The Heart of a Fox

by T. Isilwath

  “Maybe if I agreed, they would let me see you…” he pressed.

  She grabbed his arm. “No, Aki. A life in a cage is not for you.”

  “A life without you is no life at all,” he countered.

  She closed her eyes and let her forehead fall to his shoulder. “No, Aki. No.

  You don’t understand. They’d take your life. Once they no longer had a use for you, they’d kill you.”

  “Any more than the hunters would kill me? If I am to die, I want a say in how I go. And maybe I could make myself useful to them. You say that kitsune do not exist in your time. Maybe I could make a pact with them to use my powers if they would let me see you.”

  She could see his point. In his mind it would make sense, and servitude was familiar to him. As far as he was concerned, he’d just be trading one master for another, but she didn’t know how to make him understand what the people of her time were capable of doing, of the horrors they could inflict upon him.

  “No… no, Aki,” she gasped. “They would destroy you. You can’t even consider what you are considering. It’s madness.”

  “Madness is my world without you.”

  “Aki…” she tried again, but his face suddenly changed, his eyes growing wide as he pulled away.

  “Or maybe… maybe it is that you do not want me to come. Maybe you have decided to return to your betrothed now that your people have found you.

  Maybe I would have no place in your life no matter what I did.” His voice was more desolate than angry, and she knew she could not allow him to believe such a lie, even if it gained her the reassurance that she wanted.

  “No. No, Akihiro. Aki, I love you. I love you. I want you to be safe… and happy… and alive. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I couldn’t live knowing that you were caged or hurting. Please…”

  “Joanna-sama… don’t you know that I am dead without you anyway?”

  “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. Suzuka…”

  He grabbed her hands and forced her to look at him. “Suzuka does not love me. She loved me once, but no more. Our chance ended long before I ever met you. She will never leave her father or her duties, and she is not you. I do not love her. You are my vixen, the one that I love. If I cannot be with you, I will not find another to replace you. You are the only one for me.”

  “Akihiro…”

  He released her hands only to enfold her in his arms, his cheek pressed to the top of her head. “Joanna-sama… when you were so sick, dying, I wanted to die too. I felt so helpless and lost. I didn’t know what I was going to do; how I was going to live without you. I almost… I almost…” He stopped, and she dreaded hearing what he had been about to say, her own imagination filling in the blanks.

  ‘He almost killed himself…’ she thought with a sick feeling in her stomach.

  “It’s all right. It’s all right now, Aki. I’m going to live.” He placed a fierce kiss on her temple. “Yes. You are going to live. That’s all that matters. The only thing that matters.”

  She clung to him, holding onto the solid strength of him. “Yes.” She shivered, and the cool night air reminded her that she was dressed only in a flimsy hospital gown and a thin cotton blanket. Akihiro felt her trembling too and pulled away, but the lack of his body heat only made her shiver more.

  “Your people are idiots,” he complained, looking at her clothing. “Look at what they put on you. You will catch your death from cold.” She chuckled and it seemed they were both grateful for the distraction.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He shook his head and moved for the hollow. “No. Your clothes are here, Joanna-sama. You should change into your warm shirt and pants.” She grabbed his wrist as he tried to move away, taking the opportunity while it presented itself. “If I change into better clothes, does that mean you won’t keep me warm?” she asked coyly.

  He gave her a soft smile. “I will gladly keep you warm, Joanna-sama.”

  “Aki… don’t you think, after all we’ve been through, that you’ve earned the right to drop the –sama honorific and just call me Joanna?” she said.

  He shook his head. “You will always be my lady, Joanna-sama, I could no more stop calling you Joanna-sama than I could stop the tides.”

  “Ouch, melodramatic much?” she teased.

  He chuckled and gently pried his wrist from her grasp, turning instead for the hollow and her clothes. He came back carrying a set of her sweats, and she slipped them on while he fetched water and firewood. They were silent as he started a fire and boiled water on the grate to make tea.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, poking the fire with a thin branch.

  “No. They fed me, and, to be honest, I shouldn’t eat anyway. I don’t have any insulin with me.”

  “I could get it, if you want. I know what it smells like,” he offered.

  She shook her head. “No. I’ll be all right overnight. I have to go back in the morning anyway,” she admitted reluctantly.

  He was silent for a moment, then nodded. “That is when you will leave?” She nodded. “Yes. The nurse said we’d go in the morning.”

  “I… see.”

  She reached out and took his hand. “Akihiro…”

  “Is there no way then? That I can go with you?”

  “No.”

  He sighed and pulled his hand away. “Then I will die.”

  “Don’t say that! You don’t know what awaits you.”

  “The hunters await me,” he said with certainty. “I can promise you that I will not end my life by my own hand, but I cannot promise you that I will fight them when they come for me. Death will be a release from my suffering.”

  “How can you expect me to go back and… and live my life knowing that you will be here waiting to die?”

  “But I won’t be. I will already be dead and my bones turned to dust before you are even born, my vixen.”

  He looked at her, and his eyes were so old and so sad she couldn’t bear it.

  “Akihiro, my fox, how can I leave you?”

  “How can you not? If you don’t go, you will die.”

  “And if I don’t stay, you will die!”

  “I will die anyway, and, if you stay with me, you will be killed too. Neither humans nor demons will accept our bond. I’ve known that from the beginning; when I fell in love with you.”

  “Akihiro…”

  “And what of your Michael? Do you not love him? Will you not be happy to see him, this man whom you are to marry?”

  She thought of Michael, dear, sweet Michael, who had probably been through hell the last five months. She thought of him waiting for her, of his expression when they told him that she had been found. She imagined the joy, the relief and hope on his beloved face…

  No. She couldn’t say that she wouldn’t be happy to see Michael.

  “Ah,” Akihiro whispered, his voice resigned.

  She started to cry again, shame and heartache making her tremble. Akihiro turned to her and gently wiped away her tears.

  “Joanna-sama, my beloved, the best way you can honor me is to live and be happy. I want you to live and be happy. That is all I have ever wanted for you,” he admitted, his voice tender and his touch loving.

  “From the moment I met you, when you saved my life, I have been blessed with your friendship and your love. You have reminded me of all the things I had forgotten. You helped me become a man who dreamed of being worthy of you. You changed me, and I can never go back to being what I was. For that I am grateful. Even knowing that I will never see you again, I am happy. I am happy for you, and I am happy to know that you will be safe in your time with people who love you. I can only hope that Michael loves you as much as I do.”

  ‘He loves me. He loves enough to let me go…’ “Oh Akihiro. I do love you,” she swore, looking him in the eye and praying he could see her soul.

  “And I love you, Joanna-sama, my vixen. No matter what else happens, remember that.”

  “I will.
I will remember. And I will miss you. I will miss you so much. ” She reached up and took his face, his beloved face, in her hands again, and drew him down for a kiss. There was so much that needed to be said, so much that had been said, and so much that could never be said. All she could do was love him with what time she had left and savor the memory.

  “Joanna-sama…” he sighed into her mouth, his eyes closed, and his hands came up to caress her arms.

  “Tomorrow we have to say goodbye, my fox. But we have this one night left to us. Let’s make it one we both will never forget.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Akihiro watched his vixen sleep. He was exhausted, and almost completely drained of energy, but he could not make himself close his eyes. To sleep would mean wasting precious hours; hours he could spend looking at his beloved’s face. Hours that would have to sustain him in the long years to come.

  They were in the hollow underneath the king tree, tangled in the warm bedding and blankets. She’d guided him there after their first fevered kisses, when hands roamed and clothing was shed piece by piece. Even now the small space still smelled of sweat and pleasure; more pleasure than he had ever known.

  They hadn’t mated. In that one aspect, she had remained faithful to her betrothed and had not completed the final act of their joining. It was just as well because if they’d actually mated, he wasn’t certain he would have survived it.

  As it was, the things she had done… with her hands… with her mouth. His head still swam with it; his body still tingled, echoing with ecstasy.

  He sighed and pressed his nose to the back of her neck, breathing in her scent. The fox in him crooned with pleasure and possessiveness, and he knew that he had crossed a line. Before she had touched him, before she had offered herself to him so willingly and completely, before she had played his body as expertly as she played her guitar, he had entertained the fantasy of actually being able to let her go. He had managed to convince himself that her health and happiness were all that mattered, and he would gladly send her back to her time (and her betrothed) if it meant that she would live.

  No more.

  His fox blood roiled inside him, lashing its tail and gnashing its teeth. It was not about to allow a rival male to take its mate without a fight. Joanna was his and he would not give her up willingly. But how to stay with her? How would he manage to get through the Gate?

  He thought about killing one of the soldiers and taking his place, but discarded the idea because he knew Joanna would not want him to kill an innocent human. He thought about incapacitating one of them and taking his place, but decided against that because he would not leave an innocent man to Joanna’s fate of being trapped in his time. He thought about sneaking through the Gate unseen and undetected, but he doubted he had enough energy to sustain a shadow illusion long enough to achieve his goal. Besides, there was no way of telling what kind of protections they had on the Gate to prevent unknown people from traveling through. It very well could be that any unexpected activity would trigger bindings (or worse), and he was sure that the ones in control of the Gate would not be happy if a stranger tried to get through without their permission.

  And going through the Gate presented a whole host of new problems; problems Joanna had already warned him about. He would have no idea how to survive in her time. He’d seen her books, heard her speak of what life was like in the future, and he knew that there was no way he would be able to navigate her strange and confusing world; not without his vixen’s help and that could not be guaranteed. No doubt she would have to spend many days (weeks even) with the doctors of her time as they tried to find out how badly her body had been damaged by her illness. In those weeks he would be on his own, and he did not know if he could hide for that long without getting caught. And if they caught him… well, Joanna had been very clear about what her people would do to him if they ever had him in their clutches. While he might not have minded serving her people, he had no desire to become their prisoner.

  He had one viable option available to him, and it seemed the most impossible of all. He could live. He could live five hundred years and meet Joanna in the future. Of course that would mean having to actually survive through five centuries with enough of his wits about him to make it. It would mean defying Fate and denying the hunters his tail, something not even his father had been able to do. But Kazehiro did not have the incentive to live that his son did, nor did he have the benefit of someone who knew the future.

  Akihiro had both and a plan slowly formed in his mind.

  ‘I will live. I will live and meet Joanna in her time. I will find her. I know where she will be, and, when I do, I will make her mine.’

  ‘And what of the betrothed?’ his fox asked, eagerly baring teeth.

  ‘We will deal with him,’ he replied, his jaw clenching.

  He knew his vixen would never want her human lover to come to any harm so Michael would have to be handled delicately, but he had ways of removing a threat without causing permanent damage.

  ‘And if I am 500 years old, I will be much more powerful than I am now.’

  There were any number of things he could do to Michael that wouldn’t do him any harm yet still get his point across. If anything, getting rid of a single human male was so easy it was almost laughable.

  ‘Joanna is mine, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep her,’ he vowed.

  His vixen sighed in her sleep, and he took another deep breath, comforting himself in the knowledge that her scent was normal. She made a little sound and he snuggled close, licking the back of her neck with the flat of his tongue.

  He heard her moan, then chuckle softly as she awakened and started to roll towards him. He gave a small mock-growl, his teeth gently pressing into the tender flesh at the nape of her neck as his hands slid up to cup the soft mounds of her breasts, his fingers kneading carefully so as not to scratch her with his nails.

  “So you bite now, my fox?” she asked with amusement, her voice husky.

  His answer was another low growl followed by another gentle nip. She laughed and ignored him, rolling over to look him in the eye. He smiled at her and she smiled back, her expression loving and tender as she lifted one hand to lightly brush the hair away from his face. He nuzzled into her palm, licking again, loving the taste of her, and she slid her foot along his calf. He moaned.

  “You know what they say about foxes,” she commented fondly.

  “What do they say?” he asked, dipping his nose into the hollow of her throat.

  She arched her neck and stroked his head, her fingers tangling in his long hair. “That they’re insatiable.”

  He pressed his face to the valley between her breasts and breathed in the scent of her musk.

  “It must be true,” he murmured, his lips against her warm skin as his body responded.

  She groaned and pulled him closer. “Akihiro…”

  He gave a choked growl and pushed her to her back, leaning over her as they kissed. Her hands slid down to caress his thighs, and he lost all sense of time and reason...

  “I’m going to live,” he told her.

  She was snuggled against him, her cheek pressed into the crook of his shoulder, as they rested from another bout of half-mating.

  “Mmm?” she replied, looking up at him with sleepy eyes.

  “I said: I’m going to live.”

  She smiled and tightened her arm around his waist. “You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that.”

  “No, you misunderstand me,” he corrected gently, realizing that she wasn’t getting his meaning. “I am going to live and meet you in the future.” That got her attention and she sat up, heedless of the fact that she was still naked from the waist up. “What?”

  “I’m going to live and meet you in the future,” he repeated, smiling at the stunned look on her face.

  “But you said…”

  “I know what I said, but I have decided. I will live.”

  “Akihiro…”
r />   “If I do that, then I will have learned how to live in your world, and you won’t have to worry about me trying to survive,” he explained.

  “But Akihiro, there are no kitsunes in my time,” she argued.

  “How do you know? Maybe we are all hidden. We are masters of illusion.

  Maybe we all went deep into the forests, and no one even knows we are there.” She gave him an incredulous look, but did not refute his claim. He gazed at her, trying to read the expressions on her face, and reached up one had to brush back a tendril of her hair. She shivered at his touch.

  “Would this please you, my vixen? If you were to see me again in your time, would you be happy?”

  He saw her lick her lips as she smiled. “It would be wonderful to see you again; to know that you were alive and well…”

  He smiled back. “Then that is what I will do.”

  “What about the hunters? You keep telling me that they’re going to come for you as you get older.”

  He nodded. “That is true, but I will find a way to survive.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe I will seek out my uncle.”

  “Your father had a brother?”

  “Yes. He only had three tails the last I saw him. He was never overly fond of my mother and me, but he did come to see us after Chichi-ue was killed. He might offer me some protection in return for something I can give him.”

  “What will you give him?”

  “Knowledge of the future, my vixen,” he answered with a sly smile. “You have already told me of some of the changes that will occur in the future. Such knowledge is priceless. If I could tell him what is going to happen, then maybe I can trade on that knowledge for things I need.”

  “Not just that, but I can give you information on what investments to make, what inventions worked and what didn’t. With information like that, you could build fortunes,” she added eagerly, her eyes lighting up.

  “Wealth and power are useful things in any age,” he agreed, his smile widening at her obvious pleasure.