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Metamorphoses: Book 1 of the Moonmarked Series
Metamorphoses (Book 1 Of The Moonmarked Series)
When BPD/OCD/Witch Kenzie Rose transfers to an old, ivy-draped university, all she wants is a quiet new clean lines, manageable rituals, classes where no one looks too closely. She carries salt in her grocery bag and a crescent-moon pendant at her throat, drawing circles on worn dorm-room floors to keep the past on the other side of the line. She’s determined to stay small, invisible, safe.
Then she walks into Room 304.
Theo Frost—“Wolf” to anyone who’s ever taken his infamous Myth & Metamorphosis seminar—is the kind of professor rumors tattooed forearms, stage-worn boots, a voice like gravel at midnight and a syllabus full of stories that “leave teeth marks.” He is not supposed to notice the quiet girl in the back row with the sharp eyeliner and the too-careful breathing. He is definitely not supposed to feel the room tilt when she opens her mouth and says, “A story can’t save you before it ruins you first.”
What Kenzie doesn’t the man who teaches monsters for a living is one. Under the full moon, the professor who talks about transformation like a thesis becomes it—muscle and hunger and fur in the dark woods beyond campus, fighting not to let the thing in his blood swallow what’s left of his humanity.
As Kenzie’s rituals deepen from coping mechanisms into something older and witchier—salt circles, moon water, whispered pleas to be truly seen—her life begins to braid itself around Wolf’s in ways neither of them can safely explain. She recognizes her own terror in his careful distance; he recognizes his own ruin in the way she looks at him like he’s both altar and warning sign. The university has rules. Magic has prices. And obsession, once summoned, does not go back into its circle.
Kenzie has to decide what kind of change she’s willing to the girl she promised she’d be, or the witch, the lover, and the monster’s match she’s becoming.
A lush, feral dark-academia paranormal romance about trauma and ritual, wanting and being wanted back
a hypervigilant, witchy college heroine with intrusive thoughts and salt-circle magic
a brooding, bearded literature professor who’s equal parts ethics, ink, and actual wolf
obsessive age-gap, professor–student tension with teeth and consent
lyrical prose, mental health & survivor rep
A witchy, slow-burn, high-heat romance where the real metamorphosis is surviving being truly seen.🔥 Metamorphoses is a gothic dark-romance debut
the obsession is slow-burn before it snaps,
the heat is explicit, poetic, and primal,
the line between danger and devotion blurs under candlelight and salt,
and every boundary they cross binds them tighter to the shadows that hunt them both.
If you crave dark academia with paranormal bite, forbidden age-gap tension, power-exchange done right, and a love story that bleeds as hard as it burns, this is the first chapter of a series that will leave its mark.
When BPD/OCD/Witch Kenzie Rose transfers to an old, ivy-draped university, all she wants is a quiet new clean lines, manageable rituals, classes where no one looks too closely. She carries salt in her grocery bag and a crescent-moon pendant at her throat, drawing circles on worn dorm-room floors to keep the past on the other side of the line. She’s determined to stay small, invisible, safe.
Then she walks into Room 304.
Theo Frost—“Wolf” to anyone who’s ever taken his infamous Myth & Metamorphosis seminar—is the kind of professor rumors tattooed forearms, stage-worn boots, a voice like gravel at midnight and a syllabus full of stories that “leave teeth marks.” He is not supposed to notice the quiet girl in the back row with the sharp eyeliner and the too-careful breathing. He is definitely not supposed to feel the room tilt when she opens her mouth and says, “A story can’t save you before it ruins you first.”
What Kenzie doesn’t the man who teaches monsters for a living is one. Under the full moon, the professor who talks about transformation like a thesis becomes it—muscle and hunger and fur in the dark woods beyond campus, fighting not to let the thing in his blood swallow what’s left of his humanity.
As Kenzie’s rituals deepen from coping mechanisms into something older and witchier—salt circles, moon water, whispered pleas to be truly seen—her life begins to braid itself around Wolf’s in ways neither of them can safely explain. She recognizes her own terror in his careful distance; he recognizes his own ruin in the way she looks at him like he’s both altar and warning sign. The university has rules. Magic has prices. And obsession, once summoned, does not go back into its circle.
Kenzie has to decide what kind of change she’s willing to the girl she promised she’d be, or the witch, the lover, and the monster’s match she’s becoming.
A lush, feral dark-academia paranormal romance about trauma and ritual, wanting and being wanted back
a hypervigilant, witchy college heroine with intrusive thoughts and salt-circle magic
a brooding, bearded literature professor who’s equal parts ethics, ink, and actual wolf
obsessive age-gap, professor–student tension with teeth and consent
lyrical prose, mental health & survivor rep
A witchy, slow-burn, high-heat romance where the real metamorphosis is surviving being truly seen.🔥 Metamorphoses is a gothic dark-romance debut
the obsession is slow-burn before it snaps,
the heat is explicit, poetic, and primal,
the line between danger and devotion blurs under candlelight and salt,
and every boundary they cross binds them tighter to the shadows that hunt them both.
If you crave dark academia with paranormal bite, forbidden age-gap tension, power-exchange done right, and a love story that bleeds as hard as it burns, this is the first chapter of a series that will leave its mark.
654 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 6, 2025
4 people are currently reading
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 24, 2025
THE ultimate dark academia dreaaaam. The gothic tension & the chemistry is magnetic. The author handles the professor-student dynamic maturely, with a slow-burn intensity. The power shift and the forbidden romance is enough to make you want to read this! It definitely does not shy away from the “feral” side of attraction. Thank you for asking us to read this!
December 8, 2025
This book absolutely ruined me in the best most delicious ways imagineable!
I need everyone to understand something:
I picked up Metamorphoses expecting a dark academia romance with a little edge… and instead I got tackled to the floor, annotated, underlined, highlighted, spiritually rearranged, and left in the corner whispering “interesting” like a feral Victorian orphan.
This book didn’t just grip me — it studied me, dissected me, took notes, and handed me back to myself with the quiet, devastating assurance of a professor who knows exactly how you break.
From the very first pages, Kenzie Rose steps onto campus like a storm pretending to be a girl. The writing captures her anxiety, rituals, sharp wit, and soft ferocity with surgical precision — the salt circles, the perfect eyeliner wings she draws like armor, the way she navigates noise and people and desire like every footstep might be spellwork. It’s intimate, painful, and stunningly tender. She isn’t written; she is summoned.
And then there’s him.
Theo Frost — Wolf.
The kind of professor who walks into a room and silently rearranges everyone’s moral alignment. A man built out of ink, gravel, and myth. A man whose voice vibrates all the way down to your bones, whose presence feels like leaning too close to a candle and knowing you’ll do it again anyway. His first lines in the classroom?? Predatory poetry. His chalk snapping in half after Kenzie’s answer??? Sir, please. I am a civilian. I am not equipped.
This book is an absolute masterclass in slow-burn obsession — not just romance, but identity. Wanting. Becoming. The story crawls under your skin with its themes of metamorphosis, myth, and the terrifying magic of being seen by someone who shouldn’t see you at all.
I kept stopping just to savor lines that felt like they’d been carved, not written. Scenes that felt like trespassing. Moments where the tension is so electric it could power the campus.
And the female friendships??
Zoe is the funniest, brightest chaos demon to ever bless a dorm room — her commentary, her wildly incorrect whisper-shouting, the late-night disasters, the supportive threats, the unhinged boy situations… I would die for her. The comedic timing in this book is art.
But what truly destroyed me is how the story approaches transformation — how it asks what we become when we want something. When we fear it. When we’re brave enough to reach for it anyway.
This isn’t just a dark academia romance.
It’s a psychological excavation.
A witch-lit fever dream.
A book that dares you to look directly at your own hunger.
By the time I reached the end, I understood the title on a molecular level.
Metamorphosis isn’t one moment — it’s every moment that cracks you open.
If you love:
✨ obsessive older-man/younger-woman tension
✨ witchy feminine interiority
✨ dark academia dripping in atmosphere
✨ morally interesting men who should NOT look at you the way he looks at her
✨ prose that feels like spilled ink and moonlight
✨ that “I will ruin you politely” energy
…then Metamorphoses isn’t a book. It’s a possession.
And I, happily, am no longer the same.
I need everyone to understand something:
I picked up Metamorphoses expecting a dark academia romance with a little edge… and instead I got tackled to the floor, annotated, underlined, highlighted, spiritually rearranged, and left in the corner whispering “interesting” like a feral Victorian orphan.
This book didn’t just grip me — it studied me, dissected me, took notes, and handed me back to myself with the quiet, devastating assurance of a professor who knows exactly how you break.
From the very first pages, Kenzie Rose steps onto campus like a storm pretending to be a girl. The writing captures her anxiety, rituals, sharp wit, and soft ferocity with surgical precision — the salt circles, the perfect eyeliner wings she draws like armor, the way she navigates noise and people and desire like every footstep might be spellwork. It’s intimate, painful, and stunningly tender. She isn’t written; she is summoned.
And then there’s him.
Theo Frost — Wolf.
The kind of professor who walks into a room and silently rearranges everyone’s moral alignment. A man built out of ink, gravel, and myth. A man whose voice vibrates all the way down to your bones, whose presence feels like leaning too close to a candle and knowing you’ll do it again anyway. His first lines in the classroom?? Predatory poetry. His chalk snapping in half after Kenzie’s answer??? Sir, please. I am a civilian. I am not equipped.
This book is an absolute masterclass in slow-burn obsession — not just romance, but identity. Wanting. Becoming. The story crawls under your skin with its themes of metamorphosis, myth, and the terrifying magic of being seen by someone who shouldn’t see you at all.
I kept stopping just to savor lines that felt like they’d been carved, not written. Scenes that felt like trespassing. Moments where the tension is so electric it could power the campus.
And the female friendships??
Zoe is the funniest, brightest chaos demon to ever bless a dorm room — her commentary, her wildly incorrect whisper-shouting, the late-night disasters, the supportive threats, the unhinged boy situations… I would die for her. The comedic timing in this book is art.
But what truly destroyed me is how the story approaches transformation — how it asks what we become when we want something. When we fear it. When we’re brave enough to reach for it anyway.
This isn’t just a dark academia romance.
It’s a psychological excavation.
A witch-lit fever dream.
A book that dares you to look directly at your own hunger.
By the time I reached the end, I understood the title on a molecular level.
Metamorphosis isn’t one moment — it’s every moment that cracks you open.
If you love:
✨ obsessive older-man/younger-woman tension
✨ witchy feminine interiority
✨ dark academia dripping in atmosphere
✨ morally interesting men who should NOT look at you the way he looks at her
✨ prose that feels like spilled ink and moonlight
✨ that “I will ruin you politely” energy
…then Metamorphoses isn’t a book. It’s a possession.
And I, happily, am no longer the same.
November 5, 2025
Absolutely fantasticly written book and even more impressive considering it is the first effort from this Indie Publisher. Not usually a reader of this genre but heard werewolves and witches and some really spectacular feedback from other folks and had to give it a shot. It is of course EXTREMELY spicy with some really fun and unique twists and takes on the genre. What was more impressive for me however was the depth of the world building and characters, it added so much more meat to the book itself versus being thinly veiled plot for the sake of getting to the next part of smut. For instance both the FMC and MMC have quirks, history, LAYERS and specifically the MMC isn't just a bad boy for plots sake if that makes sense. It's nice seeing someone who can write from a woman's perspective AND man's perspective well. Also frankly to show some really deep kinky stuff but with a thread of consent, ritual, BEAUTY. PLENTY of smut but done very well! Absolutely would recommend!
November 29, 2025
This novel truly shines in its exploration of romantic tension; the author delivers an incredibly high level of "spice" with scenes that are compelling, passionate, and beautifully executed. The prose is rich and highly descriptive, fully submerging the reader into the gothic setting and emotional depth of the characters.
December 13, 2025
I was actually shocked to see someone give this book a 3 star review but say a lot of the same positive things about it I wanted to! I came across the author and this book on Tik Tok and decided to give it a shot. I was blown away how truly good it was and not just that but that it was their first ever book. You’d think this writer had been building worlds for years by the way the characters were developed and had real depth. It also felt like a very new take on a very popular genre and more so than that I’ve never seen a MMC written with so much depth. Seriously, tons of really hot spice yes but also a fantastic world and lore. Absolutely recommend!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews