His Prerogative (Ravenous Book 1)

Prologue: And So We Are

Inspired by The Soul Eater fanfic Poor Unfortunate Soul written by Makapedia

-:Aviur:-

He can taste it on his tongue; their desperation.

It tastes like the slick of one person's sweat against another's skin, the lingering caress of fingertips against another's arms, and the slide of one tongue against another.

It's hot and cold all at once; a flash of warmth followed by a shiver.

Gasps, and pants. Moans, and whispered pleas.

It's all there for him to see, to smell, to taste.

It's multiplied by hundreds, thousands even, as he stands there amidst the crowd of his peers. All new souls, like him, just beginning their lives whether the years ahead of them hold decades, or centuries.

Still, despite the one similarity, there is a myriad of differences. Fangs, fur, wings, and scales in various combinations adorn the sea of students, with the comparably plain bodies of humans spread out among them. He himself is toeing the plainer side of things with his eyes darkened, his horns glamoured away, and his wings hidden. His claws remain pitch black, but he had dulled them to rounded crescents just before the start of his school year.

Yet, even with these differences in appearance and power and age and wisdom, there are and will always be things that are startlingly the same.

He can taste it swirled throughout the young before him; the desire, the lust.

It rises and falls like waves, changing with the tides of each individual, but he feels it none the less.

And Aviur Aemilius sits in his chair, quiet as he had been for his previous four years, hiding most of the traits that marked him as an incubus, all the while swallowing down his disgust.

                 

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-:Spencer:-

She was burning up from exertion and the heat rolling off of the bodies that surrounded her, but she didn't have time to slow down just yet. She continued to barrel through the crowd, periodically checking her watch. Behind her she held her friend Toni, towing the taller girl along with abandon.

Antonia 'Toni' Gonzales was a good friend, but she was almost always late and as a result, she was a total pain in the ass to the punctual Spencer.  Spencer and her other friend, Mala, had gotten to the orientation well before its start, but of course Toni had called 12 minutes before it's start complaining in her normal almost monotone that she had no idea where the orientation was being held, nor did she care enough to come find it.

So with the option of either not having one of her pseudo sisters with her, or dashing off to get her favorite pain in the ass, Spencer had decided on the later.

Now with two minutes to spare and nerves ramping up at the idea of going off of her carefully compiled schedule, Spencer barged through the crowd, sweaty palm gripping at Toni's for dear life. She hated being up against people almost as much as the much shyer Mala did, but it was a necissary evil.

When they finally sat down, Mala was of course, reading a book. Spencer, now out of breath, smiled but declined politely when her friend offered to pull out one of her many tomes for her to read while they waited. Spencer had her history text in her bag, and she was only halfway through it.

What she wanted say was how badly she ached to accept her friend's simple offer of a fairy tale to pass the time.

But she bit her tongue, and stared ahead because if she wanted to achieve her goals, she couldn't afford to read a silly little fairy tale when she could be brushing up on her European history for the oncoming year. She also couldn't afford to be late, or wrong, or anything else that would screw her up. It didn't matter how badly her heart wanted to follow the knight on his daring journey, or the princess to her one true love. Fairy tales wouldn't save her from a life of nothingness, after all.

Three years ahead, and already interning at a local hospital, Spencer Cross was an academic powerhouse with a bright future ahead of her. She worked, and worked, and worked, and worked for... What? She wasn't so sure. She just knew that there was a hollowness in her, created by the past and the knowledge that if she failed, she would be nothing.