2. Hiero

Chapter two

Hiero

I t was Horns and Hooves night at Church, the biker bar I owned and operated with the help of my shifter clan, which meant that any beast with either attribute got their cover charge waived and two free drinks. A few patrons wore horns that were clearly synthetic versions of the real thing, but I didn’t split hairs. Judging by the overall intoxication of the crowd, they were likely paying customers by now.

It had been my sister Enid’s idea to introduce themed nights at Church to draw in bigger crowds. The hooved and horny had showed out, and the mass of bodies bumping and grinding on the dance floor was evidence of my sister’s superior business acumen.

I stood behind the bar, my fortress, flanked on either side by two of my lycanthropic kin. To my left was Enid, the mastermind behind tonight’s event and alpha of the Wolfsbane Clan, and to my right was my cousin and best friend, Fridolf, whom we called Frito. Both were helping me tend bar and would serve as backup in case the crowd got too rowdy.

I’d been raised by wolves, quite literally, after being abandoned first by my birth mother, and then second, by a monk named Aberthol who’d sheltered me from infancy. The latter hadn’t chosen to leave me though, he’d simply passed on to join our Father in Heaven.

As the bastard son of a maiden and a bull, I knew what it felt like to not fit in, and it wasn’t until the Wolfsbane Clan adopted me in my adolescence that I’d understood what family meant. Now my pack were my business partners and best friends, the source of my fondest memories and my co-conspirators in our quest for ever-thrilling adventures.

It was within my monk and former patron’s holy sanctuary that I surveyed the crowd. I’d turned the remote mountainside monastery into a place of refuge for the rogues and misfits of the many enchanted realms that made up the Arcane Isles. We offered our own version of communion, the chance to mingle with fellow patrons without fear or judgment. At Church every bastard, orphan, and outcast was welcome, provided they left their grudges at the door.

Around my bar, a small but thriving parish had emerged, which now included a general store, a smattering of lodgings and diners, a motorcycle repair shop owned by my cousin Gareth, and most recently, a magic shop operated by a curious fellow known simply as The Owner. We townsfolk looked out for each other and worked together to run the town under the direction of the Wolfsbane Clan. It also meant keeping an eye out for any unsavory characters intent on violence, which sometimes included petty thieves, such as the one currently making his rounds on the dance floor. It was Enid, my flame-haired sister, who pointed out the sticky-fingered fae.

“ Gadai , three o’ clock,” she said, arresting him with her piercing gaze. Thief.

I clocked the svelte figure: long raven hair, dramatically drawn eyes, and fair skin that was draped in the finest silk, the sort of fabric that only the fae could produce. The translucent clothing clung to his form like a wet tissue, leaving nothing of his shape to the imagination. His wings appeared to be neatly tucked at the small of his back, and he was currently acting as the meat in the middle of an ogre sandwich, working his lithe body against their nether regions whilst relieving them of the silver in their pockets.

“He’s good,” Enid remarked as we watched the fae reach up to caress the bald head of one partner while deftly removing the gold band from his ear.

“He’s trouble,” I said, trying and failing to drag my eyes away from the fae’s round ass as it gyrated against an ogre’s deerskin-clad bulge, two plump cheeks that would be the perfect cushion for my balls as I bred him.

Do not go there, Hiero.

“Well, what're you goin' to do about him?” Enid asked, arching one eyebrow in the shape of a question. Beautiful, troublesome men were my weakness, and Enid knew my type–a little on the wild side, looked good riding bitch on my bike, and liked to be bossed around in bed. This pretty young thing ticked some of the boxes, and despite my own sense of self-preservation, I was curious to know if he might tick them all.

“I’m going to approach him,” I said, tossing my dish towel on the bar top while leaving the particulars deliberately vague. I turned to my cousin Frito. “Meet me out back in five, would you?”

“Careful, cuz,” Frito said ominously. “The fae are a slippery sort.”

I’d never tangled with one myself, and they rarely came into the bar, preferring their high-falutin watering holes down in Emrallt Valley. When the fae did deign to make an appearance, they tended to stick with their own kind, always ordering some complicated cocktail no one had ever heard of before, then turning up their noses at our presumed ignorance. Imperious and cold, I could appreciate their ethereal aesthetic, but none had ever revved my engine.

But this little scoundrel working the floor was something else altogether. He had none of the snobby airs that typified his kind, nor did he seem to find it at all uncouth to be groped and manhandled by two brutes at once. In fact, he seemed to revel in the attention. Pornographic visions of the delicate fae being spit-roasted by the ham-handed ogres flooded my mind.

May the Lord protect me from this troublesome fae .

I crossed myself and kissed the pewter cross slung round my neck, a gift from my beloved monk. Then I strode over to the threesome and tapped each of the ogres on their shoulders. Growling and inebriated, they turned their heavily hooded brows my way. Possibly they were brothers or some such relation. The only obvious distinction between them was that one must have recently broken a tusk because the end of it was jagged and looked sharp.

“May I cut in?” I asked. Knowing that I had the power to ban them for life, the grumbling duo stepped aside. In the ever-shifting halflight of the strobes, I noticed the many intricate tattoos decorating the fae’s body. The silvery shadows, only a shade darker than his skin, seemed to pulsate in time with the music. Some sort of fae sorcery, I presumed.

The fae himself was lost in the heavy downbeat of bass and likely tipsy as well, if judging by the flush of color in his cheeks and the looseness of his limbs. He glanced up and seemed not at all annoyed that I’d replaced his dance partners. A mischievous grin split his handsome face, revealing a row of slightly pointed teeth and a dimple in one cheek. He appraised me with pleasure-drunk lavender eyes and said to me in a voice as smooth as barrel-aged bourbon, “Hey there, stud. I’ve been waiting for you.”