It seemed to be a question, though I couldn’t think what he might want in reply. I licked the palm of his hand, where traces of sweat made salt tracks through fine lines. Demik shivered, pulling his hand away.
“Uh…” he said again, breathless. “Do you think you can stand? No—just sit there a minute and I’ll get your wrap.” He glanced toward the table, easing back from me.
I held on, leaned in to tuck my head below his jaw. It didn’t fit the way it had. Even so, he returned a hand to my back and let me stay, rubbing my skin with a thumb instead of long hand strokes.
I shut my eyes, breathing deeply. The sound of his heartbeat now came faintly, as if from the next room. It beat too quickly. His skin felt flushed, hotter than he had a moment ago.
“Demik?” Skeen called. “Everything all right? Neeve heard something.” Rattle and clank of door. “Oh—” a gasp. “You changed. What’s wrong?”
“Just a shock for her,” Demik said in my ear. “It’s been a long time, maybe winters, since she’s changed.”
“You poor creature. Why push her? She didn’t have to yet.”
“I didn’t push. Well…”
Skeen snorted. She grabbed cloth and skins from the table and stepped to us. “How are you? I’m sure that helped your bruises.”
I nodded.
Demik was pulling away again, Skeen leaning in to offer me cloth.
“Just a wrap for now?” Demik said. “Who knows how long it’s been since she’s had to dress?”
Skeen threw a blanket-like garment around my shoulders. It tickled my skin, warming like fur, though not nearly so comfortable. I smiled at her, feeling the hem with one hand and still holding Demik’s arm with the other.
“You look all right.” Skeen returned the smile as she sank to her knees. She helped me tuck in the wrapper and pushed back my hair. “The river’s seen to your bath, and I can help with your hair. As I suppose you know, I’m Skeen. This is my brother, Demik. Who are you?”
Something fell away with my smile, something lost and never found. Panic came like a whiteout as I stared into her eyes, then Demik’s, then away, recoiling, reaching for my own head. Room spinning once more, stomach turning over, terror chilling my blood. I wanted to scream but didn’t have breath, wanted to run but didn’t know the way.
“What’s wrong?” Skeen reached uncertainly for me.
Demik was the one who held my shoulder, let me clutch his hand, and quietly answered her question as he looked into my eyes. “She can’t remember who she is.”
Chapter 7
Night 1
Mej reached across the table with both hands to draw the pile of coins, pokes—pouches of gold dust—a couple of nuggets, a pocket watch, a knife, a silver cigarette case, and a well-worn derringer across the table.
Kellroy, the bearded oaf, stood so abruptly he knocked into the table, rattling coins, toppling empty glasses. He fanned playing cards across the burnt, warped, and gouged wooden surface. His words may have been slurred but there was no uncertainty in that bright red face behind the reddish-brown beard. His greasy, wide-brimmed hat tunneled through clouds of cigarette and cigar smoke hanging thick around the card table.
“Wait one minute, fish-gut!” Kellroy bellowed as he slammed an open palm onto the table. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“He’s right.” Komu bounced to his feet across the table from Mej. “I thought we were waiting for the right time together? Now you pull a hand like that and I’m out?”
“Luck of the draw.” Mej laughed. “Did you think I’d wait all night for your pleasure?”
Kellroy’s narrowed eyes wavered below the hat and bushy brows, darting to Komu, back to Mej. “Think you can hornswoggle me, darkie? Us?” With a sweeping gesture around the table.
John Bernard, known to all in the saloon as Jack, grabbed his hat and ducked as Kellroy’s massive arm swung over his head.
From his chair, Mej smiled up at Kellroy, sliding his winnings into an empty flour sack. “Bitter taste in your mouth?” he asked around his own cigarette. “Get yourself another whiskey and wash it away, eh?” Mej flipped a tiny nugget from the nearly vanished pile at Kellroy.
Kellroy lunged.
Mej spat the cigarette butt in his face and dropped as fast as a squirrel, under the round table and against the pedestal at its center, among two Malamutes and a black mongrel who had been undisturbed by the ruckus. The dogs looked around as Mej tumbled past them. His chair was knocked over by Kellroy’s assault. Komu dived, making a grab for Mej, as the three men still around the table sprang to their feet.
“Goddamned stinking fish-gut cheater!” Kellroy practically fell after Mej.
Another man snatched at him. The mongrel barked, leaping to her paws. Komu tackled Mej’s boots. Mej kicked free, rolled past a barmaid with a tray, scrambled up by another table, and ran—Komu still shouting right on his heels. Kellroy screamed oaths but did not make it more than ten yards as he stumbled and swayed.
Mej burst out double doors, open to the midnight sun, rounded the corner, and Komu hit him. It hurt too, the bastard.
Mej was thrown against the timber corner of the saloon, then to the board sidewalk on hands and knees. Only his tight hold on the flour sack kept it from spilling through slats to the quagmire below. Even as he hit, winded, he was twisting like a falling cat.
In a blur, Mej whipped onto his back and, with both boots together, kicked Komu in the stomach as Komu—shouting about them being friends and working together—dove for the bag.
Komu’s tirade was cut short with a great, “Ouph—” as the wind was knocked from him and he was hurled backward, past the front of the building, and crashed into six inches of mud on his ass. The pair of horses dozing at the hitching post hardly even shied. It would have taken an actual blow to rouse the raw-boned, ill-used creatures who were now used to eccentricities any Dawson City saloon had to offer.
It was the human spectators, all male and many drunk at this hour, who greatly enjoyed the spectacle—jeering, even applauding.
Laughing, Mej ran.
Chapter 8
With light steps and a glad heart, Mej trotted almost silently up the dirt paths through the forest, then back to the riverbank, taking his own shortcuts, merging with main trails.
He followed the Yukon north, often teetering on the edge as he admired rushing water after spring’s explosive thaw, the cool evening, the juniper berries, and the glowing night sky. The sun would set but stay hidden only for a few hours. This time of year the Klondike—as the humans now called the area—lingered in midnight summer magic of almost endless light, golden and blue and pink skies, with everything in bloom.
Summer here was a flighty lover. Mej never failed to enjoy it. He’d have enjoyed it more if he had something to go home to. His family was around. They’d be home now, sitting around the fires to keep away mosquitos.
Fish-gut. And so he was. The invading hoards—mostly white American and Canadian humans, but mixed with all sorts as thousands poured into the territory after gold—called his people fish-guts for their habit of living largely on fish and smelling of the stuff.
What difference did it make if they were the Fish-Gut Clan or the Aaqann River Clan? Or that murdering, trespassing, well-armed whites called it the West River, ignoring existing customs and claims?
Survival among humans mattered now. Rifles and firepower mattered. Fur trappers and poison baits and bullets.
His family were all elders or peers now. His generation’s vixens had been spoken for winters ago. Even allowing for bonded groups—two dog-foxes to one vixen, or the other way around—it was no use. The trouble was both lack of numbers and lack of compatibility. Too many immediate sisters, first cousins, or half-siblings. Not enough of anyone else.
In the meantime, there were dens of stray dog-foxes or vixens who lived together. That was his family now. Him and his skulk of three other stray males. No mate, no kits, and no prospects.
The
last fox clan of the Klondike was dying. Demik called him a fool for wasting his time on human tricks and mundane interests, hoping to build something better. But what else was left to them? Demik and others of his sort chased shadows, prayed to Earth Mother, burned herb bundles and danced to the spirit ancestors, begging for ways to save their clan.
Yet Mej was the fool? For making a profit on the whites? For taking what they needed rather than wrapping his brush across his paws and praying for better days?
Mej was one of very few foxes who had learned human games, knew their ways, created something better for his clan by using them rather than bowing or running.
If Demik had his way they would move the clan altogether. They used to be nomadic: for generations the fox, wolf, and cat clans had roamed these thousands of miles of wilderness with the seasons. They followed the salmon, caribou, and any other means of survival they could. Sometimes they warred, sometimes gathered peacefully, and mostly they avoided other shifters and lived their own lives.
Even in avoidance, there had always been travelers. Clans mixed, changed, merged, parted.
Not anymore.
Mej could smell the settlement now: fish, smoke, dog. He smiled as he walked briskly, gazing straight ahead, his eyes hooded against the horizon of sunlight across the river.
To the yearling’s credit, Mej hardly heard Komu.
Mej waited as long as he could, then jumped into the air and back, springing clear as the lean form smashed into earth where he should have been tackling Mej’s shins.
Komu stank of horse and dog shit from the morass of Dawson City streets in summertime. His woolen trousers and leather boots remained covered in filth, despite his dash to catch Mej.
Mej had to laugh as he ran along the high riverbank. “You kit! Don’t you even try?” He spoke in their own tongue, which they always switched to outside Dawson, dropping the common English spoken in saloons.
“Black frog!” Komu shouted back at him, also in Vulpen, already up and chasing, boots thumping with less grace than Mej’s.
“Mole’s swill!” Mej called back.
“Kit’s vomit!”
“Pink nose!”
“Hand-licker!” Komu was breathless but still running.
“Flea haven!”
They continued shouting as they dashed into the settlement, a few dogs barking, and sped to their den. The A-frame structure was made of birch poles and stretched hides, along with some canvas. In the summer, it kept off rain and mosquitoes. In winter, snow slid down and made natural insulation where it covered the sides, allowing smoke to escape the top.
Mej was making for the mosquito flap around back, ready to dodge in and trip Komu—that kit was perpetually in need of another lesson. But Komu was mere steps behind him, yelling. Mej had to leap over a dog that came to greet him, looked up, and stopped.
With a horrible slam Komu, not even checking his stride, smashed into Mej and sent him flying ten feet across the rocky, weedy ground. Mej turned his head and threw out his hands, twisting fast enough to take the blow on his shoulder and skin one hand rather than getting a chin-full of grit.
Komu stumbled and fell, but caught himself and staggered until he almost ran over the top of Mej. Mej flipped to his back. Just in time, Komu found his balance. He swayed, laughing, and grabbed Mej’s hand.
Mej allowed himself to be pulled up, shifted the bag from his good hand to the skinned one, and brushed at his human’s off-white cotton shirt and chestnut leather vest with the other.
Panting, holding Mej’s shoulder, Komu stared ahead, eyes wide, laugh fading, and Mej remembered why he’d stopped. Yet, surely not. A trick of the evening light? Wishful thinking since he’d been regretting his own life being defined by being a stray for the rest of his winters? No kits, no companion more appealing than blundering Komu, no sex life, only to look up and see miracles before his dazed eyes?
Mej shook himself, side by side with Komu, also panting after the force of that last blow. He sniffed, nose full of dust and smoke off his own clothes. He listened, ears full of a strange, high-frequency buzzing. He stared.
Even so, it remained true. His irritating denmate, Demik—the dreamer, the quester, the rejector of humanity—stood on boards leading into the den with a young vixen. He’d been talking to her, hand on hers, her holding his arm, when they’d run up. Now both returned Mej and Komu’s stares.
She appeared to be twenty winters or beyond, of an age with him and Demik, older than Komu. Overly thin, with hollow cheeks and Skeen’s shift and wrap hanging on her as if on a wire fence. Aside from this, with her brushed and unbound hair down to her hips, her large eyes and dainty nose, her sunny skin and elegant hands, and that smile to see him—that pure perfect smile that said, I’m so glad you’re here—she was the most beautiful creature Mej had ever seen.
None of this was why he’d just stopped dead and allowed Komu to clobber him. Nor why both dog-foxes stood staring stupidly at her with their mouths open and their pulses quickening. That was simply because they had never seen any unknown vixen in their adult lives.
Chapter 9
“Earth Mother,” Komu whispered.
Mej was moving again, catching his breath, brushing dust from the chestnut vest, shoving the dirty flour sack with their winnings at Komu to catch.
Mej strode forward with an easy smile and return of his best graces while both instinct and reason joined to offer appropriate responses to a new female. He rumpled his hair, also dislodging dust. From short hair to black boots, Mej blended with the white gamblers of Dawson City. His skin may have been darker, his teeth too perfect, and he could never grow a beard—little to no facial hair being genetic in his clan—but his English was as flawless as his general human sense. He prayed this was a vixen who appreciated such features in a fox. Not one of those radical, old ways purists like her pal Demik.
Perhaps she’d like a night in the best hotel Dawson City had to offer? These days, that actually meant something. Glass chandeliers, waiters with silver trays, bed linens from Portugal, wine from France—even two pianos in the Yukon now, both in Dawson City.
A few years ago, Dawson had been a shanty town and row of timber buildings beside the Yukon River. Now the humans called it Paris of the North.
But did she like such things? The way she had herself draped around Demik, perhaps traditional was her hunt of choice?
“A pleasant evening to you,” Mej said in Vulpen, opening his hands, “May I offer you a humble welcome to our settlement and den? I’m Mej. You’ll have heard my name from the clan. And Komu, my student.”
Komu stopped sullenly behind Mej. Demik stiffened, which might have been reward enough, but Mej hardly noticed anything except the vixen’s soft stance and warm smile. Her luscious brown eyes, laced in shades from honeyed gold to deepest umber, lit up with his words, and she beamed.
“I, um…” Strange—Mej couldn’t remember the last time he had lost his train of thought. All he could think of was his need to prove himself, to be invincible, somehow perfect and worthy. He felt a panicky urge to punch Demik’s sour face just in case that would do the trick.
“Leave her be, Mej.” Demik’s voice was low. He glanced at the vixen as if meaning to reassure her, but she paid him no mind, only smiling her perfect smile at Mej.
Mej also ignored Demik. He would not usually have been so oafish as to offer a female of any species his hand unless she had first chosen to offer hers. Now, suddenly awkward, he presented his hand in the manner of the whites when meeting one another.
The vixen regarded it for a second, still smiling, while Demik recoiled, looking as if Mej had cursed him. Then she rested her thin hand against his, her fingers stroking his palm. Heat surged from skin contact, up his arm to his brain, bursting from hand to every nerve.
“And you are?” Mej asked, withdrawing his hand as she did. Apparently she’d never seen a handshake. Fox through and through. A vixen after Demik’s own heart. Not his. Then why, how, did he feel this way
?
At his question she glanced at Demik, her smile faltering for the first time.
Demik looked even more uncomfortable. “We don’t know. She…” he hesitated, meeting her eyes for a second, then back to Mej. “She hasn’t said anything yet.”
Mej blinked, unsure he’d understood amidst the hammering of blood in his ears. “She what?”
“It had been a long time since she’d changed,” Demik said. “She wants to talk with us. She only needs a little time to get her voice back. Maybe … practice.”
“She understands Vulpen, though?” Mej watched her.
Again, she smiled into his eyes.
“Oh, yes,” Demik rushed on. “It’s not like that. She’s very bright. She understands fine, and hears perfectly.”
Demik’s race to defend the damaged goods set off a further warning bell. Why the insistence unless he, too, feared the worst?
Lovely. One roaming vixen stumbled into the settlement in their generation and she was a mute who couldn’t even tell them her name and that smile, of course, wasn’t an open invitation. It was the completely unguarded rose-petal sweetness of someone touched in the head.
So much for worrying about making an impression. All for the best that she’d landed with Demik to look after her. Whatever Demik’s shortsighted faults, he was a good fox. He’d be kind to her even if she drooled on herself. And Mej didn’t have to completely discount her. She’d known to touch his hand, hadn’t she? She was probably sharper than many a human miner.
Mej gave the doe-eyed vixen another smile. “Well … I look forward to making your acquaintance once you … find your tongue. We won’t be parted by many steps.” He nodded to the den beside them. “You’ll be curling down with him, then?” A bit of a raised eyebrow, innocent question, still smiling.
She nodded, clearly pleased with Mej.
Demik was shaking his head. “She’s denning with Skeen.”
Fox’s Dawn: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 1) Page 3
