The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 713

Alex didn't say it out loud to Yolanda. He turned the question over instead, quiet and careful, the way he turned over everything that mattered now.

Could this skill be taught to humans, too?

"Monica." He kept his voice low. "Can beast skills be taught to humans?"

She looked at him like he'd asked whether water was wet. "Of course. Every skill can be taught. The real question is whether the human's any good at learning it. Some people take five years for something simple. Others take decades. Mostly it comes down to the bond — how close you are to the beast."

Alex nodded, but his mind had already moved on. Collect everything. As many skills as he could get his hands on.

He found his first target without leaving Willowmere.

The town had one licensed healing house — real fees, real credentials, and behind the counter, something rare: a Driftlichen. A floating tuft of moss that trailed spores like smoke and closed wounds in minutes. Champions came here when their own healers weren't enough.

Alex walked in limping on a leg that had never once given him trouble and told the man behind the counter he'd wrenched it carrying stock.

The keeper didn't buy it — Alex saw the doubt flicker behind his eyes — but coin didn't ask questions. He summoned the Driftlichen anyway.

It drifted down in a slow spiral, spores trailing like smoke, and settled against Alex's leg, glowing faint and warm while it worked.

Alex watched every second of it. When it finally lifted off, he reached up like he needed the balance — and let his fingers brush its underside.

New entry recorded. Skill: Spore-Knit. Level: Intermediate. A wood-type healing ability. Speeds the mending of ordinary wounds. Status: No Target Set.

Three skills now. Sovereign's Tongue, Silk-Cast, Spore-Knit.

He thanked the keeper, paid full price without haggling, and left. The limp vanished the second he turned the corner.

A new number was already sitting at the front of his mind. The medal had answered his silent count with one of its own.

Capacity: 3 of 5.

Five. Not a thousand. Five — and no way yet to know if that number was a wall or just where he happened to be standing today.

Monica answered the next question before he'd even finished asking it. "Menagerie Yard. Once a season, out past the east road. Traders bring in anything that isn't nailed down on a farm. Half of Willowmere goes just to look."

It ran for two days. They caught the second.

The Yard didn't feel like a market. It felt like a held breath — pens and cages and open paddocks crowding a central lane, buyers shoulder to shoulder, every animal in the Dominion arguing at once.

A woman in a full elk costume, antlers and all, met them at the gate. Ledger under one arm, a grin that had already decided what she was going to sell them.

"Nell." She didn't offer a hand, just the grin. "First time at the Yard? I can tell. You've got the look of a man who's about to spend more than he planned."

"I'm looking, not buying."

"That's what the last forty of you said." She fell into step beside them anyway, guiding rather than following. "What kind of looking?"

"Something nobody else wants."

Nell's grin didn't move, but something behind it sharpened. "Now that's a specific kind of looking."

She led them past gem-eyed cats, crated hawks, a stall selling saddle charms — all the way to a paddock at the end of the lane. Half-empty. One animal stood alone inside it.

A colt. Galewing stock, judging by the faint static lifting its mane without any wind — the kind of bloodline that grew into something dangerous, with the right skill and enough years.

This one stood too still for that promise. Head low, ribs showing a little too much. It watched them with an attention that looked almost embarrassed to be caught.

"What's actually wrong with it?" Alex asked.

"Runt of a good litter," Nell said, and for exactly as long as it took to say that, the salesman dropped out of her voice. "Should've called its wind-skill months ago. Hasn't. The breeder's asking price isn't a price. It's an apology." She glanced at the colt. "Poor thing's been out here every night, practicing alone, like it can shame the talent into showing up."

Something in Alex's chest went tight and quiet. He knew what that looked like — trying that hard for something that wouldn't come.

The colt looked back at him and didn't lower its head any further. Didn't look away, either.

"Nobody's sure yet what's wrong with it," Nell said, shrugging — for the first time since the gate, without a quick answer ready. "That's the trouble with the ones like this. You don't find out what's wrong with them, or what's right, until somebody's willing to keep them long enough to see."

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