Page 5 of Wings of Ashes (Wings of Ashes #1)

CHAPTER

W ait for it… And…bam .

Bael watched as Blondie tripped over another tree root in the forest, catching herself on a stump before she faceplanted. She can’t even fucking walk without playing the damsel in distress act , Bael thought to himself and rolled his eyes.

She was being obvious. A swan shifter joining a class of predominantly alphas and other deadly shifters? Weren’t cygni shifters supposed to flock together?

She was there for one reason only—to stand out from her crowd and attract male attention. Her long, platinum hair, lithe body, and pink lips all called out to be adored and fawned over.

Bael had heard bystanders in the hallway refer to her as the “Ugly Fuckling,” but she was not ugly. There was just something odd about her face that made her look…blurry.

Not my type , Bael thought. Cygni shifters were frail, self-centered, and scheming. They had the power to enchant others, almost like sirens.

Bael fucking hated enchantresses. Lie to my face to get what you want, and I’ll cut your tongue out, baby .

Meanwhile, the stoic and grumpy dragon shifter, Ryker, who Bael had claimed as his only friend at the academy, appeared to be falling for Blondie’s act. Pitying her.

Each time she accidentally hurt herself on rocks or fallen branches in the forest, Ryker’s lips thinned, his jaw clenched, and he looked ready to attack the inanimate objects for getting in her way.

The grunting, unimpressed-by-everyone Ryker pitied her. Ryker had never pitied anyone more than himself.

Bael cursed when Nix slimly avoided tripping over thick, risen tree roots. “The bird is slowing us down, Mara,” Bael said.

“My name is Nix,” the platinum blonde grumbled under her breath.

“Your complaints aren’t making us any faster, Bael,” Mara shot back.

The only reason Bael had allowed Mara to join their little group was because Professor Bowen said a class group had to have a minimum of three. Mara was the least aggravating of the rest of their classmates.

Bael asked her, “Did you think this through at all before you claimed a clumsy, accident-prone cygnus for our group? Or was your brain consumed with thoughts of ‘another woman, rah rah, the sisterhood, rah rah’ when you volunteered for our group to take her?”

A rock collided with the back of Bael’s head. “Fuck!” He rubbed at the spot where she attempted to pierce his skull.

Mara shrugged and dusted off her rock-throwing hand. Okay, fine, he still liked Mara.

“You just want to sleep with her,” Bael remarked to his lesbian friend. “Admit it. The ‘help me’ act gets you going.”

Mara rolled her eyes and said pointedly, “ I’m not the one who wants to sleep with her.”

Bael frowned. “Why did you emphasize that word? It implies someone else here wants to sleep with her.”

“Excuse me, hi, hello, I do in fact have ears,” Nix said. “And I am not sleeping with anyone .”

“No wonder you seem so pent up,” Bael said.

“Excuse me?”

“I can smell it,” Bael sneered at her. “You ever try an orgasm in the morning to take the edge off?”

Nix gaped at him. Not the usual way women open their mouths for me , Bael thought to himself.

“Sort this out between yourselves,” Mara said, turning to walk further into the forest, away from them. “Ryker and I are going to keep looking for the ingredients.”

Mara and Ryker disappeared behind the trees and went back to looking for yarrow, mugwort, and sage.

Nix crossed her arms and glared at Bael.

Her glare was adorable. Enticing. Tempting. That suckable pouting lower lip … But the longer he stared at her face, the blurrier it got, appearing almost distorted.

A spell .

“What’s wrong with your face?” Bael bluntly asked her with a straight face.

Nix’s simmering rage, a rage that maybe she thought she kept hidden—but Bael could practically see angry steam pouring out of her pores—blazed. “ What? ”

“Your face,” Bael replied plainly. “There is something wrong with it. Why?”

“Fuck you!”

Bael blinked at her curse word. It was so unlike a cygnus shifter to curse… They did not do anything “unladylike.” Bael preferred his women to curse as much as they fucking wanted.

“Don’t they teach you better manners when speaking with alphas?” He snorted. “Isn’t there an entire class on how to ‘please’ us that you all take?” How would Nix try to “please” him?

“You just said there was something wrong with my face. Why should I want to ‘please’ you?”

Bael frowned. “Isn’t that your whole goal? To win us? To trap us to you by graduation?”

“I have zero interest in being tied to an alpha at graduation,” she spouted off the most unlikely sentence to come from a cygnus shifter’s mouth.

Bael rolled his eyes. “Well, now you’re just lying.”

“You really think every woman here would fall to her knees and beg to serve you, huh?” Nix questioned. Her hair twisted in a soft breeze of wind, fluttering around her face. “Beg to be chosen by you?”

Bael’s tongue dabbed his lip piercing. “I didn’t say that.” A strange, warm buzzing sensation swept over his skin.

“You think your strength and your power make you just so attractive to me that I would want to attend this academy and learn about nothing else but how to make you feel good? ”

There was something about the way she said, “feel good,” and something about her low, sarcastic tone that made the buzzing grow stronger over Bael’s skin.

He scratched at his arm, wondering if he had accidentally touched some kind of poisonous plant in the woods while searching for the potion ingredients. Why did he feel so…warm? Bael never even felt shaken, yet now he felt stirred .

“You know what really pisses me off about alphas like you?” Nix asked sassily.

The wind kept playing with Nix’s hair as she glared at him.

It was distracting. “You call us flock chasers and nest sluts because we try to get you to choose us as a mate, yet you all do nothing to make the world safer for us so that we wouldn’t have to chase you. ”

Bael’s frown deepened, and he rubbed a palm over his chest as it…thrummed. His breathing stalled when he realized what the unfamiliar sensations were and what they meant.

A thick swallow bobbed down his throat as he tilted his head and watched her more closely. His eyes narrowed on her.

“Are you even listening to me right now?” Her bottom lip pursed as she scowled. Bael wanted to suck it and…

Oh, Hell no. “Stop the fucking enchanting already,” Bael viciously snapped at her. She was lucky he didn’t snap her neck for trying to bespell him.

She blinked, and complete astonishment washed over her features, feigning innocence. Oh please . She knew what she was doing.

“I’m not enchanting you,” she said.

Using supernatural speed, Bael stalked up to her until they stood face to face.

She gasped at his predatory movement, not able to move that fast herself. Her sudden inhale of his powerful, sensual scent caused her pupils to dilate, and Bael cursed his ever-present alpha pheromones.

“I know what you swans can do.” He growled, “Stop the fucking enchantment. Now.”

“I’m not—”

“The fuck you’re not,” he shot back.

Grabbing her hand, he cupped her palm over the growing bulge between his legs. Her glare and voice and scent had started making him hard. Him . Over his pants zipper, she was sure to feel the hot, lengthy erection beneath.

“You think I just get hard for anyone?” he rasped. “Hell, Blondie, I haven’t gotten hard in fucking years.”

“Y-Years?” she asked in a squeaky voice. She shook herself, seeming to feign confidence as she replied, “Sounds like a ‘you’ problem.”

“You think I am someone you can enchant to marry? Huh? You want to lure me into your little honeypot, siren-water-magic trap? You want me to be your husband at graduation?”

“You didn’t listen to a single word I said a few minutes ago, did you?” Nix huffed. “I don’t want a husband.”

“Then, stop mind fucking me.”

“I’m not .” She bit her lip. In another turn of events, her thumb stroked out. Once. Back and forth. Right over his growing erection. “Gods, you’re hard.”

“ Fuck ,” Bael grated between his teeth. “I’m not husband material. I don’t marry . I fuck.”

She inhaled sharply again.

Surprised to be caught in her scheme? “You probably don’t even know what ‘fuck’ means,” he stated.

“Fuck you,” she said.

“You’ve probably never even seen a cock. Am I right?”

“W-Wrong.”

“Yeah?” Bael asked, leaning closer so his breath played with some of her platinum tendrils. Gods, her smell … It did things to him. Her bonfire, roasted marshmallow scent invisibly wrapped around his cock and hummed . It had to be an enchantment. “Have you ever touched one?”

“Is that not what I’m doing now?” she shot back.

Bael released her hand and wiped his palm down his fitted black shirt as little pinpricks of heat remained where he had touched her skin. She slowly removed her hand from his crotch.

“You ever touch one—bare? Stroke one?” Bael asked her.

Fuck, her little rosy blush . He wanted to lick it from her cheeks. Where the hell did that instinct come from?

He added, “Because if you plan to enchant me or bespell me or whatever the fuck you I-don’t-need-to-ask-for-consent-before-mesmerizing-my-victim cygni do, you need to understand what’s going to happen.”

“I’m not enchanting—”

“You wouldn’t survive me fucking you,” he told her gravely.

“What, cause you’re ‘so good’ at it?” she asked, rolling her pretty blue eyes. “I think I could take it.”

Oh yeah? Show me. He shoved the dangerous thought aside. “You want my fingers around that slender neck, collaring you as I fuck the life out of you from behind? I don’t know what would be redder—your ass from my brutal thrusts or my palm.”

She cleared her throat; her cheeks bloomed with an even deeper blush now. She acts hard and tough, yet she is innocent . It didn’t add up.

More proof that it was all an act.

“Choking and spanking, then,” she said breathily. “How very…tame.”

His cock lengthened and hardened more for her as she met his gaze through the sunglasses. He exhaled. She really refused to undo the enchantment on him.

“You really don’t know who you are messing with, do you?” he asked.

“And neither do you,” she attempted to growl, but it came out as a little whine. Not intimidating at all. Almost…cute.

She really doesn’t know , he realized, surprised. No one in the academy, not even the dean, would openly give Bael so much sass.

Time for her to learn .

Bael reached up and removed his sunglasses.