Chapter 25
“No. No, no, no, no, no.”
Ana put a hand to her head, struggling to stay standing as the room spun around her. After regaining consciousness to find herself back in bed, she’d raced from her room and practically thrown herself down the stairs in a mad dash to assure herself it had all been a dream. Emotions rose so thick inside her she couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe. Now she stood there, staring down at the macabre pile of shredded skin on the floor. It hadn’t been a dream.
“How could he do this to me?” she sobbed, falling to the floor. Her knees screamed in pain, but it was nothing compared to the sound her spirit made. It wailed and sobbed, broken by the sight of her fur--shredded by the man she’d opened her heart to. Hot tears streamed down her face as she gathered the scraps in her arms. The singed edges crumbled as they brushed against one another and she whimpered. “Oh, Brec, how could you?”
Something thick and gooey pressed against her palm and she frowned. She stared down at the pile of scraps in her grasp, noticing that one of them appeared to be a perfect strip of white fur.
“It’s a belt. Put it on.”
The little voice came from just in front of her. Ana raised her gaze to see Nu sitting on a planter. The pixie stared at her, his tiny features tight and unreadable.
“Why did he do it?” she whispered, clutching the fur to her chest. “I told him where the other furs were, why would he do this to me?”
Numbness crept from her mind down her body, blocking out the world. She felt herself sliding, falling into a black pit of despair. She had nothing left.
I thought he cared.
Something hit her between the eyes. Her head snapped back and she grunted in pain, momentarily ripped out of her self-pity.
“What the—”
“Dammit, are you listening to me? I said put it on!”
Nu hovered in front of her eyes, his little face twisted into a mask of fury. Ana frowned in confusion, unable to comprehend why the little fey would be so angry with her. Had he, like Brec, abandoned all pretense of caring about her? Was he going to leave her now too? She sniffed, tears falling down her face. Why did she care?
“Why are you so pissed off at me?” The weakness in her tone hurt her pride, but she ignored the pain. Just one more drop of water in the ocean.
“Because you don’t know what’s really important and by the time you figure it out, it might be too late,” the pixie snapped.
Ana stared at the strip of skin in her hands. “I am too late. My skin is destroyed.”
“Tatania help me, I think I’m going to explode,” the pixie gasped. “Just. Put. The. Belt. On.”
Ana frowned, holding up the strip of skin the pixie was pointing at. A belt?
A tiny spark of hope flickered in Ana’s heart, shocking her with its intensity. Brec had cut it up. She raised the skin to her nose and sniffed. It smelled like herbs. Could he have . . .
She raised the skin in front of her, slowly rising to her feet. “You mean, if I put this belt on . . . it’ll make me a fox?”
The tears thickened her voice, making the belt in her hand shine and blur in front of her. It was too much to hope for. It wasn’t possible.
“Ana.” The pixie’s voice was gentle now and she clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a cry as he flew up to look into her eyes. “Try it,” he said softly.
Moving as if in a dream, Ana lowered the strip of fur. With shaking hands, she looped it around her naked waist. She hesitated for just a moment before tying the ends in a knot.
The effect was instantaneous. Energy sizzled along her waist where it touched the belt, a magnificent feeling of power spreading up and down her body. It tore a gasp from her throat as it infused her muscles with a glorious warmth.
She stared down at her skin, overwhelmed with shock as white fur sprouted from her flesh. Muscles, tendons, and bones moved inside her body, lowering her upper half to the floor until she lost her balance. She fell to her knees only to find her legs were shorter, thinner. She lowered her head, and felt her nose brush the floor. A short white snout tipped in a black nose met her eyes and she whirled around to find a thick furry tail winding along her side. The almost forgotten sound of claws against hard wood tickled her ears and she looked down to find small black claws protruding from four delicate white paws.
I’m a fox.
Joy exploded inside her. A clicking sound tickled her ears, and she glanced to the side to see Nu shoving the door open. Wild with disbelief and nearly incapacitated with happiness she whirled around and bolted out into the air. She hit the ground on four paws, trembling with emotions almost too big for her new body.
It was a dream come true. A wild and glorious dream filled with happiness and excitement, a dream that was too good to be real. She raced through the snow, jumping and whirling, barking and yipping her joy to the world. Her padded feet barely touched the ground as she raced faster and faster, exhilarating in the speed that was only possible on four legs. Nothing could stop her. She leapt over branches, dove through snow drifts. She was the wind, the snow. She was an arctic fox.
For what seemed like an eternity she rolled in the snow, amazed at the warmth of her fur coat. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to glory in the outdoors with nothing between her and the elements but her own fur. Her body was unrestricted by a coat or heavy boots, perfectly snug in her own skin. She leapt into the air and took off at a dead run, relishing the way the wind ruffled her fur without plunging its icy fingers into her flesh.
A small sound to her right pricked her ears forward. Suddenly she was overwhelmed with sounds, the mournful howl of the wind, the clacking of the tree branches against one another—and the tiny squeak of a lemming. Hunger bit her belly and Ana turned her attention to her prey, following her sharp sense of smell to where the small white rodent lay hidden in the snow. Her muscles jerked, firing her like an arrow straight at her target.
Warm blood erupted in her mouth as her jaws closed over her meal. She relished the taste of the first truly fresh meat she’d had in years, savoring every swallow. When she was finished, she licked the blood from her paws, lovingly returning her fur to its pristine white condition. Happier than she ever dreamed of being, she trotted off into the snow.
Chapter 26
For the first time in his life, Orkney did not take Brec’s breath away. The magnificent underwater palace, ancestral home of the selkies, glittered as it always did, lit by the phosphorescent lights of the sea. Vast gardens of multicolored seaweed and towers of beautiful white coral stretched as far as the eye could see. Giant pearls lined the towers, glittering in the lights that danced with the changing tides. It used to awe him, to remind him of how wonderful the sea was and how everything else paled in comparison.
Now all he could see was the ghost of crystal blue eyes, glittering with tears and rage. Silvery blonde hair trailed behind her like the tail of a comet as she flew at him with all the fury of a woman scorned. He could still feel his own anger burning in his stomach as he lunged for his skin. What must he have looked like to her when he snatched the fur from her naked body, the Morrigan’s madness in his eyes?
The water caressing his seal skin as he swam into the palace did nothing to ease the pain in his heart. It didn’t matter what she thought of him. He swirled through the water, around one of his home’s grand columns. Still, he would have liked to see her regain her fox fur. To watch her become her true form, the one that held all her happiness. Knowing he had played a part in returning it to her would have been the most rewarding moment of his life. Even if it couldn’t be the life he wanted.
He broke the surface in one of the many air-filled chambers that filled the underwater castle. Brec let his fur fall back to reveal his human form, taking a deep breath as he did so. His eyes danced over the bright pink and green algae growing all around the room. There was something about the oxygen produced by the algae in the small confines of these rooms that just invigorated the blood
better than the oxygen swirling around over the land. Even the sea air couldn’t quite compare.
A warm breeze touched his head like the soothing touch of family welcoming him home. Pulling himself out of the water onto the smooth rocky ledge, Brec searched within himself for the peace that usually came from returning to his ancestral home. The glass dome ceiling revealed hundreds of colorful fish swimming overhead along with the faintest hint of light that managed to pierce these depths from the sun. The water seemed so dark from here thanks to the illumination from the electric lights. Brec stared at the lamps on either side of the overstuffed couch against one wall.
Old enough to remember a time before they’d brought such human comforts down into the bowels of Orkney, he sometimes missed the simple glow of luminescent plants and fish that had once been used to light the rooms. He flopped down on the sofa. He did love the furniture though. It wasn’t a picnic wrapping the couches in plastic and dragging them down through the tunnels, but the comfort of the end result was worth it, in his opinion.
A sharp pain in his hand made him wince. He looked down at the gash in his palm, inflicted by his own knife. Ana’s face flared to life in his mind again and he let his head fall back on the couch. Too miserable to get up and fetch the herbs he needed to doctor himself, he just sat there for awhile, staring up at the depths of the sea.
“I like to think I’ve been a very patient brother.”
Micah’s voice made Brec open his eyes. He stared at his brother where he floated in the circle of water, his bare human arms propped up on the stone ledge. His voice sounded calm and conversational, but the tension in his shoulders and the way his eyes kept going back to the wound on his arm told Brec in no uncertain terms that his brother wasn’t happy.
“Micah—”
“When you wanted to go after the woman you believed had stolen your skin alone, I said okay,” Micah continued. “You’re a grown man and given the incredibly personal nature of the attack and what I perceived to be the relative vulnerability of a human opponent, I let you go ahead on your own.”
Brec fought not to roll his eyes at the condescending tone in his brother’s voice. Micah was warming up to his story now.
“Micah—”
“I continued to show what I believe to be remarkable restraint when you called for me in the dead of night and gave me an armful of more stolen skins. I didn’t ask any questions—of which I had many—I just did as you asked and took the skins to Briana.” He tilted his head, raising his eyebrows as he leaned forward. “Our people are out there now, returning those skins, in case you are still interested.”
“I—” Brec started.
“And now,” Micah continued loudly. “I find that you have returned, but instead of coming to me and providing the information I was so gracious not to demand all along the way, you’re just lying here bleeding all over the most comfortable couch in the entire castle.”
“Micah, I’m really not in the mood for this,” Brec growled, rubbing a hand over his face. “I—”
Something smacked him in the face. Startled and getting pissed, he looked down at his bag of herbs lying in his lap.
“Fix up your hand while you fill me in,” his brother said quietly. “And don’t leave anything out.”
For a moment Brec seriously considered telling his brother to go stuff his head in the sand. He was hurt, he was tired, and he wanted to wallow in his own misery in peace. Unfortunately, Micah was right. He’d been unbelievably understanding and had given Brec more leeway and more privacy than Brec had had any right to expect. Sighing, he opened the bag and began to pick through the herbs.
“Her name is Ana. When I got to her house the other night, I found her in bed sleeping under my skin like it was a blanket.” His eyes lost focus as he looked back on that moment, replaying it like a movie in his mind. He tried to stir up some of the anger he’d felt, but it was just a memory now. “She tried to tell me that she’d stolen my skin because she was lonely and wanted to keep me for her husband.”
“Bloody humans,” Micah muttered. “Never could understand that. It’s not like we go hopping out of the water and hacking off their feet to make them stay and marry us.”
“Yeah, well, she was lying anyway. She just wanted me to leave so I wouldn’t find out about the other skins she’d stolen.”
“The ones you brought to the water with you.”
Brec nodded. When Micah was silent for a moment, Brec turned his focus back to his brother. There was a tightness in Micah’s face that betrayed a hint of dismay. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as Micah fixed him with a penetrating gaze.
“Brec, I know what she did was horrible. And I know she deserves to be punished.” He took a deep breath, not breaking eye contact. “I have to ask you, did you hurt her?”
Brec barked a laugh and shook his head. “No. No, I didn’t hurt her. At least not like you think I did.”
Micah breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. I know you want to be a warrior, but some things that may seem easy in a hypothetical aren’t so easy in reality.”
“So I found out,” Brec said quietly.
Micah’s face softened. “There’s no shame in not wanting to hurt people, Brec. You’re a healer, it goes against your nature.” He reached back as if to slip his skin back on. “Don’t worry about Ana. I’ll take care of it.”
Brec frowned, something inside him balking at his brother’s words. He had images of his brother taking a pod out to Ana’s house, their rifles glinting in the sunlight as they marched her out to the water. The process of escorting a non-marine prisoner to Orkney was not easy--especially if they struggled. The hair on the back of his neck rose as he imagined Ana struggling to get free, fighting with every ounce of all that strength and willpower. They would have to drug her just to hook up the underwater breathing apparatus. He grit his teeth against the imaginary sounds of her screams as she realized that she’d gotten her foxskin back only to be locked away in an underwater prison.
“No,” he said loudly.
Micah stared at him like he’d gone made and Brec clenched his teeth against a tinge of embarrassment. He hadn’t meant to shout. He just wanted to drown out the sounds of his own imagination.
“If she’s stealing skins, we have to stop her, Brec,” Micah said gently.
“Trust me, she’s not going to be a problem anymore.” An image ghosted through Brec’s mind. He saw Ana waking to find the belt he’d made, the expression of joy she would wear when she realized what it was. If it worked, she would never have to steal a skin again. His heart clenched. He wished he could have stayed to see that.
“I can’t take that chance. She’s stealing skins, you of all people know what that means.” Micah frowned. “I can’t believe I have to convince you that she needs to be stopped.”
Brec winced as he pressed a couple leaves against his cut. The pain helped distract him from his wishful thinking. Even if Ana would forgive him for mutilating her skin, he wasn’t sure he was ready to forgive her. He’d done everything he could to show her he cared about her. She should have had more faith in him.
He shoved thoughts of Ana and her skin from his mind. She was probably off in the woods, enjoying her new skin. For all he knew, she’d never come back to her cabin.
“Just leave her alone, Micah,” he said finally. “I’m telling you, she is not a threat.”
The silence coming from his brother was almost deafening. Brec focused on tending his wound so he didn’t have to look at Micah’s face. He wasn’t in the mood to explain himself. His warrior brother was just going to have to take his word for it.
For several long moments, Micah watched him. Brec kept his gaze down, silently working to bind the herbs to his palm, but he could feel his brother’s gaze boring into him. The tension in the air continued to thicken until he wondered if the algae had suddenly stopped the photosynthesis that made the air breathable.
“Brec, is there something you’d like to add to this conversatio
n?”
“What are you talking about?” Brec mumbled.
“Is Ana an . . . attractive female?”
“Oh, give me a break.”
“Is she pretty?” Micah pushed.
“Yeah,” Brec growled. “Yeah, she’s pretty.”
Micah waited.
An image of Ana sprang into his mind. He remembered her laughing, standing amidst a pile of panties while he fidgeted in embarrassment. Without the anger and despair, her blue eyes had sparkled like precious gems, her smile lighting up her face. He’d never seen a woman so beautiful as the lisitsa had been in that moment.
“She’s gorgeous,” Brec continued finally. “But it’s not just that. She’s strong and she’s passionate and she has the potential to help people. Not just heal people, but really help them.”
“You slept with her, didn’t you?”
Under His Skin Page 22
