Fox Blood

by Aimee Easterling

  And for the first time in over a week, my shoulders relaxed fully. Because, yes, I’d made terrible mistakes getting here. I hadn’t been fast enough or smart enough to save Edward. I’d stolen the humanity from Oyo and from my own grandmother. And I’d thoroughly shaken up the Atwood pack.

  But, despite literally changing my skin while denning with my grandmother, Curly recognized me as the same person who had left here a little over a week before. Plus, what I lacked in kitsune power, I now made up for with the wealth of a werewolf pack.

  And, apparently, the shifters around me were glad to have me present. Because tethers arrowed in one after another, weaving themselves together like a blanket enfolding my body until it seemed not a single additional tether would fit.

  Only there was room for one more after all, as I discovered when the werewolf gossip tree propagated further. There was always room for one more.

  Curly, bored by self realization, reared up on his hind legs to claw at my kneecaps, and I answered by hoisting him into my arms. Then I leaned into Gunner—who, predictably, was right there behind me when I needed him. And I stated the obvious.

  “It’s good to be home.”

  Epilogue

  “No! Not the serrated knife!” As I watched, Becky yanked the utensil in question out of the hand of an inept male werewolf. “Use this one to slice carrots.”

  I couldn’t help smiling at the formerly quiet werewolf’s bossiness, and even more so at the way her student obeyed immediately with no biting commentary about the bloodling puppy frolicking at their feet. Six weeks after my return, the pack was almost unrecognizable. Which wasn’t to say the male werewolves had entirely come around.

  For example, they’d nearly universally chosen the afternoon shift when presented with Thanksgiving-cooking choices. And I’d been dumb enough to let Gunner join the early-bird females while leaving the untrained werewolf males to me.

  As a result of my lack of foresight, I’d been responsible for bandaging up the first chef wannabe who injured himself through improper use of kitchen equipment. And when a second male had accidentally-on-purpose sliced into the pad of his hand instead of into the potatoes he was supposedly peeling, I’d slapped rubber gloves over the shifter’s bandage and started him on the huge pile of dishes in the sink rather than sending him home as he clearly wished.

  Since then, the only injuries had been accidents. Which didn’t mean there hadn’t been dozens of them. Perhaps that explained the shiver of premonition that kept fluttering up my spine?

  “Something wrong?” Elle diverted Curly before the pup could land in the vat of mashed potatoes, my friend’s mere presence relaxing my shoulders down away from my ears. I’d sent a formal Thanksgiving invitation over to Ransom’s territory two weeks earlier, but Elle was the only one who’d bothered showing up.

  “I wish your brother was here,” I told her honestly. “Your other brother, I mean.”

  “If Gunner had invited him, Ransom would have come,” Elle answered carefully.

  “I know.” And I did.

  Because—as much as I loved Gunner—I could admit that both brothers were equally bull-headed in their stubbornness. It was a wonder, really that they’d found a way to work together from a distance in the weeks since clan central had been invaded by neighboring wolves. On the plus side, the siblings’ alliance meant the sentries patrolling our boundary were bored out of their skulls after weeks of searching without sighting a single intruder. I was apparently the only one who felt an empty space in the web of pack bonds where Ransom should have slotted in.

  “Hey, this might make you feel better.” Elle was a master at changing the subject so she didn’t get caught in the middle between hard-headed half-brothers who still stubbornly refused to talk to each other. And her choice of topic sucked me in just as she’d known it would. “Koki left Sakurako’s compound last week, and Haru checked out on Monday. Which only leaves five guys still there, plus the bedridden.”

  That was good news. And I was even more grateful to Elle for making weekly trips to work on my grandmother’s library while also taking the slowly dwindling honor guard under her wing. I kept hoping she would find a way to break through whatever magic kept two of the males in a coma. But even if my grandmother was right and that damage turned out to be permanent, at least sixteen lives would have been saved from the vagaries of a kitsune’s whim.

  “Thank you,” I started, smiling as I watched Curly dance up to a male who would have kicked the pup aside three months earlier. This time, the youngster ended up ensconced on the shifter’s broad lap instead. Atwood pack bonds grew smoother and stronger every time I looked at them. What could be better than that?

  Then the flutter of premonition that had been bothering me for hours turned into a spear of ice striking between my shoulder blades. I whirled, eyes scanning the assemblage even as the chatter of voices around us slowed then entirely faded away.

  Because Elizabeth was standing in the doorway naked, one hand pressed into her side as if she’d run so fast she’d injured herself. “There are enemies at the border,” she gasped out after a terrifying second.

  Only, she was wrong, because I could hear wolves racing closer in the newfound silence. There weren’t enemies at the border. There were enemies outside our door.

  I REACHED DOWN AND yanked at the tethers twining around my waist as one unit, felt absent pack mates respond at once to the wordless summons I’d sent out. Meanwhile, I barked orders to the shifters present in the kitchen. “Get the elderly and children into attics.” Wolves were bad at ladders and I had a feeling our invaders would stick, at least for a while, to fur and claws.

  Then I was sprinting out the door to greet the enemy, my sword glowing and whistling through the air as I ran. Who would invade clan central on Thanksgiving? Unfortunately, only one alpha was aware of our plans down to the hour...and I’d been the stupid traitor who clued him in.

  Sure enough, I recognized Ransom at the head of the wolves streaming toward me. There were dozens of them, more than had followed Ransom into exile, more than I’d seen on Kelleys Island, and definitely more than I had at my own back.

  Meanwhile, their leader’s scent was nothing like the Atwood ozone it had been when I first met him. Instead, Ransom now smelled like a thumbnail run across the skin of an unripe orange—bitter and sour and biting all at once.

  “Find Gunner and...” I started. But then strong hands were pushing me sideways. My mate was before me even as he dropped down into the form of his wolf.

  So Gunner wasn’t even going to try words first. I swallowed and forced myself not to gainsay him. This was what it meant to be the mate of an alpha—backing my partner up even when I thought he was wrong.

  I expected Ransom’s entire pack to surge forward and for the males behind me to shift and retaliate. But, instead, only the two alphas crashed together, the rest of us an avid audience to their heated attack.

  “Should we...?” a male behind me started. But I held up one hand even though blood sprayed across the pavement, the pair of wolves moving too quickly for me to tell which one had gotten hurt.

  Blood wasn’t good...but it was still better than a full-clan pitched battle. So I clamped my hands down on the pack bonds that spiraled out away from me, forcing angry shifters to hold their tempers and stand their ground.

  Whether Ransom would be able to do the same while tearing into his brother was another matter. But even as I eyed our opponents, the fighting wolves were wolves no longer. Instead, the brothers were human and naked, rolling across the pavement with Gunner’s arm around Ransom’s neck while Ransom’s fist pounded into Gunner’s gut.

  “You’re late,” Gunner growled, releasing Ransom and surging upward, then reaching down to help his brother to his feet.

  “I heard you were making everybody help with the cooking. So the way I see it, I’m right on time.”

  Wait. So this wasn’t an invasion...it was guests arriving for Thanksgiving dinner?

>   As if he’d heard my question, Gunner glanced sideways, an eye that was already starting to swell and purple closing into the tiniest, subtlest wink. An alpha really did know everything that happened in his pack apparently...including his mate’s illicit attempt to bring the prodigal brother back into the fold.

  “Well, there’s always dishwashing afterwards,” Gunner said companionably. And as one unit, both Atwood alphas and every shifter they ruled over interwove seamlessly as they raced for the nearly completed Thanksgiving feast.

  “Can you move any faster? I’m starving!” This was Kira, mini drama queen who had wisely joined Gunner for the earlier shift in the kitchen. Her tone was snarky, but I was beginning to speak teenager. This particular example meant, “Thanks for finding such awesome werewolves to den with. And, by the way, let’s eat.”

  Behind her, Tank and Allen winked at me, then headed toward the long series of food-laden tables with Becky safely sandwiched in their midst. There were males and females, children and warriors all intermingled without regard for status within a single line.

  And as I surveyed the crowd, I realized I had everything I’d ever wanted spread out before me. Mate, family, and a pack.

  Well, almost everything I’d ever wanted. Because my sister had a point, as usual. Given the ferocity of werewolf appetites, I’d better hurry if I wanted to grab some pumpkin pie and stuffing before the best parts of the feast were gone.

  THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR joining Mai on her adventures! If you’re not quite ready to say goodbye to this world of sword-wielding shifters, you can read more about kitsunes, foxes, and what Kira thinks of moving in with werewolves in the Moon Marked bonus pack, free to newsletter subscribers. To sweeten the pot, I’ll throw in two additional werewolf novels so you don’t have to come up for air for days.

  Or dive straight into a new werewolf series full of prehistory, pack, and peril. Archaeologist Olivia Hart has spent her entire life medicating away her inner monster. But she's about to learn monsters are real.... (For a sneak preview, simply turn the page.)

  Wolf Dreams

  Prologue

  Do you remember your first date? The rush of excitement. The fumbling awkwardness. The way the boy bent down for a kiss, prompting your teeth to bite all the way through his cheek.

  The blood. The ensuing faintness that progressed into a prehistoric vision. The visit to the emergency room. The awfulness when your father arrived to pick you up.

  Okay, maybe my experience wasn’t precisely average. Normal is not my middle name.

  “Olivia Nicole Hart!” my father raged as he took in the red streaks smearing my face and the wildness of my dilated pupils. His hand lashed out just shy of striking me, and that danger provided my inner monster permission to steal my body a second time.

  Don’t touch us, she hissed, her voice raspy within the confines of my body. Then she leapt at him—I mean, I leapt at him. Sometimes it’s confusing when my body does things I don’t ask it to do.

  But it was my manicured fingernails that scraped a long welt of red down the side of my father’s cheek and neck. It was my teeth that bared as if they intended to rip out his throat.

  Blackness hovered around me, the vision attempting to pull me under before I could commit patricide. As if it wasn’t bad enough that I housed a monster, I lost my entire grasp on reality every time the beast came to call.

  But my father was ready for me. “Get in the car,” he demanded, voice so cold my feet scurried to obey him. And, just like that, monster and vision both released their holds.

  I shivered as I attempted to clean up their messes ten minutes later. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered as we drove out of the city. I’d used up half a box of Kleenexes wiping blood off my body, but I still felt like I’d been rolling around in offal. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “The doctors warned us what would happen if you didn’t take your medicine.” My father—or Dr. Hart, as he preferred to be called—didn’t bother turning down the radio while he berated me. Didn’t take his eyes off the road as he pulled the hated pill bottle out of his pocket and tossed it into my lap.

  It landed with the weight of lost potential. The promise of dulling the world to protect me from my own animal nature.

  No, my monster growled. Starbursts flickered at the corners of my vision.

  “Take two,” my father demanded.

  I twisted off the lid and swallowed them dry.

  Chapter 1

  FOURTEEN YEARS LATER....

  “From the stunning renditions of horses in French and Spanish caves...” I started, only to pause as words drifted toward me from the fifth row of the audience at my Friday morning lecture.

  “...walked out of the Peace Summit,” one student murmured, provoking a rustle of interest from those sitting nearby.

  “Well, could you really blame them?” asked a young man who’d never once bothered to answer an in-class question. “I mean, our President acted like a hoodlum. He punched the guy. In the nose.”

  Of all the times for current events to pop the collegiate bubble, I would have preferred it not to happen right before final exams during my first semester in a tenure-track job. Of course, I couldn’t really blame the kids for their lack of attention. I’d been so shaken by the news this morning that I’d forgotten my meds for the first time in months.

  Still, I was supposed to be the authority figure here. “Excuse me,” I said, pushing my glasses up on my nose then glaring into the cluster of chattering students. “As fascinating as political drama might be, this course is focused on the past, not the present.”

  “Then you focus, Dr. Oblivia,” a third student countered. “We don’t care about caves on the last day of the semester.”

  The earlier whispers had been a minor annoyance, but this was outright insubordination. No wonder my pet raven—Adena—squawked her ire from the far corner of the room. She spread her wings as if preparing to protect me and I raised one finger in warning, holding my breath until the raven’s ruffled feathers smoothed back down and her attention wandered toward the clouds outside.

  Of course, the backtalking student took advantage of my distraction to continue with her tirade. “This is a class, not a wander through a museum. Tell us what’s going to be on the test.”

  Patricia Owens—congressman’s kid and troublemaker from head to toe—was spiky with amusement. She had classic good looks combined with edgy modern style, and she used the combination like a duelist’s sword. Now, rather than fading beneath my scowl as any right-minded twenty-two-year-old should have, she raised her eyebrows and glowered back.

  No wonder the monster inside me surged awake the moment our gazes made contact. Images of teeth and blood and submissive students flooded my interior landscape, and I clenched my fists to push back the horror.

  Clearing my throat, I used words rather than releasing my inner monster. “Ms. Owens,” I started. “If your sole interest lies with the test, please pick up a copy of the handout by the door on your way out and leave the rest of us in peace.”

  Then I clicked to the next slide in my PowerPoint presentation, trying to ignore the way my vision tunneled even as a hum buzzed angrily through my mind. Here it came—part two of the craziness. First the monster, then the trance.

  Clutching the podium, I whispered a silent rebuke to my brain chemistry: Not now. The department chair was just waiting to catch a slip in classroom protocol so he could write me up.

  In desperation, I shot a glance at the ringleader of all my teaching problems. If she was sitting, the monster would subside and the vision would fade along with it....

  Patricia had risen so she could sling a messenger bag across one shoulder. And that did it. The monster grabbed me. I’ll make her sit, it started.

  No, wait, I countered, terrified by the way my muscles bunched without permission.

  Then the trance responded by slapping us both into submission. The monster subsided and I fell backwards into the silence and the dark.


  OKAY, SO PERHAPS silence was a bit of an overstatement. Sunlight was obscured by overhanging earth and rock, so even the drip of distant water became as loud as a roaring school bus. My feet scraped against pebbles while my breath echoed in the enclosed chamber. And my hand moved without conscious volition to uncover a smoldering coal housed within a tallow-filled lamp.

  Light emerged slowly as the body I inhabited fed moss into the minuscule fire. I was here, but not here. Present inside this woman, but unable to do anything other than watch her actions unfold.

  The first time this had happened, I’d been terrified. A mere child, I’d thought myself transported into a nightmare and had spent the entire trance struggling to get back out again. Now, though, I was an adult obsessed with archaeology. I could do nothing to hasten my return to the modern world, so I relaxed and took in every wonderful vision as a many-thousand-year-old cave painting gradually flickered into life.

  Red and black animals danced across the rock wall before me. Today it was horses, so many horses, with one big bison smack dab in the center. It looked similar to the French cave I’d visited on a research expedition one year earlier, but with different paintings covering the curved and irregular walls.

  Even though I knew this experience was merely my imagination playing tricks on me, I began taking mental notes the way I always did. Perfect curves made the animals lifelike, overlapping legs gave the illusion of three dimensions....

  Distantly, I knew that my living body would be catatonic and terrifying to my students back in the lecture hall. Distantly, I accepted the psychiatrists’ assessment that these visions were nothing more than a rehashing of materials I’d pored over and studied ever since becoming obsessed with archaeology as a kid.