Noctisardor Bypass reshwe

@Druid and Ava had agreed to watch the kids while Anselm stepped out for a morning hunt. He’d caught but one thing out near the lagoon — a small stoat that hung from his sodden muzzle as he made to return to Dawnleaf.


A howl cut through the storm, so close to him that he nearly leapt from his skin. He spied Heda’s silhouette in the current, her thin frame enunciated by the water that clung to her.

Anselm felt a spear of something quicken in his belly. He clenched the stoat tight, looking openly at the woman Etienne had accused of being his lover. He realized he did not understand himself; not truly. He was bitterly in denial with the attraction he felt for the seaborn. It was in the gold-gleam of Etienne’s rounded muscles, the shape of his sun-coin eyes — the strength of his body as he left furrows in the earth when he dug. And yet, there was something so elegant about women. Anselm’s eyes roved over Heda, tracking each soft curve of her body with a detached sense of lonely torment.