Chapter Text
The work of Mythic Hunting as a whole is a very misunderstood profession, in the humble opinion of private contractor Ward Levant. Some thought it to be impossibly difficult—a madman’s gamble with the odds stacked fatally against you. And the numbers, Ward admitted, didn’t do much to argue otherwise. Mortality rates among Hunters were atrociously high.
But those numbers never accounted for the most important detail—that most of those corpses had belonged to idiots. The profession had a way of attracting them; boys from the gutter chasing glory or bitter men twice Ward’s age who thought slaying monsters would soothe the ache of their mid-life crisis. Such men had a knack for charging half-cocked into a lycan den or a witch’s coven, full of bravado and nothing else. Their heads didn’t stay attached to their bodies for long. Natural selection, Ward figured. Common sense is the rarest weapon in a Hunter’s arsenal, in the whole damn world, for that matter.
On the other hand, there are those who falsely believe Hunting is easy money. How could you not after seeing some of the exuberant prices rare Mythics fetched in the pearl embellished halls of the elites? Easy, they said. Quick coin. Ward had met more than a few wide-eyed hopefuls drunk on the fantasy.
But that, too, is a misconception. While the profession is not inherently deadly to those with the right tools, enough brain cells to smack together, and a certain level of chutzpah, it is far from easy.
Catching a Mythic is one thing, but breaking it down to market level? Taking a creature born wild, shaped by magic and instinct, and coaxing it into compliance, stripping its power into pieces that could be sold without losing their value… that’s an art. A skilled Hunter has to excel at both: the hunt and the harvest, the chase and the control.
Ward is often told how lucky he is to make it as a private contractor at a relatively young age. Most Hunters apprenticed for at least a decade before graduating to the role of junior in a company, much less considered going solo. But what could he say? The work had always come naturally to him. It was in his blood, after all.
And above all else, Ward hated taking orders.
Well, he still took them, in a way. From clients. But clients were easier than bosses. Entitled? Undoubtedly. Foolish? More often than not. But clients could be dropped the moment they became too much trouble. Fees could be raised at Ward’s discretion, for the additional toll of enduring their particularities. And with his track record, most of the elite had no choice but to pay. Few Hunters matched his range of quarry, and fewer still boasted his success rate. Even the snottiest elites usually cough up the coin to ensure they get their precious toys.
Such as the quarry he’s hunting tonight—a red-tailed siren. Rare, naturally aggressive and notoriously strong-willed. Pulling a siren in from shallow water was one thing, he’d probably netted a dozen pink-tailed and even a few-orange tailed, all tanned skin and sweet faces. Pulling one in from deep water was another. Red-tailed occupied both, which is why most Hunters sought to snare them from the reefs. However, Ward knows that such thinking is a mistake.
It is true that they spend their days dragging their bellies along coral reefs, napping and flicking between the shadows of shallow water, and in the nights, they retreat to deeper waters, where their hunts truly begin. This is where to catch them. When they feel they are predator, not when they hide as prey.
And of course, there’s the task of actually breaking one once it’s ensnared on the deck of his ship. Aggressive and strong-willed.
But that is Ward’s favorite part—the breaking. The moment when his natural talents truly shine.
This past week, though, all he’d had were dreams of breaking one. The enchanted lure—shaped like a lightning-fast tuna and charmed to attract red sirens—flickers around like a shadow beneath the waves around the hull of his simple, rented ship.
Night after night, nothing. Not a ripple, not a bite. And so, each dawn, Ward hauled anchor and moved on. Red sirens weren’t fools. Once they sense a trick, they won’t fall for it again.
Fortunately, their nature works in his favor. Red sirens are fiercely solitary, too antisocial to share warnings amongst each other. And he just needs one—one foolish, one reckless, one moving too fast to think before it strikes.
On the fourth night, the line went taut. The rod bowed, reel screaming. Ward gritted his teeth, dragged the catch in against a spray of salt that plastered his clothes to his skin. His heart kicked when the head broke water—a strong jaw, heavy brow, flat chest. Male. Perfect. Then his eyes dropped lower. He swore under his breath. Claspers.
Not the kind of male his client had ordered.
So, he let the first red siren go, slacking the line until it thrashed away with a mighty swing of its tail. That action alone would’ve killed many Hunters, letting go of such a valuable quarry. But Ward had no use for him. He was fixated on his contract and his contract alone.
Three nights later, he gets another bite. This time, the strike nearly tears the rod from his hands. The battle is vicious—giving line, taking, giving again. Salt spray leaps in sheets, drenching him as the boat surges and bucks beneath his feet. He plays it patiently, muscles aching, letting the beast wear itself down, pulling it closer, closer, closer.
A dark head breaks the surface with a desperate sputter, lungs dragging in air. Marine mammals, through and through—they can not hide under forever. Ward studies it in the din. Male. The features are sharp but oddly delicate, fae-like, but undeniably male.
Skin bronze with sun and salt glistens as it emerges from the surface. A flat chest rises, slick with seawater, dappled in a calico scatter of scales—ruby red and deep crimson so dark they seem black where shadows cling. They gleam wetly, every shift of muscle flashing like jeweled armor.
Ward wedges the rod beneath his arm, locking it tight, and flicks the net out. The siren thrashes, hissing, but fatigue betrays him—the mesh catches, dragging him down, tangling fast. The creature’s tail lashes once, twice, flinging up waves that slam against the hull in booming sheets. Salt stings Ward’s eyes as he narrows them, tracking that tail, thick and long and furious in its arcs.
No claspers.
A receptive male red siren. Finally.
Ward hauls the net up with a mighty heave and the creature lands with a sodden thump. Before the siren can gather orient, Ward is already on him. He straddles the massive tail, his thighs clamped tight as he slams the first arcane restraint into place at the fluke. The device hisses, glowing faintly as it locks, pinning the deadly fan of spines flat. He latches another higher along the tail. Another near the hips. The siren thrashes and writhes, muscles rolling beneath the netting, but the restraints hold.
And then his eyes meet Ward’s, rage blazing behind them as the truth sinks in—he’s pinned.
The claws come next, slashing at the mesh, but Ward is quicker. He lunges forward, seizing both wrists in a bruising grip, and slams them to the deck above its head. Another restraint hisses, clicks, and locks them fast. The siren jolts against it, the deck shuddering beneath its power.
For a moment, it just stares, stunned. Sirens are apex predators of the sea, feared by sailors and whispered of in taverns, but Ward has spent his life mastering the art of taming what others called untamable. Pound for pound, he’s weaker, but skill makes all the difference. A primal hunter is no match for an intelligent one.
“Unhand me!” the siren screeches, his melodic voice pitching high. His skull cracks against the deck as he thrashes again. But after a moment, the fight stills—not because the will is gone, but because the siren has realized brute strength won’t break the locks.
“I think not,” Ward replies simply, still strandling the siren’s body. He can feel the muscle between his thighs still tense, coiled. The siren isn’t done fighting yet.
Then the expression changes. His ruby gaze narrows, mouth curving upward into a soft smile. “Hunter,” the siren says, smooth now—too smooth, too sweet. “These binds are horribly tight. Wouldn’t you loosen them for me? Just a little?”
The air itself feels different as magic drips like honey over his ears. Ward recognizes the trick immediately. Enchantment. A siren’s oldest play.
Ward only laughs, low and sharp. “Nice try, sweetheart. That trick usually work?”
The mask drops in a heartbeat. The siren’s eyes narrow into vicious slits, the sweetness burned away, replaced by something sharp and furious.
“Why are you immune?” He hisses, sounding thoroughly slighted, like Ward’s lack of reaction to his charm is a personal offense.
Ward clicks his tongue, all mock disappointment. “Ah-ah. Information’s not free.” He tilts his head, still straddling the creature’s pinned body, as if they’re two men trading gossip over drinks instead of captor and captive. “You want answers, you offer something first. Your name, perhaps? Otherwise I’m stuck calling you ‘creature,’ and that’s a little crass, don’t you think?”
The siren growls, but takes the bait. “I am Iski,” his fluke twitches against the wooden gunwale like an irritated cat. “Why have you captured me, Hunter? To bleed me? To kill me?”
Ward lifts one hand in mock-placation, palm out, expression easy. “No, no, nothing so theatrical. You’re worth far more alive.” His mouth curls into a sly half-smile. “Iski, hm? Cute. It suits you.”
Iski frowns, nails scraping the deck as his hands fidget. “Then you mean to sell me.” He spits the words like poison.
“That’s the crux of it.” Ward leans down, close enough that the siren’s breath warms his cheek. “But don’t worry. You’ll come to enjoy it before long. I’m quite good at what I do.”
He traces two fingers down the siren’s stomach, feeling smooth skin transition to small, delicate scales. The net bows around his wrist as he reaches his target—a slit positioned just above the pelvic bone.
Iski’s hips twist side to side, pushing against the binds as Ward presses into soft skin.
“Kch—it’s no use, Hunter.” He hisses through clenched teeth. “My body knows better than to yield to something like you.”
Ward chuckles low in his throat. The pads of his fingers knead slowly until they find the steady pulse of a thick vein beneath the surface. “You really think I’ve run out of tricks, sweetheart?” he murmurs. “How… confident of you.”
Heat rises under his fingertips as magic coils down his wrist like liquid fire. In the chill night air his touch feels almost fever-warm. Iski’s ruby eyes go wide—not yet scared, simply surprised. He stares down at Ward’s hand where it rubs against his skin as if he’ll be able to see the magic there, but he finds nothing.
Ward hears it first—a soft, wet squelch.
“What…” Iski’s question trails off, dumbfounded. Then, his face reddens all at once, blooming crimson beneath his cheeks. “What are you doing to me? What magic is this?”
Smugness unfurls in Ward’s chest as the siren’s body betrays him. The slit beneath his palm, once clenched tight, begins to part. It glistens in the moonlight—clear, viscous fluid slowly painting the edges.
“Looks like your body knows something you don’t,” he purrs, carefully tracing the edges of Iski’s rapidly dampening slit. He doesn’t yet breach the passage—he doesn’t need to. He simply runs his fingers down one side, then back up the other, slow and methodical.
“No! No, I–ah…” the siren’s argument stumbles over itself as Ward’s fingers continue their steady, almost hypnotic ministrations. Ward resists the urge to laugh again. Such a strong-willed creature and already he struggles.
“What–what are you? This isn’t–mmh…” Iski’s face screws up as he bites his cheek with sharp teeth, trying to suppress the sounds. “This isn’t the magic of a–ah… of a mere man.”
“Oh, poor thing, you thought I was just a human,” he purrs, voice full of false sympathy. “You know what they say about assumptions.”
The siren’s lips part, panting harder as his glare frays into something desperate. “Then… w-what are you?” he snaps, breathless.
Ward smiles leisurely, as if beginning a story. Beneath his touch the slit quivers, parting more, bowing open like petals in the first light of spring. “Well, my mother is a witch and my father is an incubus—you know, the sex demons? They’re still together, disgustingly in love too, if you can believe it. Long story short, I’m a hybrid. Everyone forgets about us though, so you shouldn’t feel too bad.”
“You–you’re… a bed-fiend and a Hunter? Why would you–hhn…” the siren’s words taper off into a throaty sound as Ward presses his fingers against the very top of his cunt, slipping in just a fraction as the slick skin yields to his touch.
“Bed-fiend? Now that’s just mean,” he tuts. His other hand grips around the siren’s pelvic bone, feeling the tiny little side to side twitches of Iski’s body under his hand. “How would you like it if I called you a fish-whore?”
The siren hisses. “I am no such thing! Foul-mouthed bas–bastard, bastard… ff-fuck–aah…”
Ward smirks as Iski’s fiery retorts die with a simple curl of his fingers. He sinks the pads of his fingers into the siren’s upper walls just behind his entrance and is rewarded with another stifled moan and a little gush of fluid. It beads down the back of his fingers, slowly dripping off his knuckles.
“Are you sure?” he taunts, establishing a steady pace, curling his fingers rhythmically. “Because from my angle, whore seems like the right word.”
The siren grinds his sharp teeth, letting out a sound between a growl and a moan, sea water beading off his dark lashes as his eyelids flutter. It’s not the first time Ward has had his hand in a siren. Parts of their anatomy were uncannily human—he’d heard most of their organs were indistinguishable, so why would their reproductive system be any different?
But there were subtle variances.
He curves his fingers, sliding deeper in the slick passage. Unlike a human, a siren’s cunt angles more steeply upward accounting for the larger gap between their slits and where their wombs sat nestled in their pelvic cradle. Consequently, their G-spots are further in. And to account for underwater procreation, they produce an incredible amount of slick, trying to create the lubricant faster than the waves could wash it away.
Already, thick clear liquid puddles on Iski’s skin, oozing out around Ward’s fingers with an audible squelch. It pains him a little to see that fluid begin to drip onto the deck. A siren’s arousal is a valuable substance—one of the most potent aphrodisiacs available and a euphoric stimulant to non-magical creatures such as humans. It was the primary reason sirens went for so much on the Mythic market.
“No, I’m not–ah…haah,” Iski pants, clenching around his fingers. “I’m no whore. It’s–nngh—! Your devil magic! I can’t–oh fuck—!”
Ward smirks, grinding his knuckles against the siren’s drooling slit as he rubs his fingers against that traitorous little bundle of nerves on Iski’s upper walls. His incubus magic makes every erogenous zone hypersensitive, and he can see the consequence of that on Iski’s face as he squirms against the deck—no longer thrashing viciously, no longer fighting to get away from the Hunter. Instead, his body writhes with the pleasure of it, abs quivering and rose pink lips parting.
He knows sirens respond to friction rather than pressure, so he rubs back and forth, over and over, as if mimicking the sensation of a cock bullying his walls apart. Iski’s resistance crumbles before his eyes, rendered completely helpless by just two of Ward’s fingers in his heat.
It's a wonderful sight.
“Feels good, doesn’t it, baby?” he says, rubbing across the siren’s toned stomach with his free hand. The rope is rough under his palm, scraping softly against sun-kissed skin.
“Nn-nnhg… ah… d-devil,” Iski forces out, breathless. His narrowed eyes tell Ward it's meant to be an insult, but the way the words fall apart on his tongue makes it sound like anything but.
“I wonder how long you’ll fight me for?” Ward muses, continuing a maddening pattern with his fingertips. Rubbing back and forth, back and forth with a shlick, shlick, shlick sound. “First I’ll make you cum just like this. Twice, maybe three times. By then, you’ll already be fucked out, but I hope you’ll still have a little spark in you.”
Ward leans closer, squeezing Iski’s waist as his hand in the siren’s cunt begins to move faster. The siren’s reaction is immediate—he whines high in his throat, eyes shutting tight.
“That little spark? That’s what I like to see break when I finally fuck you.”
Iski’s mouth opens to reply but Ward steals the words from his tongue with a quick thrust of his hand, pressing the pads of his fingers hard against those sweet, velvet walls.
“Ah–!” Iski gasps, high and breathy. “Nn-no… I-I won’t–a-ah…”
The sound of his cunt squelching around Ward’s hand grows louder than the cadence of waves crashing again the hull as the Hunter fucks him with two deft fingers, striking his G-spot with clinical precision. Fluid pools and bubbles in his hand as the siren’s body responds eagerly. He can feel the passage just beyond his reach parting ever so slightly—a sign that the creature’s womb has dropped lower, inviting him in.
Yet another slight variance between humans and sirens—their deeper passages contained an extra layer of protection to guard their most sensitive anatomy against abrasive sea water, only granting access when their bodies entered a breeding state.
He smirks as he pushes his way deeper, grinding his knuckles against arousal slicked skin.
“You feel that?” he taunts, lazily scissoring his fingers, his unhurried pace making it impossible for Iski to deny how thoroughly his body is yielding to the Hunter. “Feel how badly your body wants me? Feel how it’s begging me to pump your slutty little womb full?”
“Nn–oh…” The siren pants. Even in the din, Ward can clearly see the way his cheeks have flushed crimson and the shimmer of spit on his parted lips.
“I know that means you’re about to cum,” he whispers low and close to the siren’s ear like it were a secret as his hand resumes thrusting in and out, faster now. Iski’s breath hitches in response, sharp teeth digging into his lower lip as he lets out a low, desperate whine.
“A lowly Hunter, like myself, about to make you cum, can you believe that?” Ward continued prattling on, mocking, feeling how the humiliation made Iski’s cunt grip his fingers.
“Ah–nh-n–I-I—” The siren’s face flushes dark below his cheeks as he stammers, dark lashes fluttering over half-lidded eyes.
“Can’t even deny it now,” Ward chuckles lowly, thrusting faster as those silken walls begin to quiver around him. “Two fingers in your cute little cunt—that’s all it takes. I want you to remember that as you cum for me, sweetheart.”
Iski’s moans taper off into a drawn out whimper as his ribs spasm beneath Ward’s hand, muscles tensing as his orgasm crashes over him. His pink lips part, spit making them shimmer in the moonlight as tears glisten in his waterline. Slick paints the inside of Ward’s wrist up his forearm—one sudden gush followed by a series of increasingly pathetic little spurts.
The siren’s climax releases him slowly, his hazy, ruby eyes drifting back to Ward’s face as he lies limp and panting on the deck. For the first time, there is no malice there. It’s as if his pleasure has rung him dry of any meaningful thought, unaware of anything besides Ward’s fingers where they rest still buried in his cunt.
Then, his gaze sharpens over the course of a few seconds, jaw clenching beneath closed lips.
Ward only laughs at the expression, slipping his fingers free. A thick coating of the siren’s arousal clings to them. It stretches like a pearl necklace as he spreads his fingers apart, admiring the way the moonlight catches off of each thick drop.
His tongue is warm in the cool night air as it meets his skin, licking Iski’s slick off of one digit while looking down at the siren’s flushed face. He can taste the magic there like the buzz of hard liquor intermingled with a creamy sweetness beneath the bite of ocean water. The tapered tip of his tongue slips across the pad of his finger, its length further proof of his devilish heritage.
“Oh, don’t look so surprised, baby,” he croons at Iski’s expression—anger and embarrassment fighting to take hold of his delicate features. “I can already tell. We’re going to have a lot of fun together.”