Fox’s Dawn: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 1)

by K. R. Alexander

  It crossed my mind to ask Frank to join our pack, but Frank was no packing wolf—no matter how tall he might be. Frank wasn’t even a shifter.

  Komu used silver tongs to pick out a bag of strawberry bonbons for me, with a few extra flavors, then another mixed bag with toffees and licorice and other delights for the trail tomorrow. He said they were for Ondrog and Demik. Mej rolled his eyes, tapping his toe on the blackened wood floor. I kissed Komu’s cheek.

  He paid extra for all our sampling, gave me a bonbon, then put away the paper bags in a pouch on his belt beside the poke for gold dust.

  “You need a handbag if you’re going around Dawson City like us,” Komu said when he noticed me watching.

  “I have nothing to put in it.”

  “How about bonbons?”

  “Oh…” I smiled. “Where can we get one?”

  Neither answered but Mej laughed all the way outside.

  The hotel was a mountain of a human building. Timber and glass, with three stories and a false front at the top that made it look even bigger.

  Mej explained that in the downstairs was a lounge, dining hall, saloon, dance hall, and “games.” Upstairs were sleeping rooms that humans borrowed for stays from one night to several weeks, paying in gold dust or coins for the privilege.

  “Businessmen in Dawson won’t even look at paper money. Everything’s run on scales. Barmen grow their fingernails long to pick up extra dust and cheat their customers. You’ll see. And the prices start out sky-high. Five to ten dollars in gold for a beer or whiskey, a dollar apiece for a chicken egg. It’s not the miners striking it rich, it’s these fellows.”

  I wasn’t sure what Mej meant by some of this, what a saloon was, or “paper money,” but that couldn’t be important. Being here in the city with them and bonbons and climbing to a third story mattered. How did we get up there?

  Mej carried me across the street to front doors while I laced my fingers at the back of his neck and gazed at the hotel with even more excitement than at candies.

  “We’ll get up there? To the very top?”

  “We aim to impress.” Mej chuckled. “At least to look out a window. Not sure if we can reach the roof… Barbara Ann will give me a key for a top room if I ask real sweet and one of them’s empty. The place gets packed just like everywhere else in the spring, but everyone in Dawson runs an inn or a boarding house these days.”

  “Might give her one of your bonbons.” Komu winked at me. “ Barbara Ann loves them too.”

  “Do you get them for her?”

  Komu looked away. It seemed color darkened around his ears. “Oh, well—”

  I didn’t have time to wonder why that had embarrassed him, or apologize, as Mej set me down on the boardwalk and simultaneously stuck his foot out to trip Komu. Komu was fast enough on his feet to jump and land without falling. He cursed Mej, saying he didn’t have another pair of trousers. Mej only laughed.

  “We’re pals tonight, all right?” Mej said as he led me up the steps to the hotel’s double doors, one standing open to the sunny night. “No fights. Quick few games, show the vixen upstairs, and gone. Right?”

  Komu nodded, smoothing back his hair.

  “Are you usually not pals?” I asked.

  “Usually,” Mej said. “That’s no way to pull a bluff. Now—” He turned to face me before the doorway. “We’ll be speaking English in here, but if you need to know anything, just ask. You can hang about our table, have peanuts and fish eggs if you want, and I’ll show you upstairs when we get a chance. They put out salty bites and crackers so men will buy more drinks.”

  I nodded. “I want to see the first story also.”

  “That’s what I thought. Make yourself at home.” He smiled as we stepped in, one side of his mouth turned up more, while he watched me.

  The cloud of cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoke was so thick, wafting toward us through the open door, it made my nose burn and eyes tear up. The rumble of voices merged to thunder—every one being male. Lamps kept the smoke gloom at bay, making dark panel wood, floor, bar, and tables glow. I couldn’t see any oil in the lamps. Indeed, some hung from the ceiling and I couldn’t tell how they were lit at all. They didn’t even flicker.

  In all directions men ate, talked, or argued as we moved past the bar on our right. Several dogs bounded from under tables to sniff us and growl, surprising the humans around them, who shouted. I couldn’t understand what they said, though apparently the dogs were not usually interested in newcomers.

  “Don’t worry about them,” Mej told me in Vulpen. “Local dogs are used to the smell of us. New ones get confused.”

  I wasn’t worried. I had too much to look at and sniff through the smoke. Anyway, Mej and Komu moved forward and hissed at the dogs as if in fur. The big animals backed down, still sniffing after our feet, their hackles on end.

  “Always as if they think we’ve got foxes in our vests,” Komu said above the din.

  They both laughed.

  I smiled, yet couldn’t think what was funny about that. Dogs, after all, were not stupid.

  Mej wore a chestnut vest over a cream shirt. Komu wore a black vest and charcoal shirt, making him look more serious and older than he was. They’d seemed oddly dressed at home. Now they looked like the humans, only sharper and cleaner. Some of the grubby men were in shirtsleeves with no jackets or vests at all.

  The room of tables with the dance hall took up most of this first story. A vast expanse of a room, an indoor city, everything noise and motion and new smells. I roamed around the parameter, several times losing Komu or Mej, or both.

  Tables and chairs with men, men, men: sitting or moving between them. At the end a piano—Mej said what it was called—and woman on the low platform. She stood before a soft red curtain that shimmered and rippled in the light. A man played while she sang and paced up and down the little stage with an irritable manner. No one seemed to be watching or listening, yet I longed to.

  The piano music made me want to move, skip, turn, put on my fur and prance. I could hardly hear it at all because of the boom, boom, boom of thunder voices.

  What did she sing? What did the lyrics mean? Why didn’t anyone listen?

  She was pretty, with reddish hair and sickly pale skin as if she never went out of doors. She wore a green dress, much darker than mine, that was missing pieces. A great chunk was gone from the top of her chest so she had no collar at all. There were slits up her skirt, showing flashes of her stockinged legs as she stalked up and down the stage. Why hadn’t they had one like that at the tailor’s? That dress looked so easy—wispy like aspen leaves and cool like a stream.

  “Wait—you—”

  Someone caught my wrist and I turned, smiling.

  “We really need a name for you,” Mej said, panting. “How about Slippery? Or Quicksilver?”

  “Mej? What’s behind the cloth wall?”

  “Backstage. Just a couple of dressing rooms for performers. Nothing you need to sniff. Stay in sight.” He was tugging my arm so I returned with him to a table where Komu sat, talking in English to an extraordinary array of men. All different types and clothes. I forgot about music when I leaned in to sniff each one, smiling as they glanced around, some apparently alarmed.

  Mej waved his hand, saying something about me in English.

  I hadn’t thought they could be so unique, these men. Yet, like our fur colors and markings, each had his own look. Beyond that, in this form with no nose, I sadly had to conclude that their smells were all the same: smoke and sweat with little to distinguish one from the other.

  I circled the table while a man passed around slips of paper. Playing cards. All talked over one another, none bothered that the others might have something to say.

  A mammoth dog with drooping ears and thick, hanging jowls, clambered from under the next table to growl at me, nostrils quivering, hackles lifting down his white and brown patched back.

  I skipped past him, bumping his muzzle aside with my leg below skirts
as I went. He didn’t know what he wanted, only stood uncertainly after the whack, looking around to the man he must have accompanied here.

  I made out the sound of the piano around the growls and voices, thump of pokes and stomp of feet. A woman with feathers around her neck brought glasses of amber liquid to the card table.

  I sniffed her tray, sharp and stinging with alcohol, then went on.

  She said something to me—a question.

  I could only smile, hoping I didn’t hurt her feelings.

  The song ended.

  One man at a table clapped his hands together many times and whistled. No one else noticed.

  The angry singer in the green dress stalked back to the man at the piano and talked to him. A break. We could start something new.

  Now with two dogs at my heels, I reached the stage and climbed up beside the piano.

  Chapter 26

  The dogs accompanied me onto the platform, sniffing around my skirt and moccasins as if sure I had something they needed. Seeing this, three more emerged from below tables to follow—another husky, a long-eared hound, and a rough-coated terrier with a torn ear and one eye.

  The piano man jumped, nearly falling off his wooden bench. The woman in the damaged dress stared at me, then at the five dogs.

  “Please?” I smiled. “May I touch the curtain?”

  The woman only stared with her mouth open. The man said something so unfamiliar I wasn’t even sure if it was English. I felt bad that they couldn’t understand me, but no one was blocking the way. They probably wouldn’t mind.

  I skipped past the piano to the red curtain. It rippled and bunched at my touch. Oh, it was lovely! Folds of soft, plush, smoky crimson. Like twirling about in a fire. Spin, spin, spin, laughing I bounded back to the piano. Why wasn’t he playing? Something to move us?

  I wasn’t the only one. Noise in the dance hall had changed. All the men nearby were laughing, looking up from their drinks or cards to gaze at the dogs around my skirt.

  The piano man flapped his hands, gesturing off the stage. I looked but couldn’t see anything important over there.

  The woman caught my shoulder and also pointed off to the right. I still didn’t see anything.

  Men laughed more. And more.

  The pale woman shouted and jabbed her finger to the right. I jabbed my finger to the piano.

  “Play, please? Won’t you play? No one could hear before.”

  The piano man only blinked at me.

  I moved around beside him. The woman snatched for me, but the tide of dogs kept us apart. Maybe she would dance with me if only music started again.

  Laughing, laughing, laughing, lighting up this inside city, transforming the room.

  I showed the piano man by dancing my fingers over keys.

  His face was red. He looked at me, the room, the woman, said something, shrugged, and started to play. I waved both hands at him, up, up, up: faster.

  This time, he understood. He changed to a fast beat: a spin and twirl tune, a glide and bound and stomp around the fire to keep warm on dark winter days tune.

  I beamed at the woman, leaping past, inviting, while dogs followed me. Some lost interest, merely standing on stage in a preoccupied manner, as if trying to place my smell. The terrier snapped at my skirt. I hissed as Mej and Komu had done, lest I kick him when I started to spin, and he desisted. He gazed up at me, cocking his head to see clearly with his one eye. I held down my hand to show I didn’t mean anything by it, peace gesture, and he hopped on his hind legs to sniff as if expecting a treat.

  Laughter. The singer’s angry words to the piano man’s music. Piano man shaking his head and playing; singer turning away to me; dog pack watching and moving round me as I spun. Twirl, stamp, jump, spin again.

  “Quicksilver! What the hell!”

  Whistling, clapping.

  The singer started, stepping in among us, throwing out her arm, taking in the stage. The dogs danced with me while she sang and the piano man played and dozens of men beat their hands in a regular clap, clap, clap.

  With the singing, the big hound threw back her head, opened her mouth, and gave tongue in a long, Owooo, yoooo-wooo!

  Then the huskies howled. Then all the dogs in the hotel howled.

  There was Mej, shouting, coming to join me, reaching up a hand as he stood at the side of the stage.

  Even more thrilled, I bounded to him, heart bursting with joy. I grabbed his hand and wrist and yanked him up. Of course he was here, of course he’d been waiting for this also. The dance of winter, of spring, of the happy hunt and the growing kit, dance of life beating in our blood. Komu too? Where was he? I didn’t see. Mej was enough. Dancing lived in our souls, in the senses of our whiskers and tread of our paws leaving scarcely a mark on a frozen crust of snow.

  “No, wait, listen to me—”

  I spun Mej into the pack of howling dogs and we twisted together. He caught my hands in his, pulling me. I followed, then pulled him back.

  He was saying something, calling into the howls, clapping, singing, and piano. Our eyes met and I tried to tell him with no words how perfect it was, how magical. It might be a black city, a blight, a plague, yet they made music and filled jars with the most delicious joy. The least we could do to show how much we appreciated the good things was dance. And how could we not dance when delight came this fast and thick, night bursting with life and laughter, summer in full cry?

  He pulled hard, many steps across the stage, then something changed in his eyes as they focused on mine. He stared. He squeezed my hands. Finally, he smiled—both sides of his mouth, both eyes. A rich smile that filled my heart with even more light and a new love for him as I felt his resistance shift to understanding.

  Then we danced.

  Mej was a splendid dancer. The dogs had lost interest in us to follow their fading howl. We could move uninhibited now, brushing past dogs, piano, and the pale woman, free to spin, whirl, and flow with rushing music. Many men joined with the woman’s song on the chorus. I don’t know what they said but it didn’t matter. It was not a laugh anymore but a cheer: an expression of this dancing euphoria like spring wildflowers.

  The piano raced. The singer also threw out her arms and moved with the music, hurling her words so the dance hall filled to bursting with her powerful, beautiful voice

  Men were on their feet, stomping in place, clapping their hands. The mighty room swelled with light and heat and common movement. Here was a shared wealth for all, no matter empty pokes or patched trousers. We were all the dancer, all the dance.

  Mej spun me away, caught again, and we moved together. He was heat, lightening, power, and grace. He was the ocean tide and forest fire’s power, midnight sun and full moon in endless nights of winter. He was the quickness of a squirrel, lightness of a sparrow, and strength of a wolf. In short, he was a fox: the perfect physical being, Earth Mother’s born dancer, with which not even the weasel, not even the cat, could compete.

  In my own motions I felt no more getting used to this skin body, no more reaching for balance. At last I knew me as if I had never spent a winter away from my skin, as if I had been dancing inside this body, and with this dog-fox as my soulmate, for all the winters of my past, and would be for all the winters of my future. I did not have to think of a single step, did not have to count or look. This was part of me. This I could never forget. I could forget my own name, but not my own soul. And this was it: soul manifest through ecstasy of the dance.

  Before, when I’d moved this way in my past, there had been another. Just as I had known Demik from his embrace and his love, I now knew Mej for the dancer and fire in his eyes. That burning intensity, the heat of his body, curve of his muscles, poetry of his step, and, mostly, the way he held me. The way he knew how to move, when, where, and how to connect. From the moment we started, unless spinning, our eye contact never broke. I knew it all. Knew exactly who he was as I had for Demik. Here was another side of my mate. The first had been the caress. The second woul
d be the fire—turning me into fire with him, for I burned in his light and heat like one flaming branch joining another.

  So we twirled and blazed bright together as one form, one being, joined by light, until the singer snagged a high note on the final line and the crowd roared. The piano banged. Mej caught me, let me fall back in a long, graceful curve, my arms thrown over my head, and the music stopped. The indoor city erupted with an explosion of cheering, pounding, clapping.

  Mej pulled me up, eyes still locked on mine, never blinking, sweat glistening on his brow, his breathing as hard and fast as my own. He was a fire god, an elemental spirit, a force of nature rivaled by nothing before Earth Mother herself, drawing me into his light, while I knew pure enchantment to be there.

  He kissed me, hot mouth over mine, with was open and waiting for him. He tasted of salty sweat, tobacco, and smoky whiskey. Then his own saliva, own personal taste that I wanted to climb into—drown with him.

  I grabbed his neck, pulling him painfully tight while he held me into him. I supported almost none of my own weight, still draped back against his hand. Warming winter dances could be more than this: leading to more, keeping warm together long after music faded. I imagined him following me onto the stage floor, lowering me all the way back. He had already made a promise in his request to be my mate. I would twine around him, hold on, and he would follow, finishing the dance together.

  Instead, amid what had turned to trilling cries and whistles, we stumbled down the few steps at the side, past the piano. Mej still held me up, pulling me from the stage, where I longed to remain with him. Yet … wasn’t there more to explore here?

  While we gasped and kissed, I wondered what we might find on the next stories.

  Chapter 27

  Komu met us, bringing us back to their table as another song started and the dance hall began to settle. I swayed with the new music, leaning into Mej’s hand for balance as I rocked.

  There was much talk around the table: much addressed at me, much I didn’t understand. I smiled and rolled along. Mej did the talking. His tone grew harsh as he commanded Komu to do something.