Page 36 of Marked By His Hunger
Not ravenous.
Not mindless.
Focused.
Claiming.
I snarled and slammed my fist into the tower wall. Stone cracked beneath the force, fractures spiderwebbing through the ancient structure.
“This is a trick,” I hissed into the storm, my voice nearly swallowed by thunder.
The All-Father had always delighted in cruelty.
Grant the cursed a glimpse of something unattainable—only to tear it away.
I would not be made a fool.
I would not become like those who came before me—males driven to madness by longing, by the impossible hope that something pure could survive proximity to a creature like me.
Mate.
The word slid through my thoughts like a blade.
Foreign.
Absurd.
Dangerous.
What female would willingly bind herself to this?
To a Monster who must be chained to feed?
To a creature whose very bloodline carried damnation like inheritance?
To a male who had already sworn—no!
I would not procreate.
“The curse ends with me,” I growled low and deep.
My father had called it stubbornness.
Professor Kenna had called it arrogance.
I called it mercy.
Better extinction than an eternity of suffering passed from father to son.
Thunder cracked again—louder now, closer—as if the sky itself sought to challenge that declaration.
Below, the great iron gates of the Institute groaned open.
They stood at the edge of the courtyard like the jaws of some ancient beast, carved with runes that glowed faintly beneath the storm. Beyond them stretched the bridge between worlds—the shifting threshold where reality bent and bled, where Earth touched Asgarheim in fleeting, unstable moments.
Tonight, it burned brighter.
Students crossed through in staggered waves—figures cloaked in uncertainty, power clinging to them in different forms.
