watch.
To witness.
And maybe to protect.
Because in way her safety became my sanity long ago.
And to understand the way she shines when she's near a kill site.
The way her pulse slows.
The way her eyes sharpen with a writer's hunger.
The way she is not horrified, but inspired.
She thinks I'm the only monster circling her.
But she forgets she's circling me too.
She forgets predators never stalk in one direction.
She forgets I already know where she goes, who she shadows, what she hunts.
And the others?
They're drowning in fear and suspicion.
Their doubts about us are growing teeth.
They compare tattoos.
Symbols.
Odd matching bruises.
Wrong timing.
Wrong alibis.
Wrong instincts.
And every conclusion they reach leads them closer to something that tastes like the truth.
But they won't find it.
Because while they chase phantoms…
I am already behind their backs.
Breathing warm.
Silent.
Smiling.
The real hunt hasn't started yet.
But it will.
Soon.
Very soon.
And when it does…
I won't be the only predator in the room.
For now she thinks she walks alone.
That's the sweetest lie she tells herself.
She slips out when night is still wet and breathing. Hood up. Steps deliberate. Body humming with the kind of alertness most people mistake for fear. Not her. Her alertness is hunger sharpened into instinct. She moves with purpose, chasing threads of someone else's violence like she's assessing a rival sculptor's work.
But I follow.
Always just far enough to give her the illusion of solitude.
Close enough to taste her thoughts in the cold air she leaves behind.
She is reckless in a way only someone confident in her invisible safety net can be.
And I am that net.
Invisible. Constant. Coiled.
She bends over alleyway corners where blood hasn't fully dried. She crouches beside dumpsters where shoeprints slant. She peers at broken windows with the fascination of an artist admiring another's brushstroke.
And every time she touches something she shouldn't.
I erase it.
Fingerprints. Dust smudges. The faint mark her boot leaves in a puddle.
I wipe.
I fix.
I reset the stage.
She never turns around to check if I'm there.
That's how I know she knows.
She leaves mistakes on purpose.
A glove seam tucked too obviously into a crack.
A stray thread snagged on barbed wire.
The soft imprint of her knee on damp soil.
She leaves them like invitations.
Like whispers.
Like she's saying:
You'll clean this, won't you? You always do.
And I do.
Because the idea of her leaving her scent where someone undeserving could track it ignites a fury so deep it feels ancient.
She thinks she's stalking a killer.
But half the time, I'm stalking her stalking him.
When she disappears for hours, the others panic.
They spiral.
They assume the worst.
And maybe they're right to.
She returns disheveled.
hair messy, breath uneven, clothes smelling faintly of iron and cold pavement.
She crafts excuses on her tongue like she's testing flavors.
"Library."
"Walk."
"Just needed air."
None believable.
None meant to be.
She doesn't even try to mask the tremors running under her skin.
The tremors aren't fear.
They're adrenaline.
But the others don't know the taste of that kind of adrenaline.
So they assume danger.
She comes back at 2:17 AM.
I slip into campus at 2:27.
Always ten minutes after her.
Always consistent.
Always calculated.
And they notice.
The two shadows the ones who cling to her because they love her or fear life without her exchange looks behind her back.
They pretend to be discreet, but suspicion has a scent, and they reek of it.
They observe every detail:
Her dirt-smeared sleeve.
My untucked shirt.
Her flushed cheeks.
My steady pulse.
Her uneven breathing.
My too-calculated calm.
They're starting to trace patterns that should've stayed invisible.
When she returns one night, her hands are shaking as if she touched something that whispered back.
There's dried mud on her knee and a faint scrape on her wrist.
Not from danger.
From fascination.
She probably got too close to the killer's trail again.
The moment she slips into the dorm, I step into the shadows ten minutes after.
Like always.
And the two of them are waiting.
They pretend they just happen to be passing by.
They pretend they don't scan me from head to toe.
They pretend they don't tally the minutes.
But the tremble in their voices gives them away.
I walk past them, silent, composed, the person they think is a protector.
But predators and protectors often wear the same face.
Only prey can't tell the difference.
Not that she's prey.
Far from it.
She stands in her room, back to the door, staring at the rose I left on her pillow.
Black, soft, dying beautifully.
She lifts it gently, inhales its fading scent, and a faint smile touches her lips.
A private smile.
One meant for me.
Because she knows.
She knows it wasn't placed there by the killer she stalks.
She knows it wasn't the others.
She knows it was me.
Her body relaxes not in safety, but in recognition.
As if she's been waiting for confirmation that her steps in the dark didn't go unnoticed.
I watch from outside, through a slit in the doorway.
She thinks the door is fully closed.
She brushes her thumb over the rose petal
and whispers something so soft I barely hear it.
"Just right."
She approves of the timing.
Of the placement.
Of the message tucked beneath the bloom.
She didn't even read it yet, but she knows what it'll say:
I saw where you went.
I saw what you touched.
I saw what you followed.
Don't forget I'm always ten minutes behind you.
The others barge into her room, panic in their voices, accusations in their eyes.
"Where were you?"
"Why didn't you text?"
"Why are you dirty?"
"Why aren't you scared?"
"You could've been killed."
She gives soft, vague answers that mean nothing.
But her eyes drift to the door.
To me.
To the shadow she knows is watching.
And she softens.
She softens only for me.
They notice.
Their suspicion cracks wide open.
They lock eyes with each other in silent panic.
Something's wrong.
Something's off.
Something's too connected..
her disappearances,
my arrivals,
our shared bruises,
our matching timing.
They're getting closer to the truth.
But it doesn't matter.
Because every time they get close…
I remove a piece.
A page.
A clue.
A threat.
Every time they doubt us…
I give them new fear to distract them.
Every time she tests me with a reckless move…
I clean her messes like a secret devotion.
She leaves footprints beside a crime scene;
I brush them away.
She touches a broken window shard;
I pocket it.
She kneels in blood to inspect it;
I wash the evidence clean.
She stalks death with a scholar's curiosity;
I stalk her with worship sharpened into hunger.
She disappears.
I follow.
She returns.
I return.
She breathes danger.
I breathe her.
And the others?
They're starting to understand:
This isn't a case.
Or a coincidence.
Or separate stalkers circling them.
This is a pattern.
A pair.
A bond threaded with something feral and wrong.
Something ancient and inevitable.
They can feel the truth approaching.
They can sense the reveal coming.
And when it does…
They won't know who to fear more.
The monster who protects her.
Or the monster she becomes when she smiles at the kill.