Page 52 of Marked By His Hunger
The North remained a distant echo—an access point only.
Our true form could not pass unnoticed there.
So we stayed here—in Asgarheim
Studying. Training. Feeding.
Waiting.
And every semester my father sent a missive reminding me of my duties.
Professor Kenna had agreed to his terms.
Another wave of female students would undergo compatibility exams.
Breeding potential.
The word tasted foul.
I was not a stallion to be paraded.
I was not a stud.
And yet there I stood—overseeing the new arrivals like some monstrous customs officer.
“Faaz,” I hissed into the rain.
Pain.
The storm answered with thunder.
I launched myself into the sky, wings snapping open.
Cloaking magic wrapped around me as instinctively as breath.
It worked outside the castle walls. Allowed me to go about unnoticed.
Within the Institute proper, the wards weakened it.
Yet another humiliation.
I hovered above the village as students descended on the town like the blissful little fools they were.
Witches. Gargoyles. Shifters. Warlocks.
The usual mixture of unlikely allies bound by treaty and rune.
Neutral ground, they called it.
Safe.
I nearly laughed.
Safe for whom?
The wind shifted.
And her scent pierced through ozone and salt and storm like a blade through flesh.
