Fox Blood

by Aimee Easterling

  “Brother.” Gunner held out one hand to his sibling, waiting a beat longer than I would have for reciprocation that clearly wasn’t forthcoming before allowing the appendage in question to drop back down to his side. Still, he continued attempting to build bridges. “I’m glad you’ve come home. It’s high time we learned to rule together.”

  Together. It was a tremendous admission...but apparently not quite tremendous enough to mollify the older brother. Because Ransom remained dour as he eyed Gunner consideringly. Then, slowly, he shook his head.

  “I will be your ally if you support my bid for the northern territory,” Ransom growled. “But don’t think I’m going to retreat with my tail between my legs to accept your scraps. You cast us out and we’ve made new lives for ourselves. Lives that don’t involve bloodlings and kitsunes and losing ground our grandfather bought.”

  Beneath us, the members of both Atwood packs let their conversations falter into silence, shifter ears catching every word from up above. This wasn’t the reconciliation Gunner had been hoping for...but at least it wasn’t the coup I’d feared.

  “Take what Ransom offers,” I begged Gunner silently, wishing once again that he could hear my words.

  And maybe he did. Because my never-mate’s eyes slipped toward me momentarily, then he nodded graciously. “Of course I’ll support your territory, brother. I hope the lines of communication will remain open between our packs.”

  Chapter 35

  At long last, Ransom was gone, Gunner’s underlings had settled in for the night, and I was alone with my never-to-be mate. Without Kira present to necessitate the keeping up of appearances, he drew me not toward my cottage but toward his own residence...a home that was considerably larger than it had been the last time I’d walked through its doors.

  “This is Kira’s room,” I guessed, turning an awestruck circle within the addition that Gunner had created on the far side of his living room. There were fox ledges on the walls for playing in fur form, a glass-fronted cabinet full of yearned-for magic-trick paraphernalia, a full-size desk for schoolwork, and of course the mandatory canopied princess bed.

  “Mm hm,” Gunner answered, hovering so close to my body I could feel his heat without our skin ever touching. The alpha’s restraint was doing crazy things to my thermal-regulation system...and his subsequent words were like a bucket of cold water poured over my head. “Where is my favorite teenager anyway?”

  This was the beginning of the questions I couldn’t answer...well, that I couldn’t answer without losing the few hours I’d hoped to spend in Gunner’s arms. So, rather than lying to a wolf who could detect prevarication through pure instinct, I curled my finger through his belt loop and drew him away from the teenager’s paradise and toward the adult bedroom at the other end of his home.

  “Come to bed,” I murmured, plucking at his sleeve as he hesitated in the doorway then recoiling as my finger slipped across an open wound and came away bloody. His current pain was my fault...and I’d just made it even worse.

  To my surprise, Gunner didn’t wince at being poked in the middle of a red and angry laceration. Instead, he chuckled, grabbing my hand and replacing it around his wrist.

  “I’m not so broken I can’t welcome you home properly,” he told me, using one hand to fumble at buttons that nonetheless obeyed his command with alacrity.

  It was finally happening, the moment I’d been craving for weeks. So why did my heart hurt when Gunner paused before continuing, speaking a sentiment we hadn’t yet shared aloud?

  “I love you.”

  Three words. Three arrows piercing lungs and stomach and head as certainly as if they’d been made of wood and steel and murderous intention. I froze, unable to answer as the reality of my choice became thoroughly clear.

  Because this was what I’d be losing when I returned to my grandmother tomorrow. Sure, Sakurako was an old woman. Eventually, she’d die and leave me to make my own choices. But even though becoming her apprentice wasn’t a life sentence, I’d never again be someone Gunner looked at so warmly. Not after being molded by my grandmother’s iron will.

  I couldn’t bear the thought of the alpha’s disappointment upon seeing what I was fated to turn into. And I couldn’t risk harming pack mates who had already lost so much at a kitsune’s hand.

  So once I left this home, I’d never again see Atwood clan central. Instead, I’d trust the alpha who might have been my mate to raise my sister. And I’d treat his memory as a spark of fire to warm an increasingly frigid heart.

  Eventually, I’d be just like my grandmother. Eventually I’d stop caring. If I was lucky, I might even begin to forget.

  My face must have broadcast this tumult of emotions because Gunner’s caresses turned platonic and soothing, his huge hand cupping my chin. “I don’t expect an answer,” he told me, incorrectly interpreting my lack of a reply as a continuation of my ongoing independence battle. “I’m just happy to have you beside me. I’m so grateful that you’re here.”

  And I was here. For an hour or two—the most I could spare from Sakurako’s timeline. I shivered as the full force of the future brushed up against me. And Gunner, always attuned to my emotions, provided yet another opening for me to get weighty secrets off my chest.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Gunner was willing to ignore the demands of our flesh and hash out the argument that still simmered unresolved between us. But I wasn’t. Not when any explanation would leave me without the single memory I ached to carry with me back into the snow.

  “Tomorrow,” I answered, brushing my lips against Gunner’s. But those final words were a lie, because in the morning I intended to be gone.

  I WOKE IN GUNNER’S arms an uncountable number of hours later, my heart pounding with fear that I’d overslept. I hadn’t meant to close my eyes at all, actually. Had intended to wait out Gunner’s exhaustion then leave once he was deeply asleep.

  Only, I’d been the one to wear myself out and descend into slumber. I’d been the one to snuggle into his safe harbor and forget about the impending storm.

  Now, as I gently disentangled myself from the werewolf I’d once thought would be my life partner, I powered up my cell phone and sent Elle the long-awaited text. “Bring Yuki and Oyo. We’re going.”

  “Are you sure?” she countered immediately, clearly wide awake and waiting for me.

  “Be ready in five minutes,” was my only answer. Of course I wasn’t sure...but I’d do whatever had to be done.

  It wasn’t as late as I’d thought, however. So I slipped into the kitchen, found a pen and pad of paper, and sat down to explain myself to the mate I was leaving behind.

  Because it wasn’t fair to leave Gunner dangling. Wasn’t fair to make him think I was rejecting our mating through anything other than a desperate bid to save my sister’s last few years of childhood. The only way to even the scales a smidgeon was to tell the truth so he could find another female to fill the hole in his pack and his heart.

  “I need to explain,” I started. Scratched that out and tried another opening: “It isn’t because of you that I’m doing this....”

  Okay, that was so trite as to be depressing. Gunner deserved to understand how I really felt. And this time when I pushed my pen’s point into the paper, the words finally began to flow.

  “I have to leave for the sake of my sister,” I started. “But in my heart, you will always be my mate....”

  Only, rather than finishing my explanation, the pen streaked a crazy line across the paper. Then it fell out of nerveless fingers as our mate bond clicked into place with the force of a tractor trailer hitting a pedestrian on a crosswalk.

  For an instant, my vision dimmed, my ears rang, and I lost all track of reality. “You implied I had to say the words,” I moaned in protest.

  Wait, had I sent that emoting down the mate bond? Had Gunner felt the contact even though he slept?

  I gasped, trying to regain enough breath to rush out of the house without look
ing backwards. I couldn’t afford to be bogged down in explanations with Kira’s future on the line. Plus, if Gunner understood what I was planning, he’d never let me go....

  But my legs crumpled beneath me and I ended up leaning against the counter instead of sprinting away out the door. All I could do was beg silently: “Stay where you are. Stay safe,” as wooden legs gradually carried me through the kitchen at the speed of a beer-soaked garden snail. One step after the other, from counter to counter to cabinet to door.

  There. I was walking almost normally again even though the pain in my stomach was so intense I would have thrown up if I’d bothered eating before I slept. This I could handle. Being mated then leaving my mate forever wasn’t so horrible....

  And as if the thought had called agony back into existence, I doubled up over a spear of pain as intense as a sword slicing into my gut.

  Gut wounds are usually fatal, I thought vaguely. Then, more clearly—Ten hours is all I have left.

  I refused to leave Kira to our grandmother’s mercy. So I straightened, looked down at a stomach I’d thought would be bleeding but wasn’t. Finding no wound evident, I opened the door and walked out into the night.

  Chapter 36

  “This is a terrible idea,” Elle informed me. “You can’t even drive.”

  I leaned back against the heated, leather seat on the passenger side of the vehicle, trying to ignore how disloyal I felt taking the car Gunner had bought me while making my escape. Glancing back over my shoulder, I assured myself that Yuki and Oyo were sleeping. Then I countered, “I can drive. You just wouldn’t let me behind the wheel.”

  “Because you look like death. You do realize Gunner will feel exactly like you do when he wakes up and finds you missing?”

  No, I hadn’t realized that. Somehow, I’d assumed the pain of mating then leaving would all be mine to bear. The knowledge that Gunner would deal with the same sort of agony started my head pounding as if Kira were using my skull as her own personal drum.

  “Can I protect him by breaking the mate bond?” I didn’t even manage to finish the question since the last word stuck in my throat like the fifth cracker swallowed without a sip of water in between.

  Rather than answering immediately, Elle glanced at me sideways, the dark, empty highway giving her leeway to divide her attention as she drove. “Do you want to?”

  Yes, of course I did. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life getting used to this pain, nor did I want to subject Gunner to the same agony.

  And yet, the word that came out of my mouth—this time crackerless and adamant—was: “No.”

  “There’s your answer.”

  For another half hour, the car rolled down the highway in silence, road noise dulled by the cocoon of comfort Gunner had paid top dollar for. Eventually, the warmth of the leather started feeling like Gunner’s body spooning me. And I was halfway asleep when his half-sister spoke once again.

  “Maybe we can come up with a compromise before we get there. You and Kira dividing your time between your grandmother’s estate and Atwood clan central. Or we could find something else the old woman covets....”

  “Elle, stop it.” She meant well, but every time I was reminded of my situation another wave of pain racked my body. And now I was starting to wonder whether my friend would betray my location after she returned with Kira, giving Gunner a roadmap to walk straight into a powerful kitsune’s lair.

  That couldn’t happen. I could leave him—just barely. But I couldn’t be responsible for further injury or death. “You have to promise not to tell your brother—either brother—where I’m going,” I demanded, my voice so harsh Yuki turned over on the back seat.

  “What if...?” Elle started.

  But I shushed her in the werewolf way, with a hand laid gently on her forearm. “Elle, promise.”

  And, after one long moment of silence, my friend agreed.

  WE WERE FIVE MINUTES tardy when the gate opened up before us despite there being no human operator visible. Snow had melted off the road, so the approach to Sakurako’s mansion was easy to navigate. Within moments, Elle had pulled up beside the multi-colored fountain, then she and I glanced at each other in a sudden unity of thought.

  We did not want to get out of that car.

  Yuki, on the other hand, was glad to return to his mistress. He opened the back door with alacrity...and before any of us knew what was happening, Oyo had slipped between his legs and escaped.

  “Grab her!” I yelled, scrambling to follow my own order. Without the fox, I had nothing to trade for Kira. And despite Oyo’s leash spinning out behind her, we three resembled a circus act as we futilely tumbled over each other in the haste of our pursuit.

  Only our clownishness was irrelevant because...

  “Going somewhere?”

  The elderly kitsune appeared out of nowhere inches in front of Oyo’s nose. How had I ever thought of Sakurako as a little old lady? Now she towered above her former apprentice, magic buzzing like insects as Oyo’s feet literally froze to the ground.

  The four-legger yelped as she tried—and failed—to free them. But Sakurako’s attention had already moved on to spear me as I pulled myself up out of the slush pile that seemed to have been placed there for the sole purpose of soaking my clothes.

  “And you,” she continued. “You are late.”

  “Where’s Kira?” With an effort, I ignored the electricity seeping out of the pores of the other kitsune and headed toward the open front door instead. I hadn’t missed the deadline by enough minutes that Kira should have suffered for it. But her absence was telling, to say the least.

  Only my sister wasn’t being punished for my lapses. Because even as I brushed past Sakurako, Kira was stepping out into the sunlight with a big smile on her face. “Mai! I’ve been waiting for you. I want to show you the library and...”

  And no one had told the thirteen-year-old about the swap. Now it was my turn to glare at Sakurako, and I thought she might have actually wilted slightly beneath the force of my rage.

  “Kira, walk with me,” I interjected, taking my sister’s hand for what was likely to be the last time in decades or at least years. The ache of my mate bond had dulled with distance, but now the pounding in my head leapt back to life with a jolt.

  In response, my feet tried to stumble, but I pushed aside physical ailments and made my sister the entirety of my world for one brief moment. Still, she noticed my trembling, glanced back over one shoulder, asked me, “What’s wrong?”

  Rather than answering, I picked up the pace, surprised to find no complaint from my sister as she trotted right alongside me. Only when we were far enough away from our audience so shifter ears couldn’t pick up on our conversation did we turn and face each other, neither of us initiating the movement but our toe tips meeting at the exact same time.

  This was what we were losing. Sisterhood. Bonds of blood that ran deeper than mere genetics. I would never watch Kira blossom into womanhood, would never teach her to fight with a sharp-edged sword.

  “You’re going and I’m staying,” I started. Then, as bargains and complaints rose in my sister’s eyes, I shut her down abruptly. “I can’t change this, Kira. Please don’t ask me to.”

  Given the way she liked to gripe about everything from breakfast to homework, I thought she’d argue or at least rail against the fates and the world. Instead, my little sister stood as tall and straight as I did, asked a single question: “Until when?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her truthfully. But, as Kira slipped cold fingers around my waist and hugged me tight enough to last a lifetime, I had a sinking suspicion our separation would last for a long, long time.

  Chapter 37

  Without Kira and Curly to guard from danger, I slept in the bed. Assuming, that is, the hours of tossing and turning could really be called sleep. Eventually, though, the sun rose and I groggily sat up to greet the daylight...only to be met by an agonizing burning where the mate tether intersected with my gut.


  “Stay away. Stay safe,” I whispered, barely able to speak over the spears of pain piercing my center. I knew I was too distant for my words to be captured by their intended recipient, but I had to try to keep Gunner in clan central. All it would take was one wave of Sakurako’s fingers and he’d turn into a blood donor fueling who knew what kitsune atrocities at her whim.

  And perhaps my request made it through after all. More likely, my body simply couldn’t sustain that level of pain indefinitely. Whatever the reason, the throbbing receded to a dull ache after only a few seconds, and I sank back down into the soft mattress, pulling the comforter up over my head.

  I lay there for minutes or hours, stroking the tendril of magic that connected me to my absent mate. The tether curled like a kitten around my fingers, warmed when I touched it...then surged back into piercing torment as the covers were ripped off from over my head.

  “You’ve wallowed enough.”

  My grandmother stood above me, fully dressed and redolent with magic. When had I started smelling and seeing the influx of power as it gently seeped into her wrinkled skin? Whatever the reason behind my newfound abilities, the old woman now appeared spider-like, the only difference being that she consumed rather than spun her own web.

  “Are you sick of tormenting Oyo already?” I muttered, turning over and trying to bury my face in one of the half dozen pillows arrayed across the bed between us. Then that soft cushion was yanked out from under me and I found myself tumbling over to land on my butt on the cold, hard floor.

  “Oyo is immaterial,” Sakurako answered. Then, raising one eyebrow, she offered information I hadn’t asked for. “A golden collar isn’t temporary, granddaughter. Oyo will remain a fox forever. I’ve sent her out into the forest to live as she wills.”

  Harsh. But perhaps kinder than the fate I’d thought the redheaded kitsune would be faced with. How would Sakurako punish my sister if I similarly failed to obey her commands?