“I see.” Mej smirked at him, drawing out the second word lovingly. So even self-righteous Demik didn’t really want to be tethered to a silent, damaged vixen. It did Mej’s heart good. It made him want to take her in himself, give her anything she desired, just to prove he would—while Demik wouldn’t. “So you want to stay in here with us?”
More nodding, eyes fairly shining out of her thin face in sunset light flowing across them through the smoke of settlement fires.
“You may like to know we have four pallets—in case Demik didn’t mention it. Our fourth denmate doesn’t spend much time in the settlement these days.”
She tipped her head, a question in her eyes.
“Oh, Tweal is a miner now. Joined the humans and he’s too tipsy most nights to make it home. He sleeps in the camps. No need to bother with him. However, we’re all strays here.” Mej inclined his head sorrowfully. “Much to our shame. If you’d like to take it a step further, abide by human politeness and fashion, you could first say yes to being my mate, then den with us in complete physical and spiritual comfort.”
Clearly irritated, though used to Mej, Demik was sighing, raising his hand to flap Mej away, but he paused. They all paused, staring at the vixen as she nodded eagerly, leaning forward. She nodded to Mej, to Demik, back to Mej. Her lips were parted, smile dazzling, eyes intense.
Mej laughed, having to force it, taking a step back at the same time. “Yes, well…”
“No.” Demik squeezed her hand and shook his head, frowning. “Pay no attention to him.”
Again, she looked between them, her smile faltering. Who knew if she’d even understood properly? Much less got that it was a joke. Yet seeing that radiant joy slip from her face to be replaced by uncertainty tugged at his heart.
“That is, if you’re interested—” Mej started.
“Can’t you follow another scent?” Demik snapped.
Mej hesitated.
Still the vixen looked between them—and still held Demik’s arm.
There was nothing confused about her look. Nothing even a shred unintelligent. Her gaze was piercing, bursting to a perfect dawn of expectation at his proposal. Only to sink into a fretful dusk with Demik’s cutting in.
“You’re serious…?” Watching her, Mej didn’t know what to say.
“Just go.” Demik stepped closer, shoulders forward.
Mej held up his hands to Demik, appeasing, but didn’t look at him, focus still to the female.
She’d nodded more, though her gaze darted to Demik. She smiled at Mej. Her hand was tight on Demik’s arm. Holding him back?
“I see…” Mej inched away. “You like both of us? All right. Just keep such arrangements quiet from the humans. They’ll rush up here, waving books, telling us about their God if they hear of deviations from one male and one female pairs.”
She cocked her head again. He was struck by the lines of her neck, angle of her jaw, the way her hair moved, begging to be touched.
“It’s their spiritual teachings.” Mej explained with a shrug. “They disapprove of anyone unlike themselves. Probably think we’ll kidnap their women and force eighteen of them to a union with one male.”
The vixen laughed.
Mej stared. So did Demik and Komu. It wasn’t a voice laugh. Rather a sound of breath like a spring breeze. In that light, panting laugh, Demik’s whole aspect softened. Mej felt his own shoulders relax. He let out a breath that he hadn’t realized had been tight in his chest. He smiled, almost stepping forward again, almost reaching for her, but caught himself.
What was the matter with him? Putting aside the fact that Demik stood between them, this wasn’t even Mej’s style. He knew better than to act on impulse. Mej sized up a crowd, chose a mark, watched until he knew the hand to play: knew he would walk out a winner. He didn’t rush up to every female he saw and stick his nose in her hackles. Not that he’d ever met a vixen like this.
Quite aside from all that, hadn’t he just decided he wasn’t interested? Decided in his head, maybe. His body told him more.
He couldn’t keep this up with Demik. Anyway, Mej was glad of the excuse of Demik to back down. At least for now. A growl and a laugh seemed a perfect exit.
“Perhaps you’d like to think about it?” Mej said as he retreated. “Regardless, don’t let us trouble you. You’re welcome to den with us. Or curl with Demik on this side. Komu and I live on the other—back entrance—and we’ll give you two privacy. Should our dripping denmate Tweal arrive, I’d be honored to chase him out on his ear for you.”
Feeling he was babbling, though she again smiled at him and Demik had eased up, Mej made a hurried retreat around the side of the A-frame with his student.
“Poor bastard,” Komu muttered as they walked around the den. “Eighteen mates and one dick.”
Mej hardly heard. He kept looking back as he went. Which also wasn’t like him.
Chapter 10
Inside, the A-frame had been split into two rooms, front and back, with a stitched canvas wall. Mej distractedly fumbled a cigarette case and matches from his trouser pocket as he paced. He had to try four times just to get the match to take.
Normally he and Komu would have been going through the night’s winnings before either curling up on their two pallets built atop open-sided crates which housed their clothes and possessions, or they’d have been changing and dashing off in the long twilight to hunt and celebrate. All dependent on the night and the mood to take them.
Now Mej could think of neither activity. Komu only threw the sack on the caribou-skin cover on his bed, then returned outside to flip the den’s communal bathing tub right side up.
“Mej—”
“Get it yourself.” Mej paced around the small space, shaking out his match and dropping it in his match and butts cup made from a tin can.
“Go on, Mej. Please,” Komu whined. “I’ll make it in one trip if you’ll come with me.”
It was true, and Komu had been invaluable in tonight’s haul from the spring newcomers who didn’t know them. They could count on an influx of hundreds of new men at the gaming tables for spring and summer, right through to the first snow.
The great Klondike Gold Rush, which had been decried and headlined from New York City to Tokyo to London, remained in full sway over the land. The trouble was, much of the gold had been claimed two or three years ago. The easy picking was as gone as the snow birds. Unlike them, it wouldn’t be back. Outsiders didn’t know that yet—only the steady men, the sourdoughs. Some of them now ran and worked the big mining operations, digging deep, burning and blasting their way to riches or rags or death. Even a couple of foxes, like Tweal, had fallen victim to working for them.
So Komu had made a good showing, playing his part well, passing Mej a couple cards below the table by means of a bit of soft clay on the toe of his boot. Mej could help him with his bath. Anyway, much as he hated walking back out past that vixen and Demik, he heard Demik’s voice fade and curiosity was overcoming caution: it was the fox way.
He joined Komu in fetching four buckets, two hot from the fires, two straight from the river, and watched to see where Demik and the vixen might vanish. He didn’t see for sure, but chewed the end of his cigarette as he scooped from the river and kept turning the matter over in his mind. Demik was trying to get her to stay with other females. Why? She clearly wanted to be with him. What was the harm?
Worse, though, if Demik really didn’t want her, why raise his hackles to Mej? If he did want her, why escort her out?
More important than Demik’s eccentricities, what about Mej? Did Mej want her? Or not?
He returned with his two sloshing buckets to find Komu having just tipped in the dual steaming ones and stripping off by the tub. This was a galvanized aluminum thing from the whites. Roughly two feet across and two feet deep, it was round, cold, and cramped, yet made for a pleasant summer bath when more than a sponge was desired and even the relatively narrow Aaqann River was too dangerous to indulge in a quick dun
k.
Komu was swearing as Mej tipped up one cold bucket after the other into the tub. Suspenders dangling, wrestling his undershirt off his head, he managed to catch Mej on the second before he’d also emptied that.
“You pig-faced cream brush!”
Mej chuckled and left him with the nearly empty bucket.
Komu quickly finished undressing, cursing the mosquitoes and his own disgusting trousers—the reason he needed a bath—instead of Mej.
Mej finished his smoke and went inside to deposit the butt and start another with the smoldering end.
“You didn’t have to kick me,” Komu snapped. “These are my good trousers.”
“If we don’t appear antagonistic we might as well pack in now.”
“You can antagonize my ass all night without planting it in a foot of shit. Just punch me next time. Oh … Earth Mother…” Barefoot and peeling away his now crusty, part-dry and part-wet, mud-caked trousers and long woolen underpants.
The kit took things too hard. Trousers could be washed. Skin could be washed. You couldn’t take either one to the bank—and he wouldn’t require a doctor’s visit.
Mej made no comment, however. The trousers stank so much he pulled in a drag of smoke and stepped away, resuming his small pacing inside and out, filling the doorway with smoke to combat mosquitoes.
Komu flinched and shivered as he settled into the tub. Two buckets of warm and one of cold, rather than half and half, would have been pleasant, but that wasn’t the point. Komu needed to grow a pair. He wasn’t exactly plunging through rotten ice on the Yukon.
“Dammit, I left the soap.” He started to stand up.
Mej threw him the black bar of charcoal soap and rough hemp cloth.
He shoved a hand through his hair, rumpling it as he paced. She hadn’t minded the whites’ style of short hair on him. Hadn’t seemed to mind anything about him. Other than his having only been joking. He ruffled his hair more and lifted away the cigarette.
Komu glanced around at him after rubbing the cloth down his face. “What? It’s only a vixen.”
Mej stared at him.
Komu grinned.
Now that was a weak joke. Either of them would trade an arm for a vixen of their own. If only they had someone with whom to make the deal. Instead they kept their arms and had no vixens, no kits, no futures.
Mej went on pacing—past the tub, into the flap, back out, around a birch.
“I’m the only one who thinks it’s odd?” Mej asked at last. “Arrived this morning, right? Remember the commotion about Qualin finding someone? And hours later she’s ready to curl up with Demik, only he won’t have it? But he growls over her like a kit with a crow’s foot? Another vixen would pop him on the nose for treating her like property. He was acting like the humans over their broken wives who bow to their washing and cooking like slaves.”
Mej stepped close to hand down the smoke.
“Getting a bit carried away?” Komu took a drag and handed it back. “She likes Demik. You could see it all over her. Not saying she didn’t like us. The way she smiled at you? That was no meaningless flirt.”
“No… That’s what got his fur on end, the bastard.”
“And yours.” Chuckling a little.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Go on, Mej. That’s what was odd and you know it. Her taking you at your word?” He shifted in the cramped tub, recovering his soap. “Everything about her was peculiar. Not Demik. How about inviting her over to this side for real? You can’t lose. Either she’s happy to come, or he puts his paw in her path and starts—”
“Proving he’s the bone-guarding son of a mosquito that he is,” Mej finished. “Then at least she’ll be warned about him.”
“Warned?” Komu really laughed this time. “Demik’s a stout fox. You know that.”
“He’s self-righteous, pig-headed, arrogant, controlling crow bait.”
“Right, that. But he’s still a good fox. He’d never hurt a vixen. He’d bite off his own paw to feed to a starving kit. I’m not saying he wouldn’t be a pig-headed son of a mosquito while he did it, but he’d do it.”
Mej kicked one of the empty pails, which clattered away to bang into the birch tree. He stalked around both tree and bucket, returned, and again offered Komu the cigarette.
Finally he came back with, “It doesn’t matter. He has no special right to her.”
“Qualin found her—”
“So?” Spinning around. “If Qualin brings in a salmon is no one else allowed a sniff? No. It was chance. Chance that Demik’s wrapped his brush around her.” He narrowed his eyes and snatched the smoke back, then paced again. “He’ll let her go as soon as she’s trying to get away. That’s the thing. As long as she wants to come over to us—”
“I just said that, Mej.”
“He’ll either have to let her do as she likes or else show his teeth—and that won’t end well.” Mej chuckled and sat back on the boards at the entrance. “We make friends with her and she’ll hunt on our trail. Simple as that. The bastard has no damn right…” He sank into muttering, cracking his knuckles.
That damned dog-fox. One vixen comes along, one solitary, beautiful, just-their-age, smiling vixen, and Demik was first in line? Who made such rules? Earth Mother?
Mej snorted and stood up again.
He had just stepped back inside when Komu said, “It doesn’t bother you? How she is? Can’t talk? Maybe not all there in the head?”
Mej tossed the butt and remained in the gloom, gazing at canvas. Komu was getting up with much splashing and dripping from the bath, rid of Dawson muck, before Mej had found an honest answer.
“After looking her in the eye?” He stepped to the flap where he could meet Komu’s eyes. “Not even a little bit.”
Chapter 11
Day 2
The sun set after midnight. It rose before 3:00 a.m. In between, it was never deeply dark. Demik had told me while we’d curled in together—him tight in every muscle, me blissful—that it was late June: the longest days of the year. A time of plenty, and preparing for winter to make sure that plenty would last. Every week that was not winter, every hour, was about getting ready for winter.
I knew without him telling me. I knew the longest days meant June and July. When I saw thimbleberry clusters by Skeen’s den I knew they were good to eat. I knew the names of tables and chairs, trees and clouds. Yet not of a Yukon stove or a net until I’d heard them and remembered.
I listened to Demik’s heartbeat and morning birdsongs beyond the den, feeling damp, cool air only on one ear and side of my face as I curled in tight with him. Morning meant a full day ahead to find myself. Yet it was yesterday, last night, that was all I could remember now.
Yesterday had been … mixed…
I’d been so scared I couldn’t breathe when Skeen and Demik had asked who I was and I couldn’t think. Again, Demik had understood. Hold on, stroke across my hair—never letting go until I was ready. He said we would be fine, he would take care of me until I remembered.
I understood love and protection by his touch, the way I understood the name and use of a moccasin. In his arms, any fear or darkness was only temporary.
By the time Skeen had presented me with supper, I was laughing at the fork and spoon. They were so silly—tools to put on one’s fingers to move food instead of using fingers to move food. Then Skeen helped me into a pale shift, the wrap over, and brushed my hair.
Demik wandered the settlement to find a pair of moccasins that fit my “tiny” feet. Ones the owner, now of age, had outgrown and did not need, he assured me. They were lovely moccasins, thickly padded and strong on the bottom for long hours on summer trails. Golden brown, paler than my own skin, with teeth and claw beads laced at the top.
They were so beautiful, and fit so perfectly, I’d hugged Demik, put them on, and made him see by gesture that I had to visit the previous owner to thank her.
He took me to meet and embrace the youn
g vixen, who’d laughed. Yet she’d given Demik a sad look as we’d left. They were worried about me. Still … I wasn’t worried anymore. I would find my name. Demik had said I would. Anyway, there was too much to see and smell and hear to be worried.
While I’d smiled to take in all the settlement, holding Demik’s hand in both of mine, he had showed me the place all evening. He’d been right: I could smell. Scents did not paint stories or change colors in my mind, but they were there. He told of the salmon they smoked, clothes they made, hunting they did, about washing at the riverbank, fish nets, and dogs that followed me. They were watch dogs and sled dogs in winter. Sometimes they were trained to work and sold to white men who had boomed the price of pulling dogs with their gold rush.
Demik had started to tell me about that. For the first time an edge entered his voice, his eyes flashed, and his hand tightened in mine with the anger of his own black thoughts. Humans storm in, he said, taking over, raping and plundering Earth Mother for entertainment and gain.
Meeting my eyes, he’d stopped abruptly.
“The mines are far south. You don’t have to see them. You don’t ever have to set foot in Dawson City.”
Yet I wasn’t upset about his words. How could I hear what he said through what his body was telling me?
I touched his face, his shoulder, pressed his hand.
“Oh…” Demik shook his head. “Sorry. I won’t talk about it. You’re right. I can’t discuss whites—or many humans—without being angry. Do you like huckleberries?”
I smiled.
“Remember things like nodding and shaking your head? That would be a start.”
I nodded.
Demik laughed, filling my chest with song and bubbles like the weightless foam of the sea. The sea? Water that went on forever? Or was it ice?
In his laugh he’d leaned in. He was going to kiss me, sending another wave of joy through my blood.
He veered off abruptly, cleared his throat, walked on.
He didn’t try to kiss me again. He eased away when I moved in too close, his skin flushing. “I’m sorry. I met you hours ago. I’m taking liberties because we … well … we had to be close … when you changed… But I shouldn’t be presumptuous. For all we know you have a mate and kits waiting for you at home.”
Fox’s Dawn: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 1) Page 4