Blaze came awake in the pre-dawn chill, not to a sound, but to a feeling. A cold, gnawing emptiness was coiling in his gut. He hadn't lit the brazier, but it wasn't the cold that bothered him. It was a hollow ache that felt carved out of his very being, a relentless, patient pressure that whispered a single word in time with his own heartbeat: more.
Across the room, a floorboard creaked. Kael was awake. Blaze didn't need his eyes to know; he could feel him. The bond, once a faint tether, was now a constant, low thrum beneath his own senses. He could feel the slow, steady rhythm of Kael's heart, a distant drum that was both alluring and repulsive. He could almost taste the coppery warmth of the blood moving through his spawn's veins.
Blaze sat up, pressing the heel of his hand against his sternum as if to physically hold the hunger back. His gums ached.
Kael shifted, propping himself on an elbow. In the faint light filtering through a grimy window, his eyes held no alarm, only a dark, knowing anticipation. "You're thirsty," he said. It wasn't a question.
Blaze's own voice was a low rasp. "You can feel it."
A slow smile spread across Kael's face, sharp and eager. "I feel you, Master. The bond sings when the hunger rises." With a deliberate movement, he tilted his head, exposing the long, corded muscle of his neck. The pulse there was a steady, maddening rhythm. "It's yours to take. You don't have to fight it."
Blaze stared, his throat suddenly tight. A part of him, the part that was still Blaze Carter, recoiled in disgust. Kael's devotion was a drug, and this offering was another, deeper dose. To feed from him was to blur the line between master and parasite, to strengthen a chain that already felt too tight.
But the hunger was a physical thing, a clawing beast inside him. His jaw clenched with a faint click.
He was across the room in three silent strides. Kael didn't flinch, didn't even breathe. He just tilted his head back further, eyes closing in an expression of almost religious surrender. Blaze leaned in, and the world narrowed to the scent of Kael's skin—salt and sweat and the intoxicating iron tang of blood.
His fangs descended with a surgical precision he still wasn't used to.
The first rush was an explosion of relief. A hot, vital sweetness that extinguished the cold ache in his gut. He forced himself to drink slowly, to sip rather than gorge, but each swallow was a wave of fire and strength washing through him. The room came into sharp, painful focus. He could see the individual fibers in the rough-spun blanket on Kael's cot, hear the scuttling of a rat two floors below.
A shudder ran through Kael's powerful frame, a tremor that had nothing to do with pain. It was pleasure. A low, guttural sound rumbled in his chest, and his hands clenched into fists on the thin mattress. "Yes…"
The sound broke the spell. Blaze pulled back as if burned, a string of saliva and blood connecting them for a half-second before snapping. Two perfect, crimson beads welled on Kael's neck. His spawn's eyes were unfocused, glazed with a fierce, unwavering devotion that was more terrifying than any defiance.
"Enough," Blaze snapped, the word harsher than he intended.
Kael blinked, the haze clearing from his eyes, but the look of adoration remained. He nodded, a flush creeping up his throat.
Blaze turned away, wiping his mouth, the taste of Kael still coating his tongue. The hunger was quieted, but a new, colder dread took its place. This bond was a poison. It fed Kael's worship and risked eroding his own will into a simple, brutal cycle of need and submission. He was forging an army, not a cult of one. He needed a sustainable source of power, one that didn't look at him with the eyes of a disciple.
Greywick was a sea of potential sustenance, but he couldn't just pluck victims from the street. A string of drained corpses would bring the Church and the city guard down on him before he'd even laid the first stone of his empire. He needed prey that no one would miss. Prey that was already considered disposable.
"You need more," Kael stated, his voice still thick from the feeding.
Blaze's gaze was sharp as glass. "I need control," he corrected. "This hunger is a tool. If I let it become my master, I'm just a beast in the dark."
A memory surfaced, dragged into the light by the new clarity in his mind. Drunken mercenaries in a tavern, boasting. Something about a "pit." Smuggled beasts. Fights. Bloodsport. At the time, it had been meaningless noise. Now, it was a solution.
He moved to the door, his purpose solidifying. "We're hunting tonight."
Kael's smile returned, feral and satisfied. "Good."
Blaze paused, his hand on the door latch. The hunger was sated, for now. But it was always there, a shadow self, whispering of the power that came from the kill. He would feed it. But he would do it on his own terms.
After dark, Greywick shed its daytime mask. The filth didn't disappear—it just found new places to hide. Torches sputtered to life along the winding streets, casting more shadows than they banished. From behind shuttered windows came the sounds of people trying to forget their troubles: off-key singing, the desperate rattle of dice, the ring of steel as mercenaries settled scores with fists and blades.
Blaze moved through it all like he belonged to the darkness itself. His cloak hung loose around him, hood pulled low enough to hide his face but not so low as to draw attention. Each step was deliberate, silent—a skill he'd learned the hard way over the years. Beside him, Kael tried to match his stealth but couldn't quite manage it. The young beastfolk's head swiveled at every sound, ears pricked, muscles coiled. Where Blaze was shadow, Kael was barely contained violence.
Blaze knew exactly where he was going. Three days ago, he'd dismissed the drunken boasting as tavern talk. Now, with hunger gnawing at his resolve, those overheard words felt like breadcrumbs leading to salvation.
The tavern he sought wasn't trying to impress anyone—no painted sign, no welcoming light. Just a weathered door hanging slightly askew and the muffled sound of voices within. The kind of place that survived on being forgettable.
He pushed inside and immediately regretted breathing. The air was a cocktail of cheap tobacco, spilled beer, and unwashed bodies. Smoke hung in lazy clouds near the ceiling, catching the amber light of oil lamps that had seen better decades. The clientele matched the atmosphere—hard men with harder stories, clutching their drinks like lifelines.
It didn't take long to spot his target. The man with the scarred jaw was holding court at a corner table, gesturing wildly as he spun his tale. His audience hung on every word, the way desperate people do when they're hungry for excitement.
"—thing fought like a demon, I tell ya! Claws long as daggers, but we got it chained up proper!" He punctuated his words by slamming his mug down, sending foam cascading over the rim. His friends erupted in appreciative laughter.
Blaze eased closer, letting the crowd's noise mask his approach. He'd learned long ago that the best way to be invisible was to act like you belonged.
"Fresh shipment tomorrow," the man continued, dropping his voice in a way that made everyone lean in closer. "Caught ourselves a real prize this time—warwolf from the hill country. Took half a dozen chains and twice as many men, but we got the bastard."
Someone whistled low. "Where you keeping something that big?"
The scarred man's grin showed too many missing teeth. "Same place we always do. The pit's served us well enough." He tapped his temple. "You want in on the action, you know the price of admission."
Blaze filed away every detail—the man's mannerisms, the casual way he spoke about location, the assumption that his audience already knew the basic setup. This wasn't some fly-by-night operation. This was established, routine, accepted.
Next to him, Kael's jaw worked silently, every word clearly setting his teeth on edge. Blaze caught his eye and shook his head slightly. Not here. Not yet.
"Best part is the crowd," the man went on, warming to his subject. "Last fight, we had a scaled boar that put up such a show, people were throwing coins at the ring! Thing bled out slow and beautiful—made fine eating afterward, too!"
The table erupted again, but Blaze had heard enough. He melted back into the crowd, then out the door, Kael close behind.
The night air felt clean after the tavern's stench. Kael immediately started pacing, his whole body vibrating with barely contained fury.
"They treat thinking beings like entertainment," he growled. "Like meat."
"And that's exactly why it's perfect." Blaze's voice was calm, but his mind was racing ahead, already mapping possibilities. "They spill blood for sport. They waste what we need. No one counts casualties when the whole point is death."
Kael stopped pacing to stare at him. Understanding dawned slowly. "You want to feed from their victims."
"They're going to die anyway." Blaze met his gaze steadily. "Better their deaths serve some purpose than mere entertainment."
Something shifted in Kael's expression—not quite approval, but recognition. "Clean up their mess while solving our problem."
Blaze pulled his hood back up. "Time to find this pit."
Finding the warehouse wasn't hard once you knew what to look for. The main streets were for honest business—what passed for honest in Greywick, anyway. But venture into the maze of back alleys, and you'd find where the real money changed hands. Here, the cobblestones gave way to packed dirt. The smell of waste mixed with something metallic and wild. And if you listened carefully between the usual sounds of the night, you could hear it: the deep, guttural sounds of caged animals and the roar of crowds hungry for blood.
The warehouse squatted against the town's outer wall like a boil that had been there so long, people stopped noticing it. Its windows were boarded shut, but light leaked through gaps in the wood. A steady stream of men approached its guarded entrance, coins ready, eyes bright with the anticipation of violence.
The guards barely glanced at Blaze and Kael as they joined the line. Just two more sellswords looking to blow their earnings on blood sport. Blaze dropped a few coppers into a waiting palm and received a grunt of acknowledgment in return.
The moment he stepped inside, the heat hit him like a physical blow. Body heat, torch smoke, and the raw stench of fear and violence all mixed into something that made his hunger rear up like a living thing.
The pit dominated the center of the warehouse—a crude arena sunk into the floor, surrounded by rickety wooden barriers. Men pressed three deep around the rails, shouting encouragement and threats in equal measure. Money changed hands faster than Blaze could track. At the bottom of the pit, a bronze-scaled wolf strained against heavy chains, blood already matting its fur. The remains of some other creature lay crumpled in the corner—tonight's earlier entertainment.
"Fresh meat!" someone bellowed, and a door groaned open across the arena. Guards dragged in something massive and horned, its roars shaking dust from the rafters. More chains. More blood waiting to be spilled.
The crowd went wild. Coins flew through the air as bets were placed and raised. But Blaze wasn't watching the spectacle anymore. His whole attention had narrowed to one thing: the rich, copper scent of life force about to be wasted.
His fangs throbbed in response. His fingers curled into fists.
"Master," Kael breathed beside him, barely audible over the chaos. "Now?"
Blaze forced himself to stay still, to think past the hunger clawing at his chest. Rushing in now would only get them killed—or worse, exposed. But watching all that precious blood soak uselessly into sawdust when he was so desperately empty...
"Not yet," he managed. "But soon."
The beasts crashed into each other with a sound like breaking wood. Blood sprayed. The crowd screamed approval. And for the first time since arriving in this forsaken town, Blaze allowed himself a thin smile.
Greywick had just handed him exactly what he needed—a place where death was expected, where blood flowed freely, where no one would question empty corpses or missing pieces. All he had to do was wait for the right moment to claim what was already destined for the dirt.
The fighting pit wasn't just in a warehouse; it was a festering wound in the city's gut. The moment they stepped inside, the noise hit Blaze like a physical blow—a chaotic wall of sound built from roared bets, drunken laughter, and the wet, percussive impacts of flesh and claw from the pit below. The air was a suffocating cocktail of sweat, cheap ale, and fresh blood. For the human mob, it was exhilarating. For Blaze, it was an agonizing sensory overload.
The two beasts in the sand-covered arena below collided with a sound like a cart full of scrap metal crashing. A horned brute and a scaled wolf, both twisted by crude magic, tore into each other. Blood arced through the torchlight, each steaming droplet a siren's call to the hunger coiling in Blaze's belly. He could smell it, taste it on the air, feel its heat from twenty paces away.
His jaw clenched so tight a muscle spasmed in his cheek. This was a test. A self-inflicted torture.
Kael leaned close, his own senses clearly overwhelmed by the human stench and noise. "Master," he growled, his voice tight, "you're trembling."
Blaze looked down. His hands, hidden in the folds of his cloak, were clenched into white-knuckled fists, shaking with a fine, violent tremor. He was fighting a war on two fronts: one against the overwhelming stimuli of the crowd, the other against the screaming void inside him that wanted nothing more than to leap into that pit and drown itself in gore.
"I need to know my limits," he forced the words out, each one a shard of glass in his throat. "I need to know how close I can get to the fire… without letting it consume me."
When the wolf finally ripped the brute's throat out, the crowd's roar reached a fever pitch. Handlers swarmed the pit with chains and hooks, their movements practiced and indifferent. Blaze's gaze was locked on the survivor—a massive, panting creature, its scales slick with its own blood and its enemy's. The smell was intoxicating. The hunger flared, a white-hot agony that nearly buckled his knees.
He tugged on Kael's sleeve and melted into the throng, moving with a predator's grace through the chaos. They found the stairs at the far end, guarded by a single, bored-looking thug. The man was chewing on a splinter of wood, his eyes half-lidded. He never saw Blaze's approach. One moment he was leaning against the wall; the next, his eyes met Blaze's, went vacant, and his body sagged. Blaze caught him before he could make a sound, laying him gently in the shadows.
The descent was a journey into the warehouse's rotten core. The air grew thick with the smells of ammonia, damp fur, and infection. Ahead, the rattling of chains and the low, guttural snarls of caged things echoed off damp stone walls.
The holding room was a gallery of nightmares. Cages were stacked two high, each containing a creature more twisted than the last. Their eyes, glowing with feral hatred, tracked their every move. The wolf from the pit was in the nearest cage, its massive chest heaving, fresh blood still weeping from a dozen wounds. The handlers hadn't gotten to it yet.
Blaze stood in the center of the room, every nerve ending screaming. The proximity to so much raw, magical blood was a physical torment. He took a single, deliberate step toward the wolf's cage.
The beast snarled, a low, rumbling threat.
Blaze met its hateful yellow gaze and, slowly, slid his hand between the iron bars.
It lunged. Not with a snap, but with the full force of its body. Its fangs, thick as daggers, punched through his forearm. The pain was a distant, irrelevant flash. Before the wolf could rip and tear, Blaze's other hand shot through the bars, gripping the back of its skull in a vice.
Then the blood came.
It wasn't like Kael's. It wasn't like a human's. This was wild, raw, infused with a chaotic, primal magic that felt like swallowing lightning. It scoured the hunger from him, replacing it with a surge of pure, untamed power that made his own blood sing. His vision bled to crimson at the edges.
The wolf's struggles weakened, its life and rage pouring into him. The transfer was intoxicating. He could feel his own body responding, muscles tightening, the very shadows in the room seeming to deepen and cling to his form.
With a gasp, he ripped his arm free. It was an act of will so profound it left him dizzy. He staggered back, his breath coming in ragged bursts, the taste of wild magic still electric on his tongue.
In the cage, the wolf collapsed into a heap, unconscious but breathing.
"Alive," Blaze rasped, the word a revelation. He stared at his hand, then at the deep punctures in his arm. Even as he watched, the flesh began to knit together, the skin pulling taut, leaving no trace of the wound behind. It didn't just heal; it consumed the damage, turning it into part of his own strength.
He had control. He had walked to the edge of the fire, felt its heat, and had not been burned.
A slow, cold smile stretched his lips. He looked at the other cages, at the snarling, hissing collection of raw power. A larder. A library of strength, waiting to be consumed.
"This place," he whispered, the words resonating with a newfound certainty. "This pit… it belongs to me now."
From the arena above, another roar went up from the crowd. Another fight had begun. But down here, in the bloody quiet of the cages, a new kind of power was being forged. Not from the chaos of the pit, but from the cold, calculated control of the predator who had just claimed it.