by D. F. Jones
Hell, it was only through luck that I hadn’t shot him in the head. My stomach clenched at the thought. I wondered how many shifters died every year from hunters’ bullets or traps.
As I washed our dishes, I heard him moving around in the bedroom. He left the door partially open and it took all my willpower not to turn around and peek.
And then, I felt it when he shifted. It was a noise without sound, waves of something flowing over me, sending chills up my back.
Either that, or I was imagining it entirely.
Still, seconds later, a large red fox trotted out of my bedroom just as I was finishing the dishes.
I dropped the last bowl into the draining rack and moved toward the front door. “Let me grab my coat and get my boots on, and I’ll go outside, too, at least for a little while.”
The fox—Tristan—nodded.
I shoved my feet into my snow boots and was pulling on my winter parka when I heard a vehicle rumbling up my drive. At the same moment, Tristan cocked his head, his ears perking up.
“Not many people come up here, especially when a storm is brewing. I bet it’s the sheriff.”
Tristan turned his head to look up at me inquiringly.
“It’s not unusual. He likes to check on some of the more isolated people in his jurisdiction when a big storm is on the way.” I turned around and moved through the kitchen. “Come on. I’ll let you out the back. Don’t let him see you if you can help it. I don’t know how he’d react to seeing an enormous fox lurking around.”
Tristan nodded again and waited for me to open the back door. When I did, he bounded away into the snow. I watched him for a few seconds. His leg looked fine to me.
I could have used some of that healing power after I got shot.
I had already shut the kitchen door and latched it when I heard the honk of Jim Bingley’s SUV.
Although the storm door was closed, I could see him through the glass as the sheriff came up my front steps, stomping the snow off his boots. He waved to me and I opened the storm door. “Hi, Jim. You want to come in?”
He eyed my parka. “Looks like you were just about to go out,” he observed.
“Only to sit on the porch for a while and watch the snow fall.” I smiled. “We can sit out there or in here, whichever you want.” I didn’t say it, but I really wanted him to come inside. Less opportunity for him to see frolicking foxes in my yard that way.
Of course, keeping him out in the cold might convince him to leave quicker.
“No. Let me pour some coffee to keep us warm, and let’s go out to the porch,” I said, not really giving him time to make up his own mind.
Surely Tristan has the sense to stay out of sight.
“You don’t need to pour me a cup,” he said. “But I’d love a refill in my thermos, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. Go grab the thermos and I’ll fill it up.”
That was good. It meant he didn’t mean to stay too terribly long.
I poured myself a cup of black coffee and waited until he trotted back up the stairs, coffee thermos in hand.
As he stood just inside my door and I poured coffee for him, I said, “I assume you’re up here checking to make sure I’m okay for the storm?”
Jim laughed. He was probably about ten years older than me, with thick dark hair and a matching mustache. And he was a nice guy, someone I might have considered dating under other circumstances, but we’ve never had any kind of click. At least on my part. I’d never asked him about his ideas on the issue—and I wasn’t about to start now.
“Yeah, mostly to make sure you’re stocked up on supplies and know the storm’s coming.” He held the storm door open for me, and we walked out to the two rustic-style rocking chairs I had on the front porch. He stared out at the flat yard that dropped off into a creek bed at the end of my property.
My cabin faced the very edge of my own property because it had the best view. Directly across from us, a mountain rose up high, its deep, craggy slopes ensuring I wouldn’t have human neighbors building houses that could look down into my windows. Behind the cabin, my land stretched out for about an acre before dropping down toward the next plateau. The road Jim had taken in was the only easily accessible route to the cabin itself, though with enough perseverance, a climber could get from the clearing down the mountain where I had found Tristan and up to my house.
“Have you seen anything unusual on your property lately?” Jim asked, startling me out of my reverie. I fought to keep my reaction minimal.
“No. Why?” I tried to sound casually curious, but I was afraid I’d failed miserably when I saw the interest in his eyes sharpen.
“Just been getting some odd reports lately about poachers lurking around in the woods.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “I ran across another bear trap in the first clearing off the trailhead down the mountain. I clipped it and left it there for you.”
“Left it? You usually come drop them on my desk with a clatter and an announcement that I need to keep the poachers under control.” He was grinning now, but he wasn’t exactly joking. That was what I did.
I laughed along with him, though. “It was late, and that just seemed like so much work.”
“But you’ve seen nothing…strange?”
I wrinkled my nose and frowned as I answered, trying to look confused. I was afraid I only looked constipated. “Well, the bear trap isn’t that unusual. Annoying, but I think a typical poacher left it there.” That part, at least, was true.
Jim turned and gazed directly into my eyes intently. “But you will let me know if you run across anything bizarre, won’t you?”
“Absolutely,” I promised, mentally crossing my fingers behind my back.
“Sounds good.” He pushed himself up from the rocker and tilted his thermos at me. “Thanks again for the refill. Be sure to give me a call if you need anything. I’ll touch base with you after the storm.”
We said our goodbyes, and I stood on the porch waving at him until he had disappeared down the drive and I could no longer hear his SUV’s engine.
Seconds later, Tristan bounded around the corner, stiff-legged in the snow, his mouth wide open in a vulpine laugh, his tongue lolling out. He trotted up the steps and shook the snow off his fur.
“Hey,” I protested as it hit me in a shower of snow clumps. “Go to the other end of the porch.” But I was laughing at him as I said it. “Are you ready to go inside?”
He nodded definitively, and I opened the door to let him in.
As I did, however, a strange, silvery-white figure rose from the creek bed, climbing up to the very edge of my property line and unfolding itself to stand tall where it had been entirely camouflaged by snow only seconds before.
I had to assume that this was one of the creatures that had been hunting Tristan.
That supposition was confirmed when the thing opened its mouth and hissed, “The kitsune is ours. Give him to us.”
Chapter 11
Tristan
I froze in absolute terror for a moment, worried that Mary would say or do something that would give the elf hunter mystical control over me.
But she assessed him coolly, then stepped out in front of me on the porch. “He is not yours. You cannot have him. And you are not welcome here.”
That blue-tinged light flared at the edges of her property, and the elf warrior recoiled from it with another hiss.
He paced back and forth along the edge of the boundary she had just reinforced with her statement, snarling at her. When he dropped down to all fours, he looked even more animalistic than before.
I might be the shapeshifter, but he was the one without any humanity.
Finally, he stood up and called out to her, but he was taunting me. “It doesn’t matter how you make him yours. We will have him eventually.”
Oh, no. I hadn’t really been considering it, but part of me had known that Mary having magic was a possibility.
I met her gaze with my own, th
en gave something that I hoped look like a shrug.
I needed vocal cords to talk about this.
And pants. I’m definitely going to need pants to discuss this with her.
I needed to shift back to my human form.
Dammit. I didn’t have time for this kind of complication.
But a little voice inside my head whispered, Look around. You’re about to be snowed in, safe from the fae hunters, and without anything better to do for at least the next twenty-four hours than find out just how magical Mary Kendrick really is.
That little voice needed to shut the hell up.
“Do you think they can get inside the cabin?” Mary asked. It took me a second to realize that she was asking about the fae. I shook my head emphatically.
“Then let’s go inside. I think we need to talk about some things.”
I nodded and trotted in front of her as she held the door open for me, and then closed it behind us.
Back in her bedroom alone, I concentrated on letting the energy and power of the shift flow through me. It was so much easier now that my leg was almost healed, and I wasn’t caught in an iron trap.
I wondered briefly if it was possible that the kitsune had some connection to the fae that made us slightly susceptible to having our powers weakened by iron, too. I’d never felt as bad as I did when I was caught in that trap.
I picked up the T-shirt and sweats Mary had loaned me from where I’d left them on the bed after I made it that morning. Holding them up to my nose, I inhaled deeply.
They smelled like her, like green plants pushing up through snow, fresh and new and sweet. And I’d worn them long enough this morning that they smelled a little like me, too. I found the combination of our scents unexpectedly arousing.
“I’m gonna need a pillow to cover myself up,” I muttered.
“You okay in there?” Mary called out from the living room.
I opened the bedroom door and stepped out to join her. “Just fine.”
She was staring out the front window.
“Can you still see him out there?” I asked.
“I’m not entirely certain. Or rather, yes, I can see him—but I think I can see others, as well.” She began pointing at the creek line. “If you look right in the middle, you can see where he’s crouched down.”
“I see him,” I said, stepping up to stand close behind her and peer out the window over her shoulder.
“If you look to his left and his right, you can almost make out the others outlined against the snow. Maybe six or seven?”
This close to her, her smell was nearly overwhelming, and I had to take a step back. “That would make sense. That’s about how many I saw following me at various times.”
She turned to face me, her eyes wide. “You had an entire pack of those things after you? That’s awful. They’re awful. Monstrous.”
I padded toward the loveseat again, then realized it was the only comfortable seating in the room. “Do you want to take the sofa?” I asked abruptly.
She turned from her observation of the elves lurking outside her property line and frowned at me. “I don’t want my back to the window,” she said, “but I also want you to sit wherever is best for your leg.”
I waved a hand dismissively. “My leg’s fine. One more shift and it will be completely healed and strong again. Also, I don’t think the fae can come any closer than they are right now to your cabin.”
She chewed her bottom lip again, and I found myself staring at her mouth. I tore my eyes away and inhaled to try to calm myself down—but that just brought me another wave of her smell. I couldn’t choose between trying to block it out and reveling in it.
I took the same seat that I had earlier. This time, however, Mary came and sat on the far arm of the small sofa. At some point, she had kicked off her boots, and now she put her small, socked feet in the middle of the cushion next to me. She leaned her elbows on her knees and held her chin in her hands. “There. Now I can see both you and the creepy elf army outside my window.”
Outside the window, the creepy elves hunkered down in the snow, waiting. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet, but the clouds were darkening outside. If any other creature had been stalking me, I would have welcomed the storm as a diversion. But the Winter Court elves thrived in weather like this.
The snow began falling in bigger, fatter flakes. Pretty soon, our view of our opponents would be obscured by the snowfall.
“Talk to me.” Mary’s tone had turned commanding.
I nodded and ran my hands in my hair. “I assume you want to know what he meant out there, right?”
She leaned forward even farther and gazed directly into my eyes as she said, “I want to know what he meant when he said that it didn’t matter what I did to make you mine, you still belonged to him.”
“It has to do with the idea of magically claiming someone or something,” I began.
“And given his leer when he said it, I assume that claiming is done through sex?”
Okay, there was something about her absolute directness that was unbelievably hot. I swallowed, audibly, I feared, before I answered. “Sex is one method of claiming. Not all supernaturals are able to claim, and even those who are don’t claim everyone they have sex with.” I was finding it easier to talk about all of this in theoretical terms. Supernaturals and people, not you and me.
“I’m just a human. Why would that thing out there think I could claim you?” A crease appeared in between her eyebrows as she worked through the possibilities. “Or does it think that you’re claiming me?”
Well. That had shifted to you and me pretty quickly.
“No, it definitely thinks you’re claiming me.”
“Why?”
Now I was the one chewing on my bottom lip, trying to figure out how to say what I knew I needed to tell her. This woman had saved me, nursed me through a fever, kept the local law enforcement officer from seeing me, and protected me from the hunter elves chasing me.
And that was only in the first twelve hours.
The least I could do was repay her with absolute honesty.
“Last night in the clearing where you found me, did you feel or see anything out in the woods when you announced that they belong to you, and whatever was hunting me wasn’t welcome?”
She shook her head. “I mean, it seemed like something was out in the woods, and I felt—I don’t know, maybe a little shivery? But otherwise? No.”
“And a few minutes ago, when you told the hunter out there that he was not welcome on your land?”
“No.” She drew the word out into a couple of long syllables. “Should I have?”
“I did.”
She stared at me, letting all the implications sink in. She was smart, and even if she didn’t want to believe that she might have a supernatural power, I saw the moment when that possibility finally hit her. She froze, her mouth falling open and her gaze locking on mine.
“Are you saying that you think I am…”
I finished her sentence for her as I nodded. “Some kind of paranormal being.”
Chapter 12
Mary
I could claim Tristan Todd, kitsune, fox-shifter as my own.
If I have sex with him.
Under the circumstances, those certainly should not have been my first two thoughts. And yet, they were—and more than that, they sent a hot wave of desire coursing through me that almost made my eyes roll back in my head.
Dammit, Mary. Pay attention to the issues at hand.
I tried to focus back in on Tristan’s words, instead of just staring at his mouth and imagining leaning even closer and kissing him as he spoke.
“Right now, they’re counting on the fact that I will have to leave your land eventually. And when I do, they’ll be able to resume their hunt for me.”
I frowned. “Okay. I’m not saying I believe you that I’m some kind of supernatural creature, because obviously, I’m not. But just for argument’s sake, if I were… Is there some way I co
uld protect you?”
Now he was the one whose cheeks were a flaming red. “Well. You could claim me.”
“Would that help you?”
He’d been looking out the window at the snow swirling around us, but his gaze snapped back up to meet mine. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“Claiming is more than just sex. It’s like a mating ritual.”
“How would it protect you?”
“As far as I can tell, that’s what the Winter Queen is doing to the ones she captures,” Tristan said. “She claims them, mates with them, and then holds their power within herself. In a true claiming, the power is fed back to the claimed mate in a kind of loop.”
“Huh.” I stood and moved over to the window again. I couldn’t see to the creek any longer. “So how did I claim the land? I assume that’s what’s keeping them off my property?”
As it grew ever darker outside, I watched Tristan’s reflection in the window.
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. I’ve only ever heard of something similar in…” His voice trailed off and an expression of sheer horror stole across his features.
“Tell me.”
He frowned as he made eye contact in the glass. “Among the fae queens.”
“Fae? Like those monsters out there?”
“Sort of. Those are the warriors. Think of them like...worker ants, or bees,” he said. “Their form is completely different from their queens’ forms.”
“And what do you know about the queens?”
“Well, that they’re beautiful, for one.”
“Anything more relevant?”
“That they are so tightly bound to their territory that they cannot leave.”
Bound to their territory… “Like they claimed it?”
“Yeah.” His voice had dropped to a whisper.
“Then if I’m like them,” I began, “and I claimed my land last night…”
