The Alpha's Archer (Fairview Chronicles 7)

The Alpha's Archer (Fairview Chronicles 7)
Alexa Piper
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Copyright ©2021 Alexa Piper

Like any hunter, Eris enjoyed perching. He was doing it -- perching on a fire escape -- and watching the alpha bitch below who’d snatched his heart in her werewolf claws. Eris held his bow loosely in his hand as Lindsey, all serious Fairview Police detective with her tight ponytail, took in the corpse. It was a nice, distracting corpse, which made it even easier for Eris to remain unseen.

“The fuckery,” Lindsey was saying. It was quite some fuckery indeed. Not that the sight of a torn ribcage particularly troubled Eris, nor the sight of a Dumpster and a good chunk of the sidewalk decorated with guts. But he could agree with Lindsey’s judgment. It is probably wise to get used to agreeing with her. She will expect it, once I woo her, Eris thought. Of course, Eris had dated a hellhound before, like most archers, but a werewolf alpha was a different kind of fletching altogether. I think I might be looking forward to agreeing with her, Eris thought.

A pigeon landed next to Eris, interrupting the newly found agreeable state of the archer’s mind. The pigeon’s pink claws curled around the iron banister, and he looked at the archer with hungry bird eyes and made a pigeon noise while the alpha bitch discussed the bloody fuckery with the medical examiner who was poking and prodding the corpse.

“I don’t have any food,” Eris told the pigeon.

The pigeon stared with his beady eyes and cooed.

“Seriously. I don’t. Go away. I’m perching here.” Eris shifted a bit and adjusted his grip on his bow.

The pigeon did not move. Eris’s bow hand was beginning to feel the tingling need for an arrow, no matter how scrawny the pigeon’s feathery ass was.

“Go. Away.” He was being nice, wasn’t he? Surely even a Fairview pigeon could appreciate that.

The pigeon was being stubborn, however. Down below, Lindsey was cursing some more before she told the medical examiner to let her know the moment the autopsy was done. Then, the alpha bitch pulled out her phone.

“You know, I don’t hate pigeons, but your kind really shouldn’t be all this territorial,” Eris said.

The pigeon cooed.

“Fucks and feathers,” the archer said. Below, Lindsey ended the call and walked away from the fuckery. “Looks like I’m getting coffee. So long, pigeon.”

Eris, rather than descending, went up. Archers like him had an easy way when it came to high ground, and their kind rarely fell, if ever. And Eris felt pretty sure he knew where Lindsey was headed.

The pigeon stared after him. Then, his territory successfully defended, he cooed once more.

* * *

The Queene Bean’s coffee was the best in all of Fairview. Eris had no evidence at all to support this claim, but when he walked inside to the chirping of the bells above the door, the mellona behind the counter returned his bright smile with a sort of sour twitch of her lip. The bee demon always put extra honey in Eris’s coffee, and he didn’t really care that she was prejudiced against his kind. It much helped that any mellona was proud to provide the best customer service experience.

“Hey, June!” Eris said.

“Trickster.” Her tone was level, because she was a mellona, and being friendly to a customer was important to her. “How misfortuitous to see you and your arrows here again. What’ll it be?”

“Oh, June Bee. Coffee. Double extra honey.” Eris looked at the selection of baked goods. “And a cranberry chocolate muffin.”

“Will you need a table?” Clearly, she was hoping he wouldn’t. Or perhaps she was hoping for a heart attack or a lightning strike to hit Eris. Mellona really are the best, Eris thought.

Eris looked over his shoulder. His table was free. “I’ll just take the one by the window. With the best view in all of Fairview, you know.” The mellona visibly bristled, but she hid it with another stinging smile.

The Queene Bean was pretty empty, yet Eris spotted a poet. His kind could spot them at a great distance, and this one was even at her craft, which made her all shiny and lyrical to behold. With his bow still ready, the archer was tempted to pierce the poet’s heart with one of his arrows, not a love one, but perhaps the kind of ravishing longing that came on strong and then vanished with time. It might prompt line upon line of verse, but Eris decided to leave all his arrows in his quiver. He did not want June to ban him, after all. Shooting people with arrows might actually give her enough of a reason to do that.

Eris settled into the comfy chair at the table which offered him the best view in town, namely the front entrance of St. John Investigations, the prime purveyor of supernatural sleuthing and high-end problem solving in all of Fairview. Not that there was any competition, but still, St. John’s assistant was a mage both pretty and powerful.

“She swayed a heart pierced with my arrow’s lust back to her through true love’s kiss,” Eris mumbled. Then he realized there were no pigeons here, only June, who had approached his table with her buzzing turned to loud.

“Here,” she said. The muffin and coffee were placed onto the table with just the smallest ounce of too much force, and her smile was sour as curdling milk.

Still, Eris beamed at the bee. “Thank you ever so much, oh buzzing beauty. Beauty buzz. Buzz beauty… Say, do you have a buzz boy?” He leaned close to June. “I would offer to kiss you, but I must woo another. What woos a werewolf, I wonder? Any advice?”

“No, there are no boys in the hive, and you know that. Tell your werewolf to bite you.” And with that, June walked off to glare at Eris from behind the counter.

Eris started sipping his sweet, sweet coffee while the poet wrinkled her forehead in the pursuit of rhymesome verse.

Somewhere during the second line of butchered meter and severed feet, Lindsey pulled up in her car.

“Oh, I’d like to wipe that annoyance off your face,” Eris thought. The corpse had not been pretty, but if she kept her forehead furrowed like that, she might grow a permanent scowl. “Not that I would ever mind any wrinkle upon that werewolf’s brow.”

And probably because he had said it out loud, he started imagining how he would wipe off that expression. The wiping was figurative, but the kissing he wanted to do was quite real. Ideally, if he could add some sweeping her off her feet, all the better.

He’d kiss Lindsey sore so long as it meant she’d take her clothes off at some point, and he had imagined that all too frequently if he was being honest. His alpha bitch liked her denim and her boots, and she had the lithe, muscular shape that meant those showed off her legs. And her ass, of course, which Eris had to admit was a target he wouldn’t mind examining closer.