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

by K. R. Alexander

  He was terribly, terribly slow. I had to untangle our hair and tickle his feet again, ending in a wrestling match as he shouted with laughter and tried to get away, before he seemed interested.

  Puffing after a tangled struggle in which he fought to keep my hands away from his feet, I reached between his legs instead—at last to find him responding, growing rigid at my touch.

  I rolled on my back. Black Ice followed. Now he was slow, really taking his time and gentle. I could move my hips and tell him to lean in a certain way. And there, finally, it felt good as he thrust. Hinting at better than good, the way he rubbed against me, touching me inside and out, while I could tell him what I wanted and he was able to listen and respond.

  So this was right? How Earth Mother intended such a joining? Black Ice had been right?

  I loved him more for it. We’d been able to work this out together, make sense of it, form our own mated bond—as a strong fox should be able to rely on herself and her mate and work out problems with cunning and imagination.

  Now we’d found each other, a perfect joining, and I could not wait for the elk to come.

  I still felt stretched out, achy, each time Black Ice thrust, but it was so much better, and there was so much more in it also, I hoped even the aches and soreness would pass on.

  He’d never stayed inside me like this, kissing, rocking against me. It had all been so quick before. I’d thought that must be the only way. Now I delighted in the feelings his long, lingering touches gave me, inside and out, making my body burn below him, easing my own soreness.

  Something was building. As he kept moving, instead of the good feelings spreading out and soothing me, they seemed to be working up, making me squirm. For the first time with him, I wanted those fast, hard thrusts back. I wanted him reaching deeper.

  I shuddered, overawed by the feelings, thankful and filled with wonder as I discovered I craved him.

  “Black Ice…” I breathed and couldn’t think what else to say. I kissed him, tried to lift my hips against him. “I … more … can you touch me more? Can you go deeper?”

  He wasn’t trying, relaxed and rolling inside me like a lazy river. Now he shifted his weight and pushed in.

  “Up … move up and…” I gasped. “Get your weight off me.”

  He moved, lifting himself and thrusting upward, bringing new discomforts. Yet these aches were nothing to the rest of it. That feeling of urgency, of need and bubbling over, filled me, snatching pain and thought… Leaving behind that building inferno, until something burst over.

  I cried out, shocked as the sensations erupted through me. “Ah! Black Ice!” I clutched him, the feeling that was a pure explosion of pleasure rocking my body.

  “Summit?”

  Pulling him in, shuddering against him. “Black Ice … it’s … ah…” The ripples were fading, the explosive peak of my pleasure settling back in a slow decline as it had built. “I never … I didn’t… Not cursed. Blessed. So blessed.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t know it could be like that. I love you. I never felt anything like that.”

  He was catching on by then, shaking his head. “You didn’t? Never? I…” Smiling, laughing a little, again rocking inside me.

  “I didn’t know…” breathing out the words once more as I trembled.

  Black Ice was amused. “I can give you that feeling all the time. I want to. Always. Every moment you want me. We’ll have our own den… Anything and everything you want. I love you, Summit.”

  He reached his own pleasure and I understood for the first time what the male felt when he gave up his seed. Just like the pain, no one had ever told me a vixen could feel such a rush.

  We stayed out that night, later changing to our fur to curl up warm and safe together. It was a long time before I could. At first I only held him, ecstatic, looking forward to those upcoming days and nights on our own.

  Chapter 21

  Before

  Black Ice had a short temper with his sire. It turned out, he also had a reputation for sparring with peer males of his own clan. We stayed with my family, where he could have a new start, respected on his own merits.

  Before leaves in the lakeside forest were the color of our dancing bonfires, we moved south and set up a new home. Here, Black Ice and I built our own den of poles and stretched hides.

  All through our end of summer travels and autumn’s splendor as we made our new home, I could not bring myself to stop changing—which would have meant cutting off a part of this new life I was only just discovering as a vixen in love.

  By October, however, later than I should have, I bit down on my resolve. Black Ice eagerly agreed, giddy with the thought of kits. We did not bring up the matter to the elders.

  The leaves were falling, our new den freshly welcoming, and we clung to those remaining sunny days out working together—final preparations for winter now finishing as the first snows threatened.

  We both stayed in skin through those October nights, the better to watch the northern lights and explore one another’s bodies this way. Each new sunrise brought a shorter day, besides more work with food and wood caches and winter clothing in need of mending.

  Fresh ice rimmed the river beyond our new settlement before I was certain I was pregnant and told Black Ice. He was ecstatic, wanting to dash about, tell everyone, but I shushed him. We still hadn’t admitted our ambitions to anyone. I held on, keeping him in the den, until his kisses and endearments turned to another mating and promises of always being together.

  I had never been so happy, never known such companionship and bliss. I even looked forward to this winter in skin, snuggled in with Black Ice, thinking of possible names and personalities for our kit while he constantly kept a hand or ear on my belly, though it was far too early to feel anything.

  Hunters from Black Ice’s clan stopped with us for several nights soon after the first snows. We shared food and fire while they talked of the humans, the traplines that would be set for the winter, the outposts and settlements.

  We avoided humans in winter, both clans aware that we could not let ourselves be seen in fur in their hunting season and relying on our own caches and hunts without trade until spring, when we would take to the rivers in canoes and move ourselves for the passage of the salmon.

  I worried over the news of nearby men, fretting at my own confinement. For the first time I wondered if it was, in fact, too soon to keep a kit. I could wait until next summer, stay at my new mate’s side this winter and guard my own freedom.

  Black Ice would not hear of it and, now that he knew I carried his kit, I could not turn around and disappoint. So it was he, never I, who went out when there were winter hunts.

  Neither of our clans trapped. If we could not catch prey without torture, we did not catch it. Instead, our winter hunting parties were formed of mature foxes, some in skin with rifles, some in fur to scout, locate, and indicate a clear shot.

  This way, between blizzards and when conditions permitted, especially during the fleeting few hours of daylight, we enjoyed some fresh meat to supplement our caches through the longest season. Also, the skins and bones of deer, lynx, or wolverine kept us busy at home making new mittens, hats, beads, fastenings, tools, and jewelry. No part of an animal was wasted. Lynx in particular was the best and most succulent meat—making fresh lynx an occasion for much blessing of Earth Mother and praying for the continued greatness and strength for the lynx spirit.

  We never killed a total fox if we could help it. Usually easy to avoid since the foxes knew us for what we were and they kept clear of our ranges once we were established. It was a shame since, on those rare occasions I got to see one, especially in splendid winter coat, the beauty and elegance of a total fox brought a lump to my throat.

  There were total oranges and scarlets in the valleys that year, and a few cross foxes. But no silver. So reported our hunters one night around the fire after having met and conversed with an old mountain man running his trapline
with a team of dogs.

  This caused an extra shiver—extra foreboding. The men were after elusive black fox pelts this season, the prices being good and the animals—who valued their own skins more than any human ever could—being scarce.

  Was it a message from Earth Mother? A normal fox’s instinct? Only my own unease finding expression in life changes and pregnancy and new concern for a new love when my usual outlook was bright? I couldn’t say. However it was, I began having nightmares in which the hunting parties went away and never returned. Or I followed the tracks of a fox in the snow that gradually turned to blood and faded until I was alone in a whiteout.

  More and more anxious, I begged Black Ice not to join the hunters for a time, to stay home and help with the less glamorous chores.

  This anxiety was so unlike me it caught attention of all my family, worried Black Ice, and led to my having to admit to my dam and grandam that I was pregnant. The latter was most put out, informing me I had to change and end the newly starting life, that the elders had yet to decide if it was even suitable that we should have offspring. And, after all, I’d said we would not—would await their blessing.

  The weeks of bickering and arguments this launched was reason enough to keep Black Ice home. He was furious at the lot of them—besides Wind Blink, who took a quiet tone and said she did not think there would be any harm in us—and he hovered protectively around me as if he thought my family might be capable of forcing my change to end the pregnancy.

  Much as this family rift grieved me it kept Black Ice home. My dreams returned to our summer together and successful hunts with Black Ice, feasting on fresh berries and greens that truly were things to dream about in winter.

  We reached the shortest days, a mere few hours of light, the riverbank an endless, unchanging mass of blue-gray in the darkness, before the arguments died down. If I would have a kit, I would. Anyway, grandam liked to find a young dog-fox like Black Ice who was willing to stand up to her. Certainly not many in our clan were so brave.

  It was in this quiet time, in the depths of winter, when the nights were clear and cold and the northern lights turned the whole world pink or green or blue, that Black Ice went out again with the hunters. He had always disliked snowshoes, so went in fur with Cavern, while three others slogged along in snowshoes with rifles.

  I stayed in with my dam, sewing matching lynx hats for Black Ice and me. She made me recite our stories and legends so I would be able to tell them properly to the new kit. She, at least, was well warmed up to the idea of her first grandkit.

  A part of me, even then, must have still feared the worst. Something inside me waiting for bad news. Something scared: holding my breath.

  When the hunters returned two nights later, sooner than expected, I was the first to burst from a den to meet them, the first to face my uncle, Ridge Rock, look into his eyes, and know something had gone wrong.

  “Summit—”

  “What happened?” I gripped the front of his caribou parka, my uncovered fingers already freezing.

  “Let’s go inside to your dam—”

  “Tell me what happened! It’s Black Ice. I already know. Just tell me.” I was so scared I could not breathe, could not think. So scared my whole body seemed gone away, missing. Only the terror and tunnel vision remained.

  Ridge Rock covered my numb hands in his, in turn covered by great beaver mitts. “Summit, it was a hide. Downwind. We didn’t know. It wasn’t there last time we were out. We know their traplines. But a man was in a hide now, away from the line, and saw Black Ice tracking for us, far out ahead.”

  “No—”

  “He shot him. Black Ice tried to get back but there was nothing—”

  “No—”

  “Nothing we could do, Summit. I’m sorry—”

  “You don’t—”

  “He’s gone. He’s dead. There wasn’t—”

  “No!” I tore away from him, ran for the den.

  How could they just know like that? How could they be certain when they didn’t even have Black Ice? How could he say there was nothing to be done when they could have shot the man? Could have thrown his body to the total foxes and wolves and ravens? There had been five of them. They didn’t have to let my mate be shot and wounded and chased and shot again and dragged away by a hunter if they hadn’t wanted to. If they’d only tried. So much could be done.

  So I flew into our den and tore free of my parka and changed.

  “Summit, no!”

  “It’s too late! There’s nothing you can do!”

  I felt the sickness at once, even while I was shrinking down and fighting clear of my layers, back out into the snow. My stomach flipped over. Sharp pain hit my guts. Then there was blood.

  Blood and more, thick, the end of an almost life, there in the snow. Pain tore with dizziness until I vomited, staggering around. Blood streaked my hind legs, staining snow in the night.

  Foxes were yelling, emerging from dens, hearing the news, my dam running for me, screaming at me to stop. I had my bearings then, the first waves of pain and sickness passing as quickly as they had come on.

  I sprang through the snow, hit the trail that the hunters had just made coming in, and ran, flying in panic to find my mate.

  Chapter 22

  Day 132

  “Black Ice?” I woke crying, my face wet, warm with another close around me, strong arms and chest, hot breath on my neck. How?

  How could I be in a form to speak his name and cry liquid tears? I had run and run, tracked through all the winter nights. I had followed the man, the body, until the skin of my dead mate was sold for a high price at a trading post so it could be taken downriver in the thaw, hauled away on a steamer, and sent where it would be turned into a fashionable garment for a human lady to wear. Although she had no need of warmth or protection from the elements, living in no danger of dying from exposure if she did not have such a fur to drape around her shoulders. I gathered this from the discussions about prices I heard from the men at the river trading post.

  I tried to attack, tried to rescue what was left of the body, but was shot in the leg and hardly got away with my life. The bullet went right through. I struggled around on the bleeding, then freezing, limb for days before blundering into the snare.

  Then everything started to blur. The pain, grief, anger and fear, desolation and longing, night after night alone on the trail, then alone in the cage, to die. Just die. Let the shot end me. No, the snare. No, the isolation and hunger. Please, Earth Mother, let me die.

  Seasons changed in the cage. And changed more. I lost track of where I went, how long I was there, who bought and sold me. I never smelled Black Ice again after the outpost on the river’s bank.

  One horror after the next, one shock and despair, trapped in fur from the moment I changed that night and lost my kit… And I began to forget.

  Some internal defense reaction took my brain, made it less shifter, more total fox, breaking down the facts and feelings into pure and primal. My suffering raged on, while I gradually failed to put names to it. I no longer wished to die, only living in my torment from moment to moment—hurting more and more, reasoning less and less. Season by season, forgetting I could be anything more than a tiny, tormented being of fur and cage.

  How many winters? How many seasons before the cage opened? Then the lumber camp? Then Tem’s net in the river?

  How long before I’d lost who I was?

  How long before I really had died after all?

  How long since I had set out trying to lead the red foxes back to my silver family with no idea where to go? Only to open my eyes and find myself crying because I remembered everything?

  I remembered every joy, every pain. I understood why I had responded to Demik’s touch and latched on to him as a safe, loving place: a familiar embrace in a storm of hurt. I understood why I’d had the longing for being someone’s mate again—taking Mej for what he presented. I understood that the red foxes had never needed me at all. I had nee
ded them. Now, I had let them down. I remembered and cried for what I would never get back, what I could surely never forget again, what would haunt me for the rest of my winters.

  And I wept for Demik’s arms around me, giving me safety in his embrace. Yet I still did not understand how it happened.

  For months we had traveled in fur—searching, hunting, remembering. Then the snow closed in, the whiteout, the blizzard. And … the wolf? I looked up, my face streaked with tears, Demik stroking my hair.

  The den was a tepee in the style that Ondrog had made, not a fox den. At the center was a tiny fire built with stone sides. The smoke trickled out through the hole at the tip of the ceiling, the warmth here melting snow that would otherwise have fallen inside. There was a faint glow to the inside with this light, and greater warmth than merely that. The little tepee was full of people.

  Outside our bundle of sleeping skins, another hand that did not belong to Demik rested on my shoulder. Someone was breathing almost in snores beyond the stone fire.

  “Demik?”

  “We’re right here.” He kissed my brow.

  I turned into him, my back to the hot stone ring. “How did we get here? I thought … we were all in fur?”

  “We were.” Not Demik. It was Mej’s sleek voice just over my head. He also lay by the fire, his head beside ours, the rest of him stretched away so he formed one of the sides of a triangle shape with us and others, the fire in the center.

  The hand, also belonging to Mej, squeezed my shoulder. “You’ve missed a bit.”

  “Summit?” Demik pushed hair behind my ear. “You’ve been asleep.”

  I looked to his face, shifting again, and Demik stroked tears from my cheek with his thumb.

  “Summit…?”

  “I made a terrible mistake.” My voice broke. I pressed my face to his chest. “I’m sorry, Demik. I never should have let any of you follow me. We could have died. I was running from hurt and I had no right to bring anyone else along.”