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Chapter 722
The next morning, Grim smelled the fear before either of them said a word.Three steps into the Warden building, his hackles rose. Not aggressive — alert.Ears swiveling toward the double doors down the hall, where a knot of voices had gone too tight, too quiet, too fast. Alex didn't need the bond to read that kind of silence.He'd heard it enough times now to know exactly what it meant.Jennifer stood behind her desk, arms crossed, listening to a man old enough to be someone's grandfather grip the desk's edge like it was the only thing holding him up.Beside him, a woman in traveling clothes too fine for traveling. Behind them both, a girl young enough to still be sharp about everything — the kind of sharp that only came from never having paid for it yet.Alex leaned against the doorframe. Watched."...collapsed before dawn." The old man's voice was thin, wrung out. "No warning. No wound we could find. One moment he was resting in the eastern pen. The next—" He stopped. Couldn't fini
Chapter 721
Alex looked at the three of them for a long moment. Dorian, shaking. Kass, forehead nearly in the dirt. Bram, still talking — still trying to buy his own skin with someone else's.An hour ago, all three had been ready to open him up. Now they couldn't hold his eyes."I don't care who wanted to blame who." His voice stayed flat. "You were all three swinging something at me."Bram's mouth snapped shut."I'm not going to kill you." He let that sit long enough for them to feel exactly how little comfort it was. "But you're not walking away from this owing nothing.""One year. Full obedience. No refusals — to anything I ask, whenever I ask it, no matter the hour. No matter the inconvenience."He crossed to Dorian first. Two fingers, flat against his forehead. Barely a touch. A thread of inner force slid in and settled — the same trick he'd once learned, planting something a body would never find until it was already too late.Dorian gasped like he'd been struck."That's a seed." Alex moved
Chapter 720
The pitchfork caught Alex square in the ribs and didn't so much as wrinkle his shirt.Dorian's face went through confusion before it reached fear. He wrenched the tines back and drove them in again, harder, both hands behind it this time — and again, nothing. No give. No blood. Not even the small satisfaction of a man staggering back a step.“Trying to scratch me?” Alex asked. “Funny. I’ve been feeling itchy. Stab a little harder on my back.”“What—”Bram’s iron pipe smashed into Alex’s shoulder and rang out like it had struck a bell instead of flesh.“Decent massage,” Alex said. “But nowhere near enough. Put some real strength into it.”All three of them stared as if they had just faced a monster. Then they attacked with everything they could—hitting, stabbing, and striking harder than before.Alex didn't bother stepping out of range. His whole body ran thick with inner force, layered so deep under the skin that a blunt weapon might as well have been swung at a mountain. Kass, scramb
Chapter 719
Dorian double cabin truck dropped the three of them at White Field a little after eight, the terraces already visible from the road, brown-edged and sunken where something had been eating the roots out from under them for weeks.Dorian had brought two people. He introduced them without much ceremony — Kass, wiry and quiet, with a badger-shaped digger pacing low at his heel; Bram, heavier through the shoulders, his beast a hooded, dust-colored viper coiled loose around one arm like a bracelet that had decided to wake up.“Citizen quota,” Dorian said. “They’re short on theirs as well. Thought we’d clear it all in one go. Team quota—more hands, the better.”"Efficient," Alex said, and didn't ask anything else.Kass's eyes moved once over Grim, cataloguing, then moved away too fast to be casual about it. Bram didn't look at Grim at all, which was its own kind of tell.A farmer met them at the gate with the tired relief of a man who'd stopped expecting anyone to actually come. "North terrac
Chapter 718
The Rime Lynx hit the dirt on its side and didn't get back up, one paw twitching against the packed ground, out cold before its own keeper had finished registering what he'd just watched happen.Dorian Vance stood frozen at the rail, mouth open, no sound coming out of it.His vision actually swam for a second — a genuine, physical lurch, like the ground had shifted under a match he'd already spent in his head.Fluke, he told himself, and didn't believe it even as the thought formed.His Rime Lynx had trained under a licensed handler since it was a kit. It had never gone down in one exchange. Not once. Not to anything.How, he thought, and had no second half to the sentence.The breeder-woman at the rail had gone the color of old paper. "That's not—" she started, to no one, and didn't finish that either.Grim didn't gloat. He didn't need to. He simply turned his head toward Dorian and held the look, calm and unhurried.Behind Alex, the row of keepers who'd called this the easiest match
Chapter 717
That night, once the shop had gone quiet, Alex sat with Grim's head against his knee and called up the skill.Skill on record: Bloodrend. Compatible target found. Teach?Grim was awake, ears already up, watching him with the particular stillness of a dog that knew something was about to happen to it and had decided in advance not to flinch."Yes."Cost: 300 mana. Cooldown: 48 hours.The pull came sharper than Windshear had, a cold drag behind his sternum that didn't let go for a full ten seconds. Grim's whole body went rigid, then shuddered, then settled — and when he lifted his head again there was something different sitting behind his eyes, a weight that hadn't been there an hour ago.He tested it without being told to. A short, low swipe at the empty air, twin motions folded into one strike. The old fence post nearest him didn't so much break as disagree with existing."That's yours now," Alex said. "Don't waste it on fence posts."Grim's tail didn't wag. It thumped, once, like a
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very very interesting .