Chapter 5-Draugr
I knew the second I caught her scent that I would be undone.
Not tempted.
Not distracted.
Undone.
It struck me like a blade through the spine—clean, precise, inevitable. One breath of her, carried on the storm as she crossed the threshold into Asgarheim, and something inside me shifted… aligned… recognized.
That this creature—this female from Earth—would be the cause of my absolute ruin.
There was no question.
No doubt.
Only certainty.
So I did the only thing I have ever done when faced with something I cannot control.
I withdrew.
I vanished.
I swore to remain apart. To bury myself deeper in shadow. To become nothing more than rumor and warning as she moved through the Institute unaware of the destruction she carried in her wake.
It should have been simple.
Isolation is my nature.
Distance is my discipline.
But discipline fractures under the right kind of pressure.
And she—
She was pressure made flesh.
Days passed.
Or perhaps they dragged.
Time had always been a distant thing to me, measured more in hunger than in hours—but since her arrival, every moment stretched thin, sharp, unbearable.
She walked the halls.
And I followed.
Not openly.
Never that.
I kept to the shadows, slipping between torchlight and stone, a ghost of something darker, something far less merciful. I watched from archways, from rafters, from the blind corners where the Institute’s magic did not quite reach.
A predator without permission.
A creature without restraint.
A thing that should have fled.
Instead—
I lingered.
Tracked.
Obsessed.
Like a rabid, unbidden dog circling a fire it knows will burn it alive.
“Stop,” I growled once—out loud, to no one, claws biting into the cold stone of a corridor wall.
But the command meant nothing.
Because it was not I who pursued her.
It was the hunger.
And the hunger does not obey.
My usual donors did nothing to quiet it.
That alone should have terrified me more than it did.
Feeding had always been… controlled chaos. A delicate balance between need and annihilation. The chains, the runes, the layered wards—those were necessary, yes—but the act itself had never failed.
Until now.
The first time I tried after her arrival, I nearly killed the male assigned to me—not because I lost control, but because something inside me rejected him.
His scent was wrong.
His blood—
Worse.
It tasted like ash.
I tore away before I could do more damage, snarling, shaking, disgusted with myself and the weakness clawing at my control.
The second attempt?
I could not even break skin.
My fangs descended, my body poised for the act—and then—
Nothing.
My jaw locked.
My hand trembled.
Revulsion surged so violently I staggered back, leaving the female untouched, staring at me with wide, confused eyes.
As if I were the one who had failed.
As if I were the one who did not understand what I was.
Fuck.
This was bad.
Worse than bad.
This was unprecedented.
My body—my curse—was refusing all sustenance.
Except—
Her.
The realization settled cold and heavy in my chest.
Not preference.
Not desire.
Requirement.
A dangerous thing.
A deadly one.
Because I would not take from her.
I would not.
I stood now on the cliffs overlooking the docks, the jagged spine of Asgarheim cutting into a sky that churned with violent, restless energy. The sea below slammed itself against black rock, waves breaking like bone, like something desperate to reach the land and tear it apart.
Wind tore at my wings, snapping them wide, forcing me to brace against it.
Rain lashed my face, cold and relentless.
Lightning carved the heavens open again and again, illuminating the fractured world in bursts of white fire.
It did nothing.
Nothing to quiet the inferno inside me.
Nothing to ease the gnawing, relentless need.
My vision had already shifted.
Not metaphorically.
The world bled at the edges—colors dimming, sharpening, distorting—until all I could truly see was what mattered.
Veins beneath skin.
Heartbeats beneath ribs.
Warm blood beneath fragile flesh.
Every living thing reduced to what it could give me.
My curse stirred eagerly.
Alive.
Awake.
Hungry.
Every semester, it was the same ritual.
New arrivals.
Fresh blood.
Bodies still unfamiliar with the rules of this place—naive, curious, desperate enough to sign the Institute’s parchment without fully understanding the ancient clauses woven into its magic.
Consent, they called it.
Choice.
But the truth?
It was survival disguised as agreement.
And I had always fed from that cycle.
Carefully.
Controlled.
Contained.
Until now.
Now the scent of fresh blood only made it worse.
Because none of it mattered.
None of it called to me.
None of it satisfied.
Only her.
Always her.
I dragged a hand through my hair, claws catching, breath coming harsher now as I fought the pull tightening inside me like a chain being drawn taut.
“This is weakness,” I snarled into the storm. “A flaw. A break in control.”
But even as I said it, I knew—
This was not weakness.
This was something else.
Something older.
Something the Norns had not warned me of.
Had they known?
Of course they had.
They always did.
Threads within threads.
Fate woven so tightly it choked.
My father’s voice rose in memory, low and grim.
The Draugr does not get what he wants.
He takes what he must… or he destroys it.
“No,” I ground out, baring my fangs against the wind.
I would not take from her.
I would not destroy her.
There had to be another path.
A clause in my contract.
A clause in my father’s obsession.
The Draugen do not age as mortals do.
We persist. We endure. We hunger.
And we breed.
I bared my fangs to the wind.
The Norns—those twisted weavers of fate—had cursed us long ago to endure this Bloodlust for eternity.
See, it was all of them. Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos—all three denied us true mates.
Denied us softness.
Denied us redemption.
The curse would endure unless one of us—just one—was chosen.
But fated mates were rarer than unicorns in Asgarheim.
My father, his father, and the dozens before them had not been chosen.
So, why would I be?
We were creatures of the northern wastes.
Skin black as crow feathers. Horned. Winged.
Eyes lit with unnatural fire.
More Demon than man.
Revenants.
All cursed.
We could never return to the mortal world beyond the veil.
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.
Like wild thyme crushed under boots.
Wet moss.
Summer roses growing stubbornly between ancient stone.
Memory I couldn’t have owned slammed into me so violently I nearly dropped from the sky.
My village before the curse deepened.
Mornings before hunger ruled my blood.
Sunlight filtering through fir branches.
This scent did not belong to this gray island.
It belonged to something living.
I inhaled again, desperate, greedy.
Then, I saw her.
She stood near the back of a line of students, feet dragging slightly as she walked.
Curves soft and generous beneath her long coat clothes.
Dark hair pulled back.
One hand pressed to her lips, pale from something, sickness maybe?
Another girl held her elbow, whispering reassurance.
Human.
No.
Human-adjacent.
There was something beneath her skin. Something old.
What supernatural got sick crossing the veil?
I frowned.
My hunger shifted.
Not gone.
Never gone.
But narrowed.
Focused.
Instead of devouring the entire dock in a red frenzy, my Bloodlust sharpened into a single, blinding point.
Her.
The idea of harming her sent ice through my veins.
Bloody fucking ice.
And the Draugr does not feel cold.
I jerked upward, wings snapping hard.
Distance.
I needed distance.
The farther I moved from her, the worse the pain became.
It felt like invisible hooks buried in my ribs.
Something pulling.
No. Someone pulling.
I collapsed onto the roof of the Institute, claws scraping stone as whatever it was tried to fell me where I stood.
And the worst part? I didn’t know how long I could hold on.