Fox’s Night: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 3)

by K. R. Alexander

  The young dog-fox encircled my waist with a hand, moved and turned with me, and I smiled. In a minute, I was laughing. We set down our baskets again and, though the beat was far off and the sound of flowing water stronger in our ears, we danced.

  We turned and twirled and circled each other on the lakeshore, sometimes close, sometimes distant, moving to our own beats. Dance, dance, dance—again and again we touched, hands to hands or arms, backs, or waists.

  Touches turned to kisses, his lips finding my ear, my brow, my black hair that hung to my waist. After two or three dances, when the music stopped and the distant clans whistled and stamped their feet, I turned my face up and his lips found mine.

  He pressed in and I reached to hold his head. We melded together with the water and wind and music and the sunlit night. His body was hot and strong as it lined mine, close, separated only by thin summer deerskins.

  I pulled his head down tighter and Black Ice laughed when I nibbled along the rim of his soft, skin ear.

  Then, breathless, we had to separate and finish our work for our families. We filled our baskets, returned them, and filled another each while the evening’s celebration gradually died down. Still, I wasn’t tired. Every now and then we paused in our work for another kiss, shorter, longer, then open-mouthed.

  We returned our final harvest for the night and found our ways to our own dens with our families only when the sun was below the horizon. Yet I lay awake all night anyway, thinking of Black Ice. Reliving every step, every kiss, and imagining so much more.

  Chapter 16

  Before: Day 2

  We worked together the next day, though enjoyed no time alone the way we had the first evening.

  It was by fur, again, that Black Ice and I were able to steal away. We played games of chase and hide through the forest in the low country near the lake. He let me chew his delicious ears, and I let him lick my face—which he seemed to find fascinating.

  That night, we danced in our skin with our clans. It was a joy, always a whirl and thrill, joining in the dance. But it wasn’t like being alone with Black Ice. As the sunny night wore on, I kept catching his eye, finding he was always looking at me. I wished we could steal away together, any form, and run or talk, touch, dance with only the two of us.

  While the elders settled for late conversation, following supper, stories, and dances, I crept to the visitor’s side of the summer camp after Black Ice. This time we managed to get away to the lazy riverbank in skin.

  We sat with our feet in the water, the mosquitoes gone as the sun drifted below the horizon, and talked of our families, other shifters we knew, and human clans we had met or traded among. Black Ice had friends in the northern bear shifters. I knew a wolf pack but had never met bears and listened as he explained how to tell a shifter bear from a total bear by smell, how to greet one in her own language in skin, and how to make friends with a bear by offering lavish compliments—though not too lavish. Like many people, they mistrust foxes for our games and perceived insincerity. Most creatures take themselves too seriously.

  When my grandam called for me, my dam quieted her. I could just catch their voices in camp. I, my dam claimed, was a vixen grown and could stay out if I wished.

  “Without approval?” the elder vixen snapped back. “Not in my day.”

  “She is by the river talking with a friend, Mama. Not running off with him in August.”

  Running off with a dog-fox in August was a euphemism relating to a vixen who meant to stay pregnant—being wise to choose the end of summer to stop changing and keep her kit growing inside until the best season for birth: spring. No, I wasn’t running with a dog-fox in August, but I was old enough to understand what it meant—and old enough, for the first time, to want to.

  Black Ice was embarrassed by the nearby squabbling about me. I didn’t mind. I was used to my family, knew my dam would always be on my side, and I found Black Ice’s propensity to embarrass easily a most desirable trait. How much he cared for the feelings of others, especially mine, and what I thought of him, showed often in his own focus and careful ways around me. When we danced, he asked first with a touch or look before he led. He always began a conversation with questions for me. Each time he kissed me, like that evening, saying evening’s blessings, he started off gentle, making sure of me, only moving in more when he felt a response.

  Again, that night, I lay awake. Imaginings with Black Ice turned into dreams while the distinction eluded me. Visions roamed from anticipating our next kiss to welcoming Black Ice back to our den from a hunt while I was obliged to remain home with our newborn kit. Mostly, they drifted nearer the present. His voice, his touch, all I wanted to know about him and all I wanted to tell him.

  The most vivid of all was the lake, skin this time, and my scrubbing stone. My round, rough scrubbing stone that tickled my feet while I rubbed away layers of dirt. My dam had given me that stone, having found it in the river at our winter hunting grounds early in the season. It was not a treasure one shared. Now, I longed to share it with Black Ice. No more hard to reach places. Naked skin in sunlight and water, trading the stone between us, Black Ice rubbing down my back. Switching places, touching more and more, closer and closer, until the stone lay forgotten on the shore, and we lay alongside it.

  Chapter 17

  Before: Day 3

  We fished the next day with the clans, then joined in a meeting among the wolf pack from the mountains. They brought us news of shifters and game. We brought them news of humans and traplines to expect in the winter. The wolves were a dreadfully shy people, keeping to themselves and seldom meeting even with us, much less human beings.

  I might usually have liked to show off small friendships with them in front of a dog-fox like Black Ice. But, again, I only wanted to be alone with him.

  We fished and lunched together with the wolves. Then, in the evening, they sang for their goddess while we danced for summer’s bounty—and the sheer joy of it.

  I danced with Black Ice. This time, though, there was so much happening on the riverbank that we crept from the gathering without even my grandam sniffing to summon us back.

  We returned to the lakeshore, above the rocks and reeds, where we could sit together out of sight of the gathering in our skin, talking about preparations of summer and what we did and did not look forward to about winter and the long darkness.

  “You could travel with my people this season,” Black Ice said, looking across the lake, his whole head and face rimmed in a halo of golden sunlight while I lay on my back looking up at him. “If you wished. If your parents would allow it. And … I would get us a moose. As soon as the first cold snap sets in. We always get a moose if we can.”

  “So do we. Once we have our wintering grounds, we dig into the deep ground ice to keep our harvest. Each family shares a cache with another.”

  “It is too much hard digging to do alone.” He smiled, glanced at me.

  “Winter is too hard to bear alone,” I said. “That’s why we have our clans at all. Even summer rovers come home.”

  “I would be content with only you for all the winters of my days.”

  “You wouldn’t get bored of me? One mate? Or fed up? Grandam says I’m exasperating. She says I must learn to control myself, not always act on impulse, learn how to be serious sometimes. Doesn’t that sound like a grizzled old bear?”

  “It does. Anyone telling you to be more serious envies your honest spirit, or your beautiful dancing. There is no sense in telling anyone to be less light and less giving and less … love. You are brighter than any summer sun.” He was really watching me then, turned on his hip with a hand supporting him, stroking back my hair with the other. “I could never wish to speak ill of your family … but she is wrong. You have not answered me.”

  “About coming away with your family? That is up to our elders. The clans must stay balanced and healthy.”

  “If you had the choice?”

  “Then I would prefer you came with my family
. But … I would take either that they wished to grant us.”

  “I could take you away from here alone—build you a den and bring in a moose just for us—if they will not grant their blessing.”

  I had to laugh. “Why wouldn’t they? You must not worry.”

  “I only want to make sure you know how … how much this is important to me. You … will you be my mate, Summit? Only you and I? Following your customs? One mate, one life?”

  I reached up to his golden, sunlit face and pulled him down with both hands to kiss. So warm and melting and awed by my own love for him, I trembled. It seemed the very ground below us pulsed with the heartbeat of the river and life, the dance in my blood, flowing from Earth Mother. She had brought us together. Any details, such as who’s clan we lived among or whether we had a winter moose, were trifling—silly even to bother about.

  When I pulled him in, Black Ice rolled partly on top of me, intensity bursting from his kisses, his force and weight leaving my whole body buzzing for him, praying he never stopped. He kissed my face, my lips, stroked my breasts and down my body, and bit my throat, holding on with his teeth and caressing with his tongue.

  I shivered and twisted my fingers in his hair. I’d never been touched like this, craving more from him, thinking of August approaching. I needed him to be that dog-fox in August. I needed the clans to know it. As in my dreams, my mind raced ahead to our own den, our bodies together, our future with kits in the clan.

  Black Ice stroked down my sides, across my hip, kissed my lips again while I turned into him. He slipped his tongue between my lips. Dazzled, breathless, I closed my mouth so he could slide in and out. I felt his excitement through his buckskin pants, longing to touch him, at least with my hand. I’d seen him naked in skin when we’d changed, but not aroused like this. Better than any washing with my scrubbing stone, now I could envision pure skin together, every inch explored.

  We kissed and caressed with lips, tongues, fingers, and bodies twined together for some minutes before I remembered and answered him.

  “Yes, I want to be with you, Black Ice. I want to be your mate. In any clan. Or none.”

  “May I speak with the elders in the morning?”

  “I would love that. I’ll be there beside you.”

  Another kiss, gentle, seasons passing us by in the length and feeling in that touch. Then we lay still with the sun set behind mountains, each wanting more. Each, perhaps, comforted by the same thoughts of progressing our futures in the morning.

  Chapter 18

  Before: Day 4

  We approached Wind Blink, Cavern, and Bluff, plus Black Ice and Gray Pine in his clan. We made our case as mates, spoke of our commitment, and awaited their judgement. I beamed, holding his hand in both of mine, leaning on him—now many winters ahead in my mind, clearly seeing our four or five kits playing about the lakeshore. So it was less unpleasant than bewildering when the elders objected.

  Indeed, I missed what Wind Blink, my great aunt, had to say all together. I had to refocus. “Pardon, elder?”

  They paid me no heed, now debating among themselves. Was it true? Yes. Wait, how far back were the generations?

  I glanced uncertainly at Black Ice, who watched with narrowed eyes and a set jaw that I’d never seen from him before. He didn’t care what they said. He was prepared to desert the clans if they would not accept us. I had claimed to be as well, but, really, leaving my family? And his? It could not come to that, surely…

  The elders never refused a union unless on very good grounds. Which was what was scaring me so much, feeling the warmth and light drain from me like mist burning off the lake on a sunny morning. How could they mean what they seemed to mean?

  Gradually, with Wind Blink’s help, I followed the thread of the objection.

  My grandam was the half-sister to Black Ice’s grandsire. Half-sister? And grandparents? A full sibling among our parents, making us pure first cousins, of course was not a tolerable match. But distant, partial cousins?

  As I grasped the problem and Black Ice’s silent scowl, I spoke up, pointing out similar unions I could think of, noting how few of us there were, how that was not so closely related. Then how Black Ice and I were each strong and healthy—the blood of our two families also strong and independent. There could be little or no grounds for keeping us apart over something like this.

  My own family seemed at least to follow, nodding and considering. His sire and Gray Pine, another elder of his clan, appeared less impressed. There were many shaking heads and returned scowls.

  “If you feel that strongly about it,” I said, facing the elder Black Ice and still clutching his son’s hand, “there is always the possibility we may not have kits.”

  Black Ice stiffened against me. I squeezed tighter. I didn’t mean what I said for a second. Barring direct intervention from Earth Mother, there was simply no possibility that we wouldn’t have kits. Yet I knew how to offer compromise to obstinate elders. As long as we appeared to be understanding and willing to adhere to their laws, there was always time later to shift the tides. What mattered right now was our being together—with permission. Otherwise, we were stepping onto the trail with an already lost hunt.

  The elder Black Ice and Gray Pine gave grudging agreement that this would be a solution when it came to close relations ending up mates. It took more debate, and siding from my own clan, Wind Blink taking our side, before permission—with reservations regarding kits—was finally granted by both clans.

  We would be celebrated and honored tonight in dances and feasting, plans made for a proper bonding ceremony—but none of that mattered now. I only wanted to get away with Black Ice and breathe.

  He was less impressed by the elders’ leniency. Angry that I backed down to his sire, as soon as we walked off along the river he was quick to tell me we would do no such thing.

  “Unless you don’t want kits, Summit.” Pausing suddenly, his voice pained as he studied my face.

  “Hush.” I hugged him, standing on one foot, so happy I felt I could float away. “You will always find a fight with an elder if you are ready to start one. But, at least in my clan, you will always avoid one if that’s what you seek. They’ll forget all about it when they see we’re happy and strong together and ready to raise our own kits.”

  He pulled back, looked at me, then dropped his gaze and let out a breath, his shoulders sinking at the same time. “I’m sorry, Summit. I want to make my own way—especially in matters of love and family. But I was wrong. You’re the wise one. Next time we have to speak, you do the talking. Losing my temper with my sire has never yet earned me what I want. You’d think I’d have learned that by now.” With another sigh. “You’ve only just had dealings with him and already know how to hunt with him. How can one fox be so sunny and so savvy at the same time?”

  “Good heritage?” I grinned.

  He laughed a little and drew up my hand to kiss. “I admire everything about you. I didn’t know such cohesion, even in my own feelings, was possible. What in our lives does not have some positive and some negative?”

  “Strawberries,” I said firmly. “Strawberries are only positive.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Hard to gather.”

  “Summertime.” I opened my arms.

  “Mosquitoes.”

  “A newborn kit.”

  “Sleepless nights.”

  I grabbed his face. “If you will insist in finding something unpleasant in life’s most pleasant joys, then I’ll have to agree that you are experiencing a strange sensation.”

  “I’ve never been so unified in my own mind.” He gently kissed my lips. “I look into your eyes and I see nothing but light. I don’t know how it can be … but it’s true.”

  “Dance,” I said. “You cannot find a negative in dance.”

  “That is true only when it is with you.”

  My grandam shouted as he kissed me again. We were wanted for work.

  We gutted, scaled, and smoked fish all day. Filthy jo
bs that left us reeking of fish and so smoky the mosquitoes would not come near. But we stayed together so it hardly mattered. Also, we had plenty to eat. Black Ice fed me bites of smoked fish and we talked in snatches of our strategy for appeasing the elders should we be challenged again.

  That night, we drank birch water that left me warm and slightly lightheaded, and feasted so much the dancing was slow. Everyone in our families congratulated us—aside from the few naysayers over how short a time we’d known each other, wagging fingers, advising not to rush into anything. No matter that we had actually met as kits, even if we’d seldom sniffed one another. The only warnings of this sort came from those who were themselves unhappy with a mate. I had to stop myself laughing at them. It was hardly my fault if they had made a mistake.

  The sun set, the sky remaining pale, and the dance got well underway. Many young foxes put on fur, hunted the shores and played, racing up and down the riverbank and out to the lake.

  I longed to dance all night with Black Ice, yet also longed to run with those in fur.

  I could not settle, my own joy bursting in all directions. He kept kissing me, touching, hardly parting for a second as we moved and danced.

  “Do you want to change?” he whispered at last, watching my eyes in the firelight.

  “I don’t know. I want to be with you. I can’t focus tonight.”

  “Then let’s run.”

  We left our clothes at my family den. The moment I put on fur, the world opened up. A dark horizon became pale. Flickering shadows became clear foxes mousing in the brush. So strong was my night vision now, I ran heedless of day or night, tearing through the field for the lake.

  Even this run was not enough. I set out around Bowl Lake at a sprint, ears back, mouth open, my own elation making my paws blur. Black Ice could hardly keep up. I heard him sometimes racing behind, but mostly it was my own breaths and paws flashing over stones, through reeds, among trees and mulch, that filled my ears.

  Owls hooted. A distant wolf pack sang. My passage scared up roosting waterfowl.