Chapter 11-Sten
Walking beside her tonight instead of hiding in the shadows while following her back to the graduate dormitories felt dangerously good.
Too good.
Like some vital part of me had finally unclenched after days of starving.
Because yes, I had absolutely been making sure Amrin returned safely to her room every single night after leaving mine.
How the fuck could I not?
The Asgarheim Runevald Institute was not some charming little graduate school tucked safely away from the world.
Runevald sat atop intersecting ley lines that bled through the multiverse itself. The island attracted power the way blood attracted predators.
And there were predators here.
Monsters.
Some civilized.
Some barely restrained.
Some ancient enough that even the faculty watched them carefully.
My Luna wandered through all of that danger with her head in the clouds half the time.
Soft.
Distracted.
Daydreaming while horrors lurked in the shadows around her.
Completely unacceptable.
So yes.
I’d followed her.
Every night.
Silently cloaked in moon shadow while she crossed torchlit courtyards and winding forest paths completely unaware of the male tracking her from above rooftops and beneath trees.
At first, I’d told myself it was temporary.
Practical.
Protective.
Then days passed, one after the other.
And suddenly, I was perched outside her dormitory for hours every evening like some deranged celestial gargoyle.
Not for minutes.
For hours.
Which perhaps sounded a little unhinged now that I thought about it.
But in my defense, she lived on the third fucking floor.
Third.
Any moderately powerful Monster at Runevald could leap to that balcony with minimal effort.
A Revenant.
A Dragon-Born.
Half the damn Shifters.
Absolutely not.
No.
True, there were magical wards keeping her room protected, sheltered even.
But there was still no fucking way I was leaving.
A low growl escaped me before I caught it, startling a group of Witches walking below my cloaked position in the trees.
Oops.
Right.
Invisible did not mean silent.
One Witch glanced around nervously.
“Did you hear that?”
“Probably a Shadow Beast.”
They hurried away faster.
Good instinct.
I settled deeper onto the thick branch overlooking the graduate dormitories, crossing my arms as the cold night wind moved through the dark forest surrounding Runevald.
Above me, the skies of Asgarheim shimmered with green and silver auroras where the ley lines overlapped through realms.
Moonlight bled across the ancient towers of the Institute while distant bells echoed from somewhere deeper within the sprawling gothic grounds.
Beautiful.
Lonely.
And for the first time since arriving at Runevald—I no longer felt alone inside it.
Because Amrin existed now.
My Luna.
Fuck.
Even thinking the word softened something dangerous inside me.
I still had no idea what exactly she was to me yet.
Girlfriend felt ridiculous.
Too small.
Too human.
Mate?
Maybe.
But not yet.
It was too soon for her.
For me?
The truth was becoming harder to deny every passing day.
Every instinct I possessed curled helplessly toward her.
Protect her.
Watch her.
Keep her close.
Mine.
The possessiveness of the thought no longer startled me the way it should have.
Maybe because I had spent so long convinced fate hated me that finally finding someone who felt right bordered on religious revelation.
And gods—Amrin was nothing like Ingrid.
The realization hit me often lately.
Painfully often.
When I’d walked in on Erik and Ingrid all those fucking years ago, I thought my entire future had collapsed around me.
The future Menon Blau reduced to some pathetic lovesick fool watching his older brother claim the woman he thought destiny intended for him.
I remembered the mating ceremony afterward.
Máni’s blessing illuminating them both while the Clan celebrated their union beneath lunar fires.
Another nail in my coffin.
That was how it had felt back then.
Like fate itself had rejected me.
And maybe it had.
Because looking back now?
Ingrid had never looked at me the way Amrin did.
Never listened to me the way Amrin did.
Never made my chest ache with this unbearable softness every time she smiled.
My Luna was entirely different.
Soft curves wrapped in oversized sweaters.
Pale moonbeam eyes too honest for this world.
A dreamy mind forever wandering somewhere beautiful and strange.
She was sweetness and warmth and hidden loneliness wrapped together into one devastating little Witch.
And she was mine.
The realization settled deeper every night.
I looked up toward her dormitory window just in time to see movement behind the curtains.
Amrin.
Warm satisfaction spread instantly through my chest.
She looked outside for a second.
Looking for me perhaps.
And the thought nearly made me feral with pleasure.
Our kiss had affected her too.
Not just me.
Not just my unstable celestial heart.
Her.
The knowledge soothed something violent and starving inside me.
I wanted her.
Gods, I wanted her with terrifying intensity.
Not just sexually.
Though fuck, there was certainly that.
I wanted her near me constantly.
Wanted her laughter in my rooms.
Wanted her hands on my clothes and her scent in my bed and her sleepy voice greeting me in the mornings.
Domestic thoughts.
Dangerous thoughts.
The sort capable of ruining powerful men.
I should have been alarmed.
Instead, I pulled my tablet from my pocket like a complete fucking psychopath and opened the celestial mapping program I’d built.
Because apparently stalking her nightly was not enough.
Now I needed astronomical confirmation too.
Pathetic.
Absolutely pathetic.
Still—I copied Amrin’s chart file into a private project folder and began entering variables manually.
Birth coordinates.
Astrological alignments.
Realm positioning.
Moon phase calculations.
My pulse steadily quickened as I input data.
I even hacked into Runevald’s secured student records for exact timestamps and birth locations.
Illegal?
Absolutely.
Worth it?
Without question.
The deeper I dug, the more intensely focused I became.
Hours passed unnoticed while I sat perched in the tree outside her dormitory running calculations beneath the glowing skies of Asgarheim.
Cold wind moved through the branches.
Moonlight illuminated the screen.
And all I could think about was her.
Finally, after inputting every possible variable I could think of, I ran the compatibility overlay.
The tiny spinning hourglass appeared.
My throat tightened instantly.
Ridiculous.
I had faced realm predators without flinching.
Yet this?
This stupid fucking astronomy project had me genuinely nervous.
The screen flickered once.
Then the report generated.
A massive multi-layered celestial map unfolded before me in luminous silver-blue lines.
And there it was.
Alignment.
Perfect fucking alignment.
Ley line resonance.
Emotional compatibility.
Astral convergence.
The stars literally bent toward each other across realms.
Toward us.
Toward her.
Triumph slammed into me so violently I almost laughed.
I fucking knew it.
Even without the charts, I knew it.
Amrin Cordoza was mine.
The stars agreed.
The realms agreed.
Maybe even the Fates themselves agreed.
Now I simply had to convince her.
“Mine,” I growled softly beneath the moonlight, staring up toward her glowing dormitory window.
And gods help anyone who tried taking her from me.