In Pain and Blood. Spellster and the Hound, #1

He's unleashed. Unprepared. And thoroughly screwed. Dylan's life in the spellster tower has everything he should want: magical knowledge, safety from the King's Hounds and frequent clandestine affairs with women. All at the cost of his freedom. So when the chance to leave the tower-even as a leashed weapon for the King's Army-arises, he seizes it. When his first scouting mission goes awry, Dylan is left alone in a hostile world with the tower a distant beacon of safety.
Only the flirtatious Tracker, an elven man whose very presence awakens Dylan's long-repressed desire, can help him return to his old life before the crown discovers his unleashed status. But the risk of being branded a deserter may be the least of his concerns as whispers of an armed presence in the North threatens his home. Dylan must rely on Tracker to protect him even as everything he thought he knew begins to unravel around them.~~~In Pain and Blood is the first in a four-book dark fantasy series.
Told in third person with a dual POV, it contains the beginnings of a slow-burn mage/mage-hunter romance as well as an MM bi-awakening, spicy scenes, queer representation, violence, gore and explicit adult themes.