The Nine: An Urban Fantasy Reverse Harem Romance (Foxfire Burning Book 1)

by C. M. Stunich

  "Can you just wait until the show is over?" I asked, feeling righteously bitchy. I might've been a part of the guild, but I still deserved my own time, right? And any man that got between me and my bestie was going to get the same treatment the alpha wolf got—a swift kick to the nuts.

  "Thea," he said, folding his arms over his chest, that stupid coat, those tight leather pants … the way his t-shirt stretched over his muscles. I blinked and refocused my attention on his face, trying to put on my best no big deal voice.

  "Ah, nothing big. Fin used his mating rights to demand I find him a replacement wife, that's all."

  "Wait," Mik said, sliding his hands into his coat pockets and closing his eyes tight. As a member of the undead, he didn't really get the whole bestial, animalistic mating thing. At least, he pretended not to. The way he looked at me sometimes, I couldn't help but wonder if that was a lie. Sure seemed like he'd put up a wild, violent sort of fuck, one that left the sheets torn and soaked with sweat, the body achingly sore. "Your ex-husband had your magic stripped so that you'd find him a new wife? That's … it's fucking barbaric."

  "It's fine. As soon as Chris is done onstage, I'm going to ask him if he knows anyone. Easy-peasy, right? I mean, he knows everyone in the supernatural community."

  "Thea," Mikhail said again, the slightest hint of a roll in his voice—rolling was that stupid thing vampires did when they hypnotized people. "How long is this going to take? For you to get your magic back, I mean."

  "Uh, less than a week?" I said hopefully, because that's how long I had. Seven days to find my ex a wife. Gross. Now I just needed to smell out a mateless vixen that was interested in that asshole. Considering the infinitesimally small number of kitsune left on the planet, that was easier said than done. Why couldn't Fin just modernize, move off Vail Valley Earth property, and marry outside his species like the rest of the canidae shifter world? A nice werewolf girl, hyena shifter, wild dog shifter … what was wrong with that?

  "Really?" Mikhail said, leaning forward and putting a hand on either side of me, his long, pale fingers curling around the edge of the bar. Did I mention the piece of shit always had this clean, soapy smell? Every once in a while, I caught a hint of copper and iron underneath it, blood from a recent feeding. But that was rare, as rare as it was to see him without one of his signature coats on, which was, basically, only when he was in the nude. Not like I saw him naked often, but that one time we'd stripped out of bloody clothes after a hit … yes, please. "Because it smells like you're lying to me. I don't much like to be lied to, Thea."

  "It'll take as long as it takes, Mikhail. And it's not like magic is the only way to accomplish anything. There are other means."

  "Other means won't work this time," he growled, leaning in close to my ear and putting his lips against my lobe. "If you don't get your magic back before Sunday, then you're off the job. I'll take care of it myself."

  His smell wafted around me again, that soap and lather scent that was a little surprising considering it was attached to a vampire. Strong and masculine, and completely intoxicating.

  Mikhail held that position just long enough to drive me crazy and then stood back up, turning in a swirl of red coat and weaving his way through the packed crowd. I watched him go, the corner of my lip curling up in a low growl.

  "Asshole," I said, wondering if our violent tension would one day come to a head in the bedroom … or in a fight. He would win, most likely. Then again, I hadn't seen what my ninth tail could really do yet. Each tail was supposed to be exponentially more powerful than the last, right?

  I ordered another drink as Little Miss Vixen took the stage in a crazy swirl of gossamer skirts and a big blonde wig, performing a ridiculously over the top rendition of the classic Spice Girls’ song Wannabe.

  “You better werk, girl,” I whispered as I sipped my fruity alcohol and tried not to think about vampires, alpha wolves, jaguars, or asshole foxes.

  That was a hell of a lot harder than it sounded.

  "Wait, wait, let me get this straight." Chris took a long gulp of his piña colada, then tapped his chin. "So you have less than seven days to find your asshole ex a new kitsune mate, or else Mik is going to take the contract hit from you?"

  "Yeah," I sighed, picking at the label on the bottle I was drinking.

  "And we don't want Mik taking the contract, because ..." He squinted at me, a little drunk and clearly trying to piece things together.

  "Because that would be tantamount to a failed hit, potentially punishable by a long-term suspension. Need I remind you that I have a massive mortgage to pay?" Finally freeing the label from the bottle in one piece, I began tearing it into tiny bits of confetti. I said potentially, but I already knew that failing this particular hit would be a cut-and-dry situation. If I failed this one, I was screwed. It was that important to the guild, that important to Mik. Besides, sometimes it felt like he wanted me to quit or get fired, so he could stop worrying so much about me. The man had control issues.

  "Ah, which is essentially death. Gotcha. So … we need to find Fin a kitsune lady, huh?" He hummed along to the tune playing over the loudspeakers. "How are we going to do that?"

  "I thought you might know of one? Or know where we might find one?" I asked hopefully, giving him my best sad fox eyes.

  "Me? Nope, sorry chica. You're yapping up the wrong tree here. You're the only unmated female kitsune I know of, and I'm about ninety-nine point eight percent positive you're probably the only unmated kitsune female of marrying age in the entire damn world right now." He gave me a sympathetic look and patted my shoulder. "Have you thought about just agreeing to marry the damn fox, just to get your magic unbound so you can complete this hit?"

  "And then what? Take off again?" I scowled. "If I thought it'd work, I probably would do it. Fin deserves it for this asshole move he's pulling."

  "So, it wouldn't work then?" Chris clarified and I sighed.

  "No, I doubt it. Those old vixens in charge would find some sort of magic to force me to comply. Next thing you know I'd be barefoot and pregnant, cooking Fin dinner and scrubbing the floors." I shuddered. "No, fucking thank you."

  "Have you been to see Bailessa?" he suggested. Bailessa was our president, or as close as kitsune came to a president. I hadn't been joking about our leader turning orange, or about her White House equivalent cabin. It had been her that I'd been hoping to speak to about my tail before going to see the kitsune-tsukai, aka the Ancients.

  "Not much point after Trina made her decision. Everyone knows Bailessa is just the political leader. She'll never go against the Ancients’ choices when it comes to magic." I drained the last of my drink, and waved the empty bottle at the bartender for another. After the day I'd had, I deserved a few drinks.

  "So why is it so vital you have your magic for this hit on Sunday?" Chris asked, munching on his pineapple garnish and leaving glittery pink smears on the fruit. "You've done how many jobs with just your foxy abilities? Why is this one any different?"

  "Because of the target. You know about the rash of shifter deaths lately?" My glamourous bestie nodded slowly in understanding. In the past couple of months, shifters had been disappearing, then showing up dead a few days or even weeks later, and it had the supernatural community in an uproar. Even worse than that, sometimes they didn’t disappear. Sometimes, they just went mad and started attacking everyone around them. I’d had more than a few of these ‘rabid shifter’ hits on my work docket. "Well, there's more to it than that. Someone is blocking the ability to shift."

  Chris's face paled under his thick drag makeup, and I knew he got it. "But that's …"

  "A death sentence? Exactly." My lips compressed in a tight line as I thought about the amount of innocent shifters I was personally responsible for executing in recent weeks. Once a shifter lost his or her ability to shift, it was a slippery slope into madness, which was totally irreversible. The only option was to execute.

  "RADOPA intel says this coyote skinwalker, aka my Sunday
hit, is supposedly providing the magic to whoever’s responsible. They hope that by eliminating him, it'll cripple the asshole behind this enough that we can find him and take him out." I groaned and rubbed at my temples to try and hold back a tension headache that was sneaking up on me. "But obviously, it's suicide to take on a skinwalker with no magic of my own."

  "Is it?" Chris pondered aloud, and I squinted at him.

  "Of course it is. Everyone knows skinwalkers deal in strange magic; their powers are unparalleled in the known world. I need the power of my tails to even stand a chance against him." I frowned at my bestie in confusion. Everyone knew this, including him.

  "Yeah, I know that. Duh. I just meant, maybe not having any magic might be enough to give you the upper hand? This dude is probably expecting someone to come after him, so he'll be expecting a strong magical creature. But if you show up, little miss thang, with your tails hidden, looking and smelling like a regular human …" Chris shrugged. "Just saying."

  I stared at him for a long moment, thinking over what he'd just said. "Fuck, Fae-Bitch, when did you become such a genius?"

  "I have my moments," he smirked.

  "But Mik will never go for it. He'll say it’s a suicide mission, and if anyone is getting the pleasure of killing me, it'd be himself." My shoulders dropped once more with disappointment.

  "So don't tell the uptight bastard," Chris said, like I was a freaking idiot. Hell, maybe I was? "Your hit is for Sunday? So track this coyote down sooner and get the job done. Mik will thank you for it afterwards, and maybe stop treating you like you're a china doll."

  "Oh shut up," I snorted. My vampire boss was an asshole in every sense of the word, so I struggled to see his worry over me as anything more than a courtesy he showed all his employees. If there was anything more to it, he’d never acted on it.

  "Uh, do you see him paying visits to any of the other assassins, just to check in? Do you see him following any of them on their contracts to make sure they're safe? He either thinks you're not as strong as the others, or he's damn in love with you. Then again, this is Mikhail we're talking about so we know for sure it’s not the love thing!" Chris snorted a laugh, and ordered himself another fruity cocktail.

  He was referring to one of my early jobs, not long after graduating as a qualified RADOPA employee, when I’d spotted Mik watching me from the building opposite. We never spoke about it, but I knew he knew I saw him.

  "I don't get the details for the hit for a few days. I guess I can try to find an unmated female before then?"

  "Go ahead," Chris said, his gaze tracking some hot, young fae boy in a banana themed g-string. "But that's about as likely as me finding a nice, sturdy working boy and settling down. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have twinks to chase."

  Chris stood up, fluffed his pink feather boa in my direction and went off in search of tail.

  Me, I had enough fucking tails to worry about without adding another one.

  Guess I'd be sleeping alone tonight.

  In the morning, I got up and hit the Internet hard, logging onto every possible shifter dating site I could find. And trust me—there were a lot of them.

  "Wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf ..." I said as I scrolled through profile after profile of beautiful shifter girls, none of whom would work to satisfy the requirements the kitsune-tsukai had laid before me. Even with the power of the world wide fucking web in my tricky little fox paws, this mysterious vixen was giving me the slip.

  I prayed to the goddess Inari and her harem that Chris was wrong, that I wasn't the only female kitsune in the world without a fox mate. There had to be one out there somewhere, desperate for a husband, right? As desperate as Fin was for a wife?

  With a groan, I reached up to close my computer and then … paused.

  "No fucking way," I whispered as I clicked on the photo of a woman with long, bloodred hair, bright orange ears, and four delightfully fluffy tails. "No way. No flipping, motherfucking way."

  I clicked her profile and scanned through the information she'd typed up. Not only was this chick in leather pants and heavy combat boots which I could totally relate to, but her write-up was snarky, fun, and remarkably similar to … me.

  Had I seriously just found Fin a fox mate? I knew he was still in love with me, but this girl, she was damn similar, maybe similar enough to get me off the hook?

  Apparently, she was currently living in Tokyo and working for an international survey team on supernatural affairs, trying to find a way to blend all the various cultures and laws of the supes and the humans. It'd been over fifty years since we'd come out of the closet so to speak and tensions were still running high. Half the time when I introduced myself, people thought I was a werewolf-obsessed human that'd gotten the fake ears and tail part wrong. It was because of this that I often just hid them all together.

  Ignorant assholes.

  I typed up a quick message. This girl—Revel Jones—might be halfway across the world, but with less than twenty thousand red fox shifters left on the planet, I knew she'd come. Hell, and Fin was attractive, even if he was a piece of shit. He was toned, good in bed, and had an eight inch cock. Basically, this girl was hitting the fucking jackpot.

  A small surge of jealousy spiked through me, but I hit send on the message anyway and slammed the lid on the laptop.

  No way was I letting myself get sentimental and weird about a man that I'd left of my own accord. Hell, one that I'd run as fast as I could away from. I had a career now, a trade, and I made a hell of a lot more money at it than I would've working for the Earth as a guard or a secretary or living off the pittance they provided for each kit born into the group.

  I killed people, yes, but … I killed bad guys, people like my Sunday hit, Nix Locklear, a man who was determined to take down the entire shifter community with his bullshit. I made the world a better place, despite how disgusted Fin and Riot might be with my chosen profession.

  Grabbing my cell, I sent out a quick group text to some of my, uh, coworkers to see if anyone was willing to meet and spar with me. If I was going to take down this skinwalker without magic, I'd need to be on top of my game.

  "Come on, Ziff," I said, picking up the three pound fennec fox from the couch cushion. He whistled at me happily and crawled up and under the collar of my black trench coat, settling against my neck with a sweet sounding purr. "Let's grab some coffee and see if we can't turn this day into a productive one."

  No matter what I got done today, finding that fox girl was a serious score. Even if I managed to take care of the hit on Nix Locklear without my magic, I damn well wasn't going to be happy if I didn't get it back … and get it back soon.

  A kitsune without her magic was not a happy little fox.

  No, she was downright fucking pissed.

  That same angry little fox also turned into a raging bitch if she just happened to walk outside and find Riot Langthorne standing on the driveway outside her gates—even if he did look like sex incarnate, dressed in a tight black wife-beater and jeans, a cigarette clutched in his tattooed fingers. His thick, muscular tail flicked against the beige stone of my driveway in irritation. I had to swallow past a sudden rush of lust before I could take a single, normal breath.

  "Thea," he said as I stormed up to him, trench coat billowing out behind me. Ziff squeaked happily at the sight of my former lover, but I was not in the mood to entertain Ry’s bullshit today. "Fin's too chickenshit to come talk to you himself," he continued as I pressed the button on my key fob to open the gates. Not for him though, just so I could tell him to fuck off and then back my car out. Somewhere in the city, there was a cappuccino calling my name. "So I thought I'd see if you wanted to grab coffee?"

  "I'm busy," I lied, despite the fact that getting coffee was my absolute number one priority at the moment. There was nothing quite like sitting in a café with a steaming hot mug and a book. It was my morning ritual. And considering the fact that my life was made up of blood, risk, and death, I felt I more than deserved it.


  I was not about to share my quiet, peaceful alone time with Riot. Although the man knows how to pull off skinny jeans and boots with the best of them. No. No. Would not let myself get distracted by the rounded curves of Riot’s biceps or the hard planes of his chest, so easily visible beneath his tight tank.

  "Look, can we just share a single cup? One cup of coffee won't fucking kill you, Thea." He threw up his hands as I shot a sharp glance in his direction, taking in his gray eyes, his dark brown hair, and the scars that twisted across his right arm, the ones he'd had tattooed over with black and gray designs.

  A wolf had got Riot once … and he hadn't let go.

  If Fin and I hadn't stumbled on the scene, he wouldn't even be here right now.

  "Sorry, no can do," I said, moving toward the driver’s side door of my Porsche and pulling open the door.

  "Run from me," he challenged, his voice a dark whisper of intent. "I'll just climb in my own car and follow you." He raised a pierced eyebrow at me as Ziff chirped, and I curled the edge of my lip up in a snarl.

  "Please, Riot, don't make me laugh. You couldn't keep up if I was driving a damn shopping cart. You stand no chance against me and Lola." Lola was the name of my Porsche, my beautiful, beautiful Porsche with the soft ivory leather interior, the custom rims, and the meticulous gunmetal gray paint job. And shit could she run. There wasn’t a better car in the city, maybe even in the state.

  "Try me, Thea. I'm done letting you run from me." Riot met my gaze stubbornly and I remembered why I'd fallen in love with him so many years ago. Asshole that he was, he challenged me. He didn't let me get away with crap and I fucking loved that about him. Once.

  Now though, it was just pissing me off.

  Gently, I leaned down through the driver's side door and placed Ziff on the passenger seat where he circled a couple of times before curling into a little ball on the skull and crossbones blanket I had there for him.