A Fox's Tail (American Kitsune Book 2)

by Brandon Varnell

  He looked back at the girl, who's glazed eyes blinked. The smile that he wore as he peered at Lilian instantly disappeared when he turned back to Kiara. In its place was an expression that looked far too serious and determined for someone so young, especially while facing such a dangerous entity.

  “She’s still my friend, and I won’t let you lay another hand on her.”

  “Big words coming from a kid whose legs are shaking,” Kiara said. Kevin looked down at his legs to notice that they were indeed trembling.

  “I’m not going to tell you I’m not scared. I’m terrified.” Despite his fear, Kevin still managed pierce Kiara with a surprisingly harsh glare. “Even so I… I won’t let you hurt Lilian anymore. You’ve hurt her enough.”

  “Hmm…”

  Kiara had to hide her smirk as she forced her face to take on a look of thoughtful contemplation. What an unusual human. He almost reminded her of another human she'd known long, long ago.

  “Weeell…” She dragged out the word, and in turn, the tension. She could see how her lack of an answer caused the boy a great deal of stress, based on the trickle of sweat running down his face, as well as his Adams apple bobbing when he gulped. Finally, after drawing the moment out as long as possible, she shrugged, “Alright, I guess I can leave things like this.”

  Kevin blinked.

  Twice.

  “W-what?”

  Kiara couldn’t help but chuckle at the stupefied look on the boy’s face.

  “I said I’m done.” She looked from Kevin to Lilian. Her lips twitched when Kevin moved to block the injured kitsune from her vision. “I only came here to get settle the score for what she did to my brother. I think this settles the score just fine.”

  “I see, so you did this because of what Lilian did to Chris?” Kevin crinkled his brow. He still didn’t know what happened to Chris, because he'd been unconscious at the time, but it must have been bad if Kiara deemed this sort of revenge necessary. Come to think of it, Chris hadn't been at school since then.

  “Yep. Anyway, I’m finished.” As she turned around, Kiara raised her hand in farewell. “I’ll see you around, boya.”

  Kevin watched Kiara embark, her heels echoing on the wooden floor until she left the gym. He then turned back to Lilian and knelt down.

  “Lilian? Lilian? Hey, Lilian.”

  When Lilian didn't respond, Kevin gently placed his hands on either side of her face and lifted her head. He didn’t quite manage to stifle his gasp as he stared at her face.

  Though her eyes were still open, they had become dull and lifeless, blood leaked from her nose and mouth, and some trailed down the left side of her face from a head wound, which had split open like an overripe fruit. If it weren’t for the rise and fall of her chest, he would have assumed she was dead.

  “Dang it! Dang it, dang it, dang it, dang it!”

  Kevin's gut clench. He should have been there when Lilian fought Kiara; he should have been there to protect her, to do something, anything, to help her out.

  He knew these thoughts were dumb. His presence wouldn't have helped; it would have hindered Lilian, forcing her to protect him instead of fight. He would have been a liability to her, not an asset. That didn’t stop him from feeling like he should have been around to help her. It didn't stop him from feeling like a failure.

  Kevin shook his head. He might not have been around to help her with Kiara, but he could do something to help her now.

  “Don’t worry, Lilian, you helped me when I got hurt by Chris, so now it’s my turn to help you.”

  After Kevin assessed the situation, he decided that the first thing to do was get her out of the big dent she had made in the bleachers.

  First, he straightened out Lilian's limbs, grabbing the arm caught on the steel bar and setting it on her lap, along with her other hand. He then took her left leg out from underneath her thigh and set it straight, followed by lifting the foot of her right leg off the twisted steel bar. The girl’s face twitched several times when his actions caused discomfort, but that was the only sign of activity she made.

  With her limbs straightened, Kevin scooted closer. He pulled her out of the dent, her head lolling from side to side. Whimpers escaped her mouth, almost blocked out by the groaning of steel. After having to half drag her out of the bleachers, he laid them down on the ground. Now came the hard part.

  One hand went to her upper back, lifting her off the ground. The other slide under her knees. With a grunt, he lifted Lilian off the ground, her legs swaying as he strained under her weight, tails dangling limply like soggy ramen.

  “Ugh… geez…” Kevin grunted as he began walking toward the locker. There was a nurse's office in the locker room for minor injuries. While this could hardly be considered minor, he didn't have much choice. He needed some place where he could lay her down and bandage her up properly. “How do all those heroes in Shōnen manga make this look so easy?”

  Making strange grunting noises with each step, Kevin slowly made his way out of the gym. Now that he wasn’t facing a deadly yōkai who could potentially kill him, he finally had a chance to observe the damage done to the place.

  “Dang… those two really went all out.”

  The ground looked like it had been ripped apart by a category five hurricane. There were burn marks all over the place, the bleachers were a complete wreck, and a gigantic hole in the ceiling made him think a Titan had torn it open in search of humans to eat. To his left, the wall appeared to have been blasted apart by TNT, and the wall beyond it was filled with holes. He didn’t even want to know what had caused that kind of damage.

  “I wonder how the school faculty is going to take this?” he mused. Probably not too well. He could only imagine how they would react when they came to school tomorrow.

  The coaches and health teachers were going to flip.

  It took Kevin nearly ten minutes to reach the small nurse's office, which was nearly nine minutes longer than normal. To be fair, he was tired from facing Kiara's three henchmen, and carrying an unconscious Lilian certainly didn’t help, especially since he was being careful not to aggravate her wounds. At least he managed to arrive there eventually. That had to count for something.

  He gently laid Lilian down on the examination bed, then went to grab the first aid kit located inside of the lass cabinet to his immediate left. It wasn’t until he began pulling out medical supplies that another thought occurred to him, one that caused him to pause.

  “Just how am I going to get her home like this?”

  Chapter 9

  Discoveries of a Heartfelt Conversation

  Lilian woke up feeling absolutely awful, like a stampede of Onikuma (bear yōkai) had run her over at full-speed. Her entire body felt like it was one big, aching mess. It hurt so much that she wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if she looked in the mirror, and discovered that her body had turned into a giant bruise.

  Some parts of her body hurt more than others. These parts of her anatomy were experiencing a very specific kind of pain—the kind that came from having what amounted to a metaphorical jackhammer bashed into them repeatedly. She also suspected that her nose, and maybe even a couple of ribs, were broken.

  Wanting to know her whereabouts after running a proper damage assessment, Lilian slowly opened her eyes. There wasn't much light out. The room was dark, and she could see the velvety sky that marked the beginning of twilight through the open curtain. The dark hues of color painted across the atmosphere let her know that nighttime was swiftly approaching. She must have been unconscious for a good while, then. She also noticed, with no small amount of relief, that she was lying on a familiar bed underneath a familiar ceiling.

  Rolling over onto her side, Lilian placed her hands on the bed and pushed herself off the mattress—or tried to. The moment she attempted to sit up, white hot pain like fire lanced along her sides. It felt like someone was stabbing her in several places at once with a dozen scorching blades.

  She yelped. Her body e
xperienced momentary shock, the feeling of unfathomable agony causing her arms give out. She fell back onto the bed in a heap.

  Seconds later, hurried footsteps approached, getting louder, before the door burst open, and a figure entered.

  “Lilian! You're awake!”

  “Be… Beloved…”

  Kevin rushed over to her side just as she made another futile attempt at sitting up.

  “Hey, hey! You shouldn't be trying to get up right now! You're injured!”

  Kevin placed his hands on her shoulders to gently guide her back onto the bed. A hiss of barely-repressed pain escaped Lilian's lips—even her shoulders were extremely sore and sensitive. Just that small touch sent jolts of what felt like raw lightning traveling through her body. Kiara had really messed her up, maybe even worse than she had initially thought.

  “Beloved,” Lilian muttered as she fell back to the bed. She didn't struggle against Kevin's attempts to persuade her to lie back down. There really wasn't much she could do to fight him anyway, not with how hurt she was.

  “How are you feeling?” Kevin asked, then paused. His face scrunched up a moment later, and he shook his head, embarrassed. “Sorry. That was a stupid question.”

  Lilian smiled and shook her own head. His concern warmed her heart.

  “I'm,” she paused, then grimaced, “Well, I'm alive. I suppose that's something.”

  “Yeah, something.” Kevin frowned as he looked her over, checking to see if she had aggravated any of her injuries while trying to get up. “Where does it hurt?”

  “Where doesn't it hurt?” Lilian answered his question with one of her own. Kevin opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to the punch. “If you're asking me if there are any specific places that I'm hurting, then my face, chest and stomach hurt more than anywhere else.”

  “I see,” Kevin looked at her pensively, as if he was unsure of what to say or do in this situation. She didn't blame him. “Is… is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Just you being here is enough,” Lilian informed him, a soft smile curving her lips into a delightful shape. Seeing the love of her life acting so worried about her made her feel very good, content even, like so long as he continued looking at her with that expression of concern, nothing else mattered.

  It almost made getting her ass kicked by an inu yōkai worth it.

  “Ah… well…” He rubbed the back of his head with his right hand and looked away awkwardly. “T-thank you for that, I guess. But what I meant was… erm…”

  Lilian almost giggled at the expression on her mate's face. He always looked so adorable when he got embarrassed. Maybe that's why she loved flustering him so much.

  “If you really want to help, maybe you could make me something to eat? I'm a little hungry,” she said, right before her stomach chose that moment to make its presence known by rumbling, loudly. It was so loud, in fact, that it sounded more like the dying roar of a prehistoric beast than the stomach of a hungry fox-girl. Hearing her stomach moan in such an unsightly manner caused two dark red spots to appear on her cheeks, as a good deal of blood gathered to her face. “Okay… so maybe I'm more than just a little hungry.”

  Now it was Kevin's turn to be amused. He chuckled, lips peeling back in a small grin.

  “I kind of figured you would be hungry, so I took the liberty to making something for when you woke up. Hold on just a second, while I go get it.”

  As Kevin walked out of the door, leaving Lilian to her own devices, she realized something about her mate's room. It was a very lonely place without him. Despite the fact that nothing had changed about the room itself, without her beloved's presence to brighten it up, the interior space seemed dull, lifeless, and made her incredibly uncomfortable to be in. She felt like an intruder.

  Thankfully, she wasn't left alone for long. Kevin returned less than five minutes later with a plate of food in his hands. He walked over to the bed and sat next to her, a small depression forming in the mattress as it accommodated for the new weight.

  “Can you move at all?” he asked, remembering the last time they had been in this situation. Back then, their roles had been reversed. After Chris had nearly killed him, he hadn't been able to move at all, and the girl lying on his bed had been forced to feed him.

  That had been embarrassing, at least for Kevin. Lilian had thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to do something so intimate for her mate.

  Lilian raised a hand, then hissed in pain. Her muscles went into a series of spasms, twitching erratically as her arm flopped onto the bed. She imagined this was what it would feel like to plug her finger into an electric socket.

  “Don't strain yourself,” Kevin told her, setting the plate on the nightstand. “Here, let me help you sit up, then I'll feed you.”

  Kevin scooted closer, sliding a hand behind Lilian's back to help her sit up, while steadying himself with the other hand. Lilian didn't resist, though she did wince several times as pain flared up in her stomach and chest. It was not a very good feeling, and Lilian hoped to never be in this kind of agony again. Once she sat up, Kevin fluffed her pillow, and placed another one behind her to make sure she was comfortable.

  “Thank you, Beloved.” Lilian's grateful smile caused Kevin to smile in return.

  “You're welcome.”

  With Lilian sitting, the blond teen began to feed her.

  Lilian wasn't really sure if there were any words in the human dictionary to describe how happy she felt in that moment. Her beloved, her mate, the person who had become more important than anyone else, was taking care of her; acting concerned, fluffing her pillows, and feeding her. He had even done a pretty decent job of bandaging her injuries. She was sure that she would look back on this moment as one of the happiest in of her life.

  And it would be, but only until the next happiest moment of her life came along. There would be many of them, but they would come with a few hardships as well—let's call them bumps in the road.

  This euphoria did not last long, as her mind forced her to remember the series of events that landed her in this position in the first place, along with the aftermath of those events.

  “Beloved?”

  At the sound of Lilian's strangely demure and soft spoken voice, Kevin stopped feeding her. Upon casting her a cursory glance, the young man easily noticed the pensive expression on her face; the way her head tilted slightly, causing her bangs to hover over her eyes, and the way she worried her lower lip between her teeth. He had known Lilian long enough by now to recognize when something was troubling her.

  “What's wrong?”

  “Am I…” Lilian hesitated for just a second before plowing on. “Am I a burden to you?”

  Kevin looked startled for a moment. He stared at the girl, his eyes larger than normal and his mouth hanging open. He wondered why she would ask him something like that. It was only when he thought back to one particular moment, when he had arrived at the aftermath of her battle, that he realized there could only be one reason Lilian would ask such a question.

  “You heard me talking to Kiara, huh?” He sighed. “Look, Lilian, I'm not going to lie to you. When we first met, you were the biggest pain in my backside that I've ever known. You barged into my life, not giving any thought as to how I might feel about you making me your mate. You didn't even ask me if I wanted to be your mate. You just decided this for yourself, without any regards for me or my feelings. Within a week you turned my entire world upside down, and not in a good way. You've caused me so many problems, and in such a short amount of time—I even thought about throwing you out several times.”

  It was surprisingly blunt for Kevin, but even someone of his saintly patience had their limits. He had likely exceeded those limits long ago, and was only just now beginning to crack under the pressure.

  Lilian flinched at the honest words her mate spoke. It hurt to hear him say these things. And even though she tried to simply accept that he felt this way, her eyes soon began to water

  “So… I
guess… it would be better if I left, wouldn't it?”

  Just uttering those words caused her throat to constrict, as if they brought about their own special brand of damnation. The mere thought of leaving her beloved was almost too painful to contemplate.

  And yet, she knew that if he asked her to, she would leave, because she loved him. If leaving would make him happy, she would do so—even if it meant losing her own chance at happiness.

  “Leave?” Kevin looked at the girl strangely. “I don't want you to leave.”

  “Huh?” Lilian blinked. Twice. “B-but you just said―”

  “I said that when we first met, you caused me a lot of problems,” Kevin interjected. “I didn't say anything about wanting you to leave. You can stay here as long as you want.” His hand went to the nape of his neck, his face becoming bashful. “To be honest I…” He looked away, his cheeks staining red. “I kind of like having you here… now… it keeps things interesting, you know?”

  Lilian stared at him with wide, searching eyes. Just what she was looking for was unknown, but if Kevin were to take a guess, he felt confident that any theory he came up with would be fairly accurate.

  “Do you…” Lilian swallowed heavily. Her throat felt very dry some reason. Parched. Like she hadn't drunk any water in days. “Do you really mean that?”

  “I do,” he answered, “I never told anybody this, but I've never really liked living by myself. Everyone I know thinks it's awesome that I live on my own, because I don't have to follow any rules, and I can stay up as late as I want, but it's really not everything it's cracked up to be. It gets lonely, and there were times when I used to wish that someone lived with me just so I wouldn't be alone anymore. I, uh…” Kevin coughed into his hand, clearing his throat. “I haven't felt that way for a while now, though, ever since you came, so I… well, you know…”

  As Kevin trailed off, there were several long seconds in which neither of them spoke. A startling silence permeated the room, broken only by the air conditioning kicking in.