Hell’s fire! Why had Luthvian wanted to ride out the storm in his home? She had plenty of food, and with warming spells on the pipes that ran from the house to the well, she’d wouldn’t be without water. And hadn’t he filled every damn woodbox in her house? Using Craft, she could call in more wood from the woodpile without going outside. So why did she suddenly want to spend time with him?

Not that he would have her. Not today. Just the smell of her, and the lingering scent of her female students, had been enough to make him want to smash furniture, shatter bone. And the males in the villages . . .

The sight of them had been enough to bring him a heartbeat away from the killing edge. They hadn’t done anything wrong, had, in fact, done everything they could to prepare the villages in Ebon Rih to ride out the storm. But he’d wanted to hurt them, had felt something close to blind hatred for all of them.

His father was at the Keep. He could sense that dark power. So tempting to go to Ebon Askavi and test his precarious control against that darker strength.

What in the name of Hell was wrong with him? He wanted to get home before the storm really broke. Wanted to get back to his eyrie, back to . . .

Marian.

Fury avalanched through him. Changed into something violent, hot, and impossible to resist.

Marian.

He knew what this was now. It had never hit him quite this way before, but he recognized it now.

Rut. That time when a Warlord Prince’s sex drive overwhelmed everything else. Every male was a rival to be eliminated. Every female but the one he’d chosen scraped a temper turned wild and unpredictable.

Sex or violence. The rut worked itself out one way or the other. Sometimes both. He’d gone into rut several times since coming to Kaeleer and had had no desire to slake that drive in a woman’s body. He’d depended on Jaenelle’s presence to keep him chained. She had soothed his need to be close to a female and had channeled the violence into grueling physical activity that he’d thrown himself into with vicious willingness.

But Jaenelle was at her house in Scelt for a few weeks, and the woman he wanted, the woman who made his blood burn and sing . . .

He had to get Marian out of the eyrie, had to get her away from him before the storm closed in and made it too dangerous to travel, even on the Winds. Because if she was still in the eyrie when the storm inside him broke, if they were trapped together for several days . . . If that happened, may the Darkness be merciful . . . because there would be no mercy in him.