The Hunter's Vow (Monster Hunter Academy Book 4)
Page 25
“No,” Grim said sharply. “The monster realm needs to be protected from the human realm, and as we’ve seen, the reverse is true as well. The borders should be closed.”
“The borders should be closed.” A new voice spoke, old and worn. I turned to see Belle Hogan standing next to one of the gray-suited cleaners. He turned away from her as she studied us. “But I don’t see how that’s possible now. There are some doors that, once opened, can’t be so easily closed. Grim, you had to know that you couldn’t win this battle, not with so many monsters breaking through.”
Grim drew himself up straight. “My death would seal the borders,” he said sternly. “I’m the Asante, the consecrated ruler of the Akari. The magic that would fall with me would seal the borders for good.”
“Is that what you want?” To my surprise, it was Zach who asked, his dark eyes now gleaming with the pale-gold light of the Akari. Was he channeling them? He had to be. “Your people have gone a generation of their years without you by their side. Time travels differently in the monster realm than it does here, but it still passes. And the restlessness of the young will never end, no matter how much you want to protect them. Your sacrifice may well prove useless in the end.”
I thought of Niali back on the other side of the portal. She’d been eager, bristling for a chance to visit the strange and terrible world that lay just out of reach. Zach was right. She wasn’t going to be alone.
“And I can’t live without you, Grim,” I said. “I can’t live without any of you. You’re my family, and if we’re going to figure out the challenges of Wellington Academy and the monster realm, if we’re going to keep these students safe and launch an entirely new era of monster hunters, I need you. I need all of you. And I need to figure out who I am too.”
“Well, that part’s easy.” Liam grinned. “You’re monster bait.”
“The harbinger,” Grim corrected. “The beginning and end of it all.”
A rustle beside us had us turning, and Regin, the leader of this band of Laram, strode up. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Belle step back into the knot of people behind her, dropping quickly to a crouch. Regin spoke.
“The Akari aren’t the only ones who have gone without the benefit of their leaders for too long. The gray wizard’s dominion over us is at an end and can’t be allowed to define our future. We’ll show you the ways of the borderlands, Asante. We’ll find the access points to the realms that lead to the other academies. We’ll take this adventure with you.”
“Besides, as commissions go, this one sounds pretty friggin’ awesome, I’m just saying,” Liam observed.
“We’re also getting funding for an expansion of the program within the academy,” Symmes put in. “It looks like monster hunting will be elevated to the point of a major. Commander Frost, I hope you’re up to the possibility of new students.”
“We stand at the ready,” he said gruffly.
“And we’re going to do it together, right?” I asked. “All of us?”
“Are you kidding?” Tyler asked, arching a brow. “At this point you couldn’t get rid of us if you tried. And neither can you,” he said to Grim. “You never should have joined the collective, my man. I told you it was going to change your life.”
“And I need to learn more about being an Akari, you ask me,” Liam said.
Grim closed his eyes and sighed, flinching only a little as Liam pounded him on the shoulder. Zach slung one arm around me, and Tyler too, and the three of us stood—with Grim and Liam before us—together. The way a collective should.
And with our first assignments in hand, the monster hunters of Wellington Academy began an entirely new adventure.
Thank you so much for reading THE HUNTER’S VOW and the entire Monster Hunter Academy series! I sincerely hope you loved it! If you did, and you’d like to get on my mailing list for the next adventure (I include a sneak peek of it, below!) visit me at my website and sign up to my email list at the bottom of the page.
Also, if you enjoyed the book, please, please leave a review at Amazon, Goodreads, and BookBub! Positive reviews are the life’s blood of every author, and I deeply appreciate your time in reading and reviewing.
Have you read D.D.’s other series, Twyst Academy? If not, you’ll want to meet Maddigan Pierce! She’s a brainiac janitor from the wrong side of the tracks who works at a magic academy. When she gets recruited to help four supernaturally sexy college magicians win an epically screwed-up magic competition, well…things get a little messy. Check out the series here!
And to read what’s next for Boston’s academies, get ready for a new story featuring a witch with a significant attitude problem…and the king she has to conquer.
TEACHING THE FAE KING
The Witchling Academy, Book 1
Belle
This can’t be happening.
I edged along the far side of the fallen students of Wellington Academy, happy enough to leave the role of nursemaid behind for once. Ordinarily, I would have preferred to stay with the injured, the frightened. It was the work of a witch, the work of my mother and her mother before her, what we’d given up everything to do. Honest spell craft and hard-fought wins, the warm and welcome touch of calloused hands and fragile hearts.
But I knew better than to stay on the magical grounds of Wellington Academy. All that I’d worked for was in danger. All that my family had ever yearned for was at risk.
So that was where my family’s nemesis had been hiding all these years. The cruelly beautiful Regin, Laram hunter of the high king, captured by the gray wizard of the monster realm and forced into slavery and pain. Hell, not even captured, I suspected. With his holier-than-God nobility and his iron-fisted honor, the asshole had probably given himself up in sacrifice like the warrior Grim, the second biggest fool I’d ever met.
But if I’d seen Regin, he might have seen me too. And the memories of the creatures the Akari called the Laram were almost as long as the Hogan witches’. The Laram. I curled my lip. I preferred the name assigned to the Laram by humans, complete with all their whispered warnings: the Fae.
Well, with the end of Wellington’s Battle Royale, the Fae were all around us, and Regin was one of the worst of them. He’d out me to the high king in a heartbeat. Which meant I needed to get myself gone.
The faintest brush of icy wind drifted over my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks. The voice that accompanied it was as cruel as a Boston winter, dripping ice. “Well, well, well. This is an unexpected gift.”
I stiffened with reflexive fear and even more reflexive fury. “Your quarrel isn’t with me,” I said roughly, struggling to hold on to my glamour. “It isn’t even with my mother or grandmother, and they’re both long gone. We are three generations removed from the pledge we made to teach your royal family, Regin. It’s null and void.”
“You’re a Hogan,” he returned. “That’s all the quarrel I need. There’s no end to a pledge to the Fae, as you well know. You’re coming back with me. I’ll be well paid for finding you.”
“And you can go fuck yourself.” Turning to him, I lifted my chin, tightening my age-spotted hands into fists, willing the lines on my face to grow deeper and more pronounced. Time passed differently in our world, so maybe Regin wouldn’t see me for what I truly was. Maybe he would recoil, like so many of these creatures of impossible beauty, from all that happened to a human woman with the blessing of age.
But Regin only stared me down. His silver eyes raked over me; his face hardened into a sneer of contempt. He was undeniably the most gorgeous male I’d ever seen in my life, even if he was a lesser Fae. Unwanted heat flushed through me, stirring magics I had long since driven dormant. I channeled my illusion of age and feebleness more fiercely, and Regin flinched, then narrowed his gaze further.
“Don’t try your tricks on me, Hogan,” he growled. “You should have come to the realm when you were called. This human school that you’ve given so much to defend, what has it ever done for you?”
; “It gave me freedom,” I snarled back. “It gave me a future I could foresee, but not be required to sacrifice everything for.”
“I hope you enjoyed that while it lasted.”
Regin leaned into me, his silvery eyes gleaming with interest, power…and cruelty. The toxic combination that made him indelibly Fae. As awful as he was, I knew the high king would be a thousand times worse.
“Begone,” I whispered, the ancient wards shimmering to life beneath my skin. “Your magic doesn’t work on me.”
Regin only laughed, low and long. “I suspect King Aiden will look forward to testing that theory, witch. Over and over again.”
Then, with a shimmer of light, he disappeared.
I gaped a moment longer at the space that had held the king’s hunter in this realm, then glanced back toward the crowd, still keening with the aftereffects of battle. There was no reason to hide now. I’d been marked by the Fae. Tapped once again to take my place at an arcane academy that I, my mother, and her mother before her had tried desperately to evade for three long and lonely generations. The Fae would come for me with their biting silver and stinging gold, a crown of emeralds and shackles of steel. They would rip from me the deep and spectral witchling magic they craved so much. Their high king might even go so far as to claim me as his ruling consort and attempt to bend my newly minted magic to his dark and twisted will.
My lips pressed into a bitter smile of my own.
Good luck with that.
Brace yourself for a trip to the Fae realm and an academy that hasn’t opened its doors for over a hundred years when the Witchling Academy hits the shelves later this year! Sign up for my email list (at the bottom of the page!) to keep up with all the news!
About D.D. Chance
D.D. Chance is the pen name of Jenn Stark, an award-winning author of paranormal romance, urban fantasy and contemporary romance. Whether she’s writing as Jenn or D.D., she loves writing, magic and unconditional love. Thank you for taking this adventure with her.
www.ddchance.com
Copyright © 2021 by D.D. Chance
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