Chapter one
Skylar
Breaking up is hardto do. The humans were right about that one simple fact.
I’d skipped the ice cream binge and rom-com stage of grieving and gone directly to day drinking at a pay-by-day motel high up in the Dragonback Mountains. As if breaking up with my cheating ex weren’t enough, I’d also fled our realm.
When I’d stumbled upon this nameless borderlands town two nights ago, it seemed like the perfect place to drown my sorrows and nurse my broken heart. With only a knapsack of my favorite clothing and the wings on my back, I’d left behind everything and everyone I’d known in Emrallt Valley. The feeling of suffocating was as visceral as sinking in sorghum, and the only way to avoid the rising, unrelenting tide was to get out of there as fast as I could.
I loved too hard; it was what my best friend Monica always told me. I didn’t mean to fall in love with Prince Cedrych, the second-born son to our fae sovereign, and I should have knownwe’d never have a future together, but a fae boy can dream, can’t he?
Of course, his mother absolutely despised me. “A guildless, unremarkable bit of fae trash” were Queen Gwyneth’s exact words regarding my character, but Cedrych had always been quick to reassure me that my low station and checkered past didn’t bother him, that with time the queen would accept his unorthodox choice of romantic partner.
Spoiler: she didn’t.
Then Cedrych had gone and gotten himself betrothed to an elvish lord. Worse yet, he hadn’t told me of the engagement himself. I’d had to read about it in theDaily Scrollsand hear it announced from the ramparts of the Crystal Castle by the heralds of the royal family. I’d been so humiliated and disgraced. Queen Gwyneth had marked me as a gold-digging harlot from the start, and perhaps I was in the beginning, but foolishly, I’d invested my heart.
When I confronted Cedrych, the very last time we’d spoken, the slug first tried to convince me that his betrothal was inmybest interest, then told me not to worry because until his fiancé came to collect him at the summer solstice, nothing needed to change.
Let’s just say, I gota bithysterical.
Kitchenware was thrown, tears were shed, and the royal guard were forced to intervene. I’d always suspected I was a lark for Cedrych, a convenient plaything for him to visit when the carnal urge compelled him, but hearing the confirmation fromhis own callous lips forced me to take a hard look at my life and say, Goddess divine, I deserved more.
And so, as I lined my eyes with a shimmering emerald kohl, a color reserved for fae royalty and banned for common use in Emrallt Valley, I pretended the tears in my eyes were only the result of my makeup and reminded myself that I, Skylar Larkspur, was no stranger to heartbreak or adversity. I would simply have to remake myself once more. Just as the siren Gloria Gaynor had once belted out to audiences realmwide, I will survive.
But to do that, I’d need coin. Because, in addition to my dignity, I’d left behind anything of value I might have used to sell or trade, including the few fine trinkets and jewels Cedrych had given me. Perhaps it was my stubborn pride. I wanted him to visit the opulent rooms he’d rented for me only to find me vanished without a trace, to know those gifts held no value to me, sentimental or otherwise.
There was a bar nearby which would serve nicely as my hunting grounds. Drunk patrons made for easy marks. I wouldn’t take too much, just enough to pay the motel manager my nightly rate and keep up my stock of spirits I’d purchased from The Magic Shop down the street. Maybe I’d find some handsome shifter to spend a few moments of stolen passion with before the sun rose again on my subpar circumstance.
My cock hardened in my silk pants as I imagined the sweaty press of limbs, the heat of another body grinding against mine,clumsily fumbling to remove just enough clothing to get at what most needed relief, releasing all the toxicity inside of me in a flood of ecstasy.
Finding myself could wait. Tonight, I was getting lost in the arms of a stranger.
Chapter two
Hiero
It was Horns andHooves 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 metend 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 underthe 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.
