by R. J. Blain
I turned my ears back and stared at the drain.
“Yes, I liked Amelia. Of course I liked her. She protected you when I couldn’t, and she helped you when I couldn’t. I liked her because of all the things she did that I couldn’t. I never wanted to be her mate. I was stupid and hurt because you didn’t want me. She’s not you, and she can never be you. But everyone convinced me I should at least show up. Amelia knew right away there was never going to be an us and that I didn’t want there to be one. I wanted to know what you had been doing without me, and we talked about some of that. A relationship with her was never on the table.”
I wasn’t sure if I believed him or not, but I kept quiet while he worked the shampoo into my fur and began the long, tedious process of rinsing it out.
“The divorce papers were a stupid mistake. I filled them out, and all I could think was how it was the absolute last thing I wanted. I never signed them, and I never filed them. I ripped them up. I ripped them in my mother’s face and told her that if she ever mentioned them to me again, I’d petition to join a different pack, and if I ever got you back, that I’d take you with me. By then, you were already gone. Dr. Sampson’s a smart one, as you know. She told me what she had told you and why. She was right. After the first two months, when I realized you wouldn’t be coming back on your own, I told my parents what she had told me. They didn’t take it well. That’s when we started looking for you.”
Jake worked the nozzle under my chin, nudging my head up so he could rub soap into my chest fur. I turned my head so I wouldn’t have to look him in the eyes.
“We got lucky finding you. A man caught a photograph of an unusual, pretty fox near his sheep farm and posted it to the internet, wondering what species you were. No one could figure it out, since they were confused on your size; from our understanding, the picture had been taken a month after you’d vanished, so while you were large, people assumed you were a male red fox color mutation.”
I huffed.
“I saw the picture and knew it was you right away. So, we found out the location of the farm, contacted the man, and he told us where he’d seen you. By then, there was no sign of your scent, so we had to look around. It took us two weeks to pick up your trail, but we were looking for tiny paw prints.” Jake ran his hand down my leg and lifted my paw. “These are not tiny paws. These are monster paws, and when I saw monster paw prints, I was about ready to start murdering other Fenerec for getting too close to you.”
I flicked an ear at the growl in his voice.
“You evaded us for two weeks. Two whole damned weeks. Mason was the one who found you first, and you startled the hell out of him when you clawed out his fur, by the way. He’s so used to Fenerec who tiptoe around him that he forgot you’d tan his hide if cornered.”
Huffing again, I twisted around and snapped my teeth at the shower head. Jake snorted and sprayed me in the muzzle. “You also run fast enough more than a few shame-faced Fenerec in the pack decided it might be wise to get in some time working out. They didn’t like being completely trounced by a cute little fox. That alone changed some minds, when you’re a match for more than a few of them now that you’ve grown out a bit. It makes me wonder if you’ll shed out in time.”
For a while, Jake went back to rinsing out my fur, and when he finished with my back and chest, I grudgingly rose to all four paws so he could get the soap off my belly. He saved my tail for last, and I got the feeling the long, bushy fur amused him.
“If they ever figure out you have a plush, silky coat, they’re going to be jealous.” Jake turned off the water and closed the curtain. “All right. Shake off.”
I braced my legs and obeyed, sending water beating against the walls and the curtain. Even after shaking so much I made myself dizzy, my coat remained heavy and damp. Jake dug his finger in and made a disapproving noise. “Hair dryer and toweling off it is, then.”
I shook my head.
“You’ll get mold in your fur.”
I didn’t believe him for a moment, and I shot him a disapproving stare, flattened my ears, and jumped out of the tub. My leg ached, but I kept quiet instead of yipping. I nosed the bathroom door closed, lifted my head, and pulled at the bathrobe hanging from the hook.
“I suppose shifting would be one way to get dry. I’ll get you some clothes.” Jake squeezed by me.
I peeked out of the bathroom to discover his mother lurking in the hallway. With a startled yip, I retreated and crammed myself between the toilet and the sink.
“Whatever you’re doing, Mom, stop it,” Jake bellowed.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Standing menacingly in the doorway counts as doing something.”
“I’m standing in the hallway, and I’m not doing anything menacing.”
“Can she get around you without touching you?”
“Don’t you get mouthy with me, puppy.”
“While she’s shifting, will you please go get the first aid kit? Unless a lot has changed, she doesn’t heal like we do when we shift, and I’d rather her not lose any more blood.”
Jake’s mother sighed. “Very well.”
“Thank you.”
Jake returned, carrying one of my tank tops and a pair of my pajama bottoms. “I figured you wouldn’t want to ruin the top bleeding all over it.”
I emerged from my hiding place, grabbed the clothes from his hands, and retreated to the other end of the bathroom. “I’ll be in the hallway if you need me.” Sighing, Jake headed out, closing the door behind him.
In a perfect world, I wouldn’t need anyone ever again.
While the bleeding had stopped as a fox, when I shifted to human, the punctures reopened, and the pain was intense enough I curled in a ball and whimpered, which summoned Jake. He took one look at my arm, hissed, and knelt beside me.
“Let me see it.”
Moving hurt, and I squeezed my eyes shut and shuddered, but showed him where his mother had bitten me during our fight.
“She didn’t hold back at all. Damn it. These are going to need stitches.” Jake spat curses, and he placed gauze to the wounds and wrapped them. “I’ll get Dad to do it; he’s had the most practice. I’ll clean up the mess, so just give me a minute.”
With the bites covered, I could operate enough to dress while he mopped the blood of the tiles with one of his mother’s white towels—the good ones she put out when she expected company. I almost smiled at how much effort she’d have to put in to get out the stains.
Before I had a chance to get to my feet, Jake scooped me up, and the familiar fear of being far too high for my liking kicked in. I closed my eyes and grabbed for the nearest solid surface, which happened to be his shirt.
“I’m not going to drop you.”
Jake had only dropped me a few times, and with one exception, it’d always been on purpose into some form of water. The one time he had dropped me, he’d been caught off guard, and we had fallen together in a tangle of arms and legs.
His words didn’t convince me to ease my death grip on his clothes or open my eyes.
He carried me down the stairs, and I shivered at his every step. Holding onto him made my arm throb, and I swallowed so I wouldn’t make any noise and stir the ire of the wolves.
“Dad, she’s going to need stitches. I’ll take her into your office.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough she needs stitches,” Jake growled.
“All right. I’ll bring the kit. Put her on the couch. That’ll be the easiest to clean up. How bad is the upstairs bathroom?”
“Mom’s going to need new towels.”
“Was there a reason you ignored the paper towels under the sink?”
“If she liked her towels, she wouldn’t have bitten Karma.”
“First, you run her gold-rimmed china through the dishwasher. Then you microwaved her favorite color-changing mug. Now you’re targeting her towels? You have a death wish, son.”
“Just wait until she finds out what I did to the blender,”
Jake muttered.
“James Thomas, what did you do to your mother’s blender?”
“I just needed to blend something.”
“What did you need to blend?”
“Old razors. They were in the way. They fit better in the garbage after being pureed.”
Jake’s father sighed. “I’ll get the kit. Try not to destroy anything else in the house, please.”
I didn’t peek through my eyelashes until Jake sat on the couch. “Why would you puree old razors?”
“I was protesting that they’d locked you in the basement. For every day they refused to let you out, I ‘accidentally’ broke something. How was I to know her color-changing mugs would lose their color-changing properties if run through the microwave a couple of times? They don’t react well to being run through the dishwasher, either.”
“What’s the point of having a mug that can’t be put in the microwave?”
Jake wrapped his arms around me and held me tight enough I squeaked. “That’s what I said. I thought I was doing her a favor by making them easier to clean.”
“And the china?”
“Obviously no one has used the microwave yet today, as I discovered if you microwave a set of gold-rimmed mugs, they will spark and break the microwave. Also, I can confirm lemon-based cleaners and colored dish towels will stain fine china. I also ran the silver through the dishwasher multiple times.”
“She’s going to kill you,” I predicted. I wasn’t sure what I thought about that, which only added to my confusion. I was supposed to be so angry I wanted nothing to do with him, not cradled on his lap while waiting for his father to poke holes in my arm and stitch me back together again.
The Thomas family was not good for my health.
“James Thomas!” Jake’s mother shrieked. “What did you do to my towels?”
Jake opened his mouth.
I hissed, “If you pun my name, I punch you in the kidney and rip your intestines out of your big toe.”
Jake closed his mouth.
While I waited, I contemplated escaping Jake’s hold on me; his grip was firm enough I would have to put some serious effort into it. It had been a long time since he’d shown any signs of being protective at all, and I couldn’t bring myself to end it.
“She looks like she has lost the will to live.” Jake’s father strolled into his office carrying a tackle box in one hand and a metal tray in the other. “What have you done to the woman now?”
“Nothing!”
“Did she struggle to escape and you refused to let her go?”
“No.”
“Karma?”
“You know those electric knife sharpeners, Jake?”
“What about them?”
“You should sharpen their knives since you’ve been helping them out in the kitchen.”
“No,” Jake’s father growled.
Jake’s mother stepped into the room, and she had several bloody towels draped over her arm. “What’s this I hear about helping out in the kitchen?”
“Karma was suggesting to our son he should help in the kitchen with an electric knife sharpener.”
His mother’s eyes widened. “Don’t even think about it, James.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t mauled her so she needed stitches, I wouldn’t be thinking about it.”
The two growled at each other, and with a resigned sigh, I held my arm out to Jake’s father. “Just get it over with already. And no, I do not need a transfusion or a trip to the hospital.”
“How about some painkillers?”
“Only if you have Demerol.”
Jake sighed. “I can’t even say we don’t deserve it.”
“Well, it’s nice to know some things will never change. She’s still mean, son.”
While Jake’s father offered morphine, I stubbornly refused it, regretting it the instant he went to work stitching Pauline’s bites closed. I yelped at the first jab, and Jake tensed beneath me, and he growled with his every breath. While I got through it without crying, I ended up screaming curses at all of them, detailing their sins to keep the tears from falling.
By the end of it, Dr. Howards had shown up, and he watched Sebastian finish with interest. “While I’m willing to accept progress in any form, torture is illegal within the United States. I could hear the screaming from the front door. Were you aware there are a rather high number of concerned individuals crammed into your living room? They called me, informing me they were afraid a new World War was in progress.”
Jake’s father cleaned my arm while I panted to catch my breath. “The bitch bit me. The son of a bitch seems to think he’s a chair. The bitch’s face stealing chew toy wouldn’t give me Demerol.”
“You experience complete psychosis when you’re on Demerol with exceptionally violent tendencies. Also, if the evidence in front of me is to be believed, you’re the one who got chewed on.”
Jake’s father sighed. “I don’t steal faces. He steals faces.”
My shrink nodded. “I believe the ‘son of a bitch’ in this situation is the one who actually stole the face, as he’s the son.”
Why did everyone insist on annoying me? “I saw the son of a bitch first.”
“I see. Would one of you care to explain why my patient seems to have lost a great deal of her blood and required stitches?”
Jake chuckled, keeping his arms wrapped around my waist. “For some reason neither has cared to explain, Karma and my mother shifted and got into a brawl.”
“You don’t seem very concerned, Mr. Thomas.”
“She’s on my lap and hasn’t tried to kill me yet.”
“Right. Fenerec male idiot. I should have known better than to ask you. Pauline?”
“We were resolving some of our differences.”
“Did you forget she does not heal as well as Fenerec do? Did you also forget she is the equivalent of a puppy? I believe we had a discussion about unfair advantages over compromised individuals once already. I left you alone for three hours.”
Pauline scowled. “So you’re saying I should have just let her rip my fur out?”
“Yes.”
I found a new respect for the psychologist. “I got mad.”
“So you decided to shift and start a fight.”
“She was in my space.”
“It’s my house.”
“Well, if you hadn’t locked me in your basement, I wouldn’t be in your house!”
“Because hiding in the woods somewhere is so much better of an alternative?”
I scowled. “Yes.”
Jake sighed. “I don’t want to live in the woods. I’m spoiled.”
“Who said you were invited?”
“I invited myself. It’s a bad habit.”
“Yes, it is. Go back to your own home and stop breaking mine,” Pauline muttered.
Jake shifted his grip on me and stood without setting me down. “Okay.”
“Sit down, James,” his mother snarled.
While under any other circumstance, the idea of watching Jake defy his mother would have provided me with hours of entertainment, I was between the two of them and had no doubts I’d get flattened, squished, bitten, and otherwise broken like a twig if they started an actual fight. “Can you put me down before you start fighting?”
“No.” Jake growled and tightened his hold on me. “They’ll try to take you from me.”
“Maybe the psychologist should be having the appointments with you instead of with me. You can take mine. I don’t mind.”
“Karma.”
“What? I really wouldn’t mind if you take him. He’s basically a paid, legalized stalker, and he won’t leave me alone.”
Jake sighed and sank back onto the couch. While I wiggled in my effort to free myself, I likely would have had better luck escaping from handcuffs. “He won’t leave you alone because you need his help.”
It annoyed me that Jake was right.
“I see him right before your sessions. He dislikes them almost
as much as you do. Couple’s therapy will be an interesting endeavor. I’m looking forward to it.”
At least someone was. I scowled. “Couple’s therapy?”
“When a man loves a woman and convinces her to marry him, they become a couple. When a couple experiences difficulties, especially of a manipulative nature, therapy can help resolve those issues.” Dr. Howards shot a glare at Jake’s parents. “In your case, the manipulation came from outside sources.”
I remembered what Jake had said. “Because I don’t stink.”
“Because you don’t stink of my scent,” he corrected.
“I take a bath at least once a day. Of course I don’t stink. Maybe if you took showers that lasted longer than five minutes, you wouldn’t stink.”
“This is the one situation you want to stink, Karma. If we had been carrying each other’s scents, no one would have tried to separate us.”
Had separated us, but I lacked the courage to say so. I averted my gaze to the floor.
Pauline sighed. “And we never should have tried in the first place. For that, I’m sorry.”
Sorry wouldn’t cut it and never would. I wondered what would have changed if one of us had bent, if I had given up on wanting to be pack with a bunch of wolves. A year ago, my answer would have been simple. I would have waited for a while before telling Jake I was tired and wanted to go home.
I no longer had a home. I no longer had a place where I went and found comfort just by being there, surrounded by the evidence of my life, people I wanted to be near, and people who wanted to be near me.
Like everything else, the way Jake held me was a lie, one I refused to believe. Some burned bridges could never be rebuilt. Sometimes, they could be repaired, but they connected to places I no longer wished to go.
A simple sorry would never be enough.
Jake wanted to be near me all of the time, and to escape the conversations I didn’t want, I shifted and spent the vast majority of my time as a fox. No one could question me, no one could try to force me into anything, and when anyone tried to touch me, I reminded them I had a predator’s teeth.
My first full day outside of the basement, I bit seven people, including Jake. He got off the lightest; while I made him bleed, the wounds were shallow and healed far faster than the others who made the mistake of getting within range of my jaws.