Fox’s Night
Foxes of the Midnight Sun
Book Three
by
K.R. Alexander
Copyright © 2019 by K.R. Alexander.
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Angela Fristoe, Covered Creatively.
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Complete Foxes of the Midnight Sun trilogy:
Fox’s Dawn
Fox’s Quest
Fox’s Night
Additional titles by the same author available on Amazon.
Chapter 1
Night 59
“Summit!”
Ice snapped below my paws with a sound like a rifle blast. The world split apart. I plunged into deep snow, where I kept running.
“Summit, no!” my dam screamed after me.
Many feet chased behind.
“It’s too late! There’s nothing you can do!”
Blood poured off me, turning the drifts scarlet as I ran, never looking back, so terrified I could hardly see anyway, could not even feel pain while the blood flowed.
A real rifle blast. A fox screamed.
I ran blind, swirling through blackness, snow and ice and blood closing in.
Running, running, running, black paws churning through white and red powder, until the dark was complete—until there was nothing left to run from, or run to…
“Summit?” A finger stroked my cheek. Warm arms cradled me.
I blinked, turned my head, and found myself nestled into a broad, strong chest. My mouth was so dry I tried to swallow, failed, licked my nose instead. Blazing pain bit across my side and back.
“Summit? You’re all right.” It took a moment to process the words. The deep, slow voice was speaking Tanana, not Vulpen. It was Ondrog, holding me near an iron stove. The same stove I’d dried out beside when I’d first arrived here with the Aaqann River Clan two months ago. Then I had been pulled from the river. Now, I wished I were in the river.
I worked my dry jaws, suffocating, licking at Ondrog’s hand.
“Bring her water,” he said.
A slide of chair, a step, then the smell of Komu. A cold tin cup brushed my whiskers. I dipped the point of my muzzle in to find cool river water. I lapped it, the motion causing fresh pain to shoot across my side. I whimpered, but seized more until I found a rhythm to drink through the pain and lapped up the whole cup, finally licking the cool inside.
Komu stroked my head, pushing back my ears, and kissed between my eyes. “You’re all right,” he said very softly in Vulpen, as if to keep me from hearing. “We were so scared.”
I reached into the cup with a black paw, sending fresh pain waves shooting down my side.
Ondrog caught my arm, stopping me. “Summit? You must change.” His voice was also soft. Not anxious like Komu. He sounded unnaturally calm and firm—delivering terrible news with a stony face.
“You’ve been hurt,” Komu said. “But you’ll be fine.”
“You lost substantial blood,” Ondrog continued. “The bullet tore along your back and side. Moon blessed you for it left you freely. It is a grievous open wound, yet could have been far worse—could have shattered your ribs or shoulder, or destroyed your lung. Instead, it ripped across, and free. We were able to maintain pressure while you were unconscious. Now change while we hold the wound so you may heal. You surely feel weak, tired at the moment, but you must do this right away. Do you understand?”
There had been a revolver shot. Many shots. Bullets fired into more than me. Demik shouting. Ondrog attacking. No … he wouldn’t … would he? Attack a man? When he was in fur? And Demik … the shooting…
A thrill of horror rippled through me. I struggled, thrashed against Ondrog’s arms to sit up. Like fighting a tree. He clutched my whole body against himself without heat or any more force than he needed. Still, he crushed me and I stopped, gasping, mouth wide and panting.
“Don’t, Summit.” Komu, sounding in pain as well, stroked me. “Keep still, please. You’ll hurt yourself worse.” His voice almost broke and he gulped.
“Listen,” Ondrog went on in that calm, hard tone, unmoved by my scramble. “Your mates are safe. We’ll tell you about them. You were the only one of us harmed. We can tell you all that transpired. But you must stay calm and make yourself change. You have to change, Summit. Save your energy and use it to change. Understand?”
Ondrog knelt by the iron stove, Komu facing him, myself between them, gasping and trembling. My whole body hurt so much I felt that Ondrog was holding me with red-hot knives dug into my flesh all down my ribs and shoulder.
“I don’t think she can—” Komu started, voice shaking.
“She can.” Ondrog remained just as calm. “She must. Change and save yourself, Summit. We know how strong you are. Change now and we’ll tell you what has happened.”
I swallowed, shivered, and tried. Komu was right. Again and again, I tried. Each time I felt the change beginning in my core, radiating out and tingling my paws and face, it brought fresh stabbing pain as if I were being skinned alive. I cried out, yelped, screamed, and cowered back into Ondrog’s chest.
Still he talked while Komu, hand shaking, stroked me.
“You must change,” Ondrog repeated. “You must. We’ve done all we can for you. Heal yourself.”
I tried, yelped, and attempted to crawl away from him.
Ondrog held on. “It will start out dreadful. You’ll think it will break you. It won’t. Breathe in deeply, focus your will, and create the change. I know you can, Summit. Change.”
My breaths were less and less deep, more panicking. After another try, this time feeling it all through my bones, my ribs flexing, my skull shifting, my brush rippling, I fell back in his arms, screaming with pain and snapping and twisting to get away from my own torment.
Still, Ondrog held on. Komu dashed to get water in the tin cup, filling it from a jog or basin.
“Give her a break. Can’t you see how hard it is? She just woke up.” Voice cracked, Komu cradled my head in his hand, guiding my nose to the cup.
I gulped but couldn’t keep lapping. The pain had built. That last round stretched the wound so fresh blood now soaked the cloth around me, into Ondrog’s skin and down my fur.
Ondrog’s voice sharpened. “This is exactly what we don’t want. She can’t have a break. She’s still bleeding. Summit!”
I rolled my eyes up to him, teeth clattering, yelping and moaning and unable to stop as I clawed against him, desperate to escape my own body as he seemed to hold me in a fire pit.
“Change and it will free you. You must fight through the bad to reach the good. Change. Listen to me, Summit. It is the only way to save yourself.”
Komu also held on, tears running down his smooth cheeks, begging instead of commanding. “Please, Summit. Please. You’ll be all right.”
Back in the cabin—this same den, same cabin—that first day, Demik held me. He had begged me to change. So I had. I could do it again. Through the force, I felt Ondrog’s fear. What would happen if I could not change? A lot of blood, a terrible wound, infection… I would die.
You must change.
I thought of the strength in the four of them and my own love for them, needing to see them again, know they were all right: Ondrog, Komu, Mej, and Demik. And I changed.
It was the greatest pain, greatest torment, I’d ever known. The bullet wound stretched and tore open with the rest of me. Then the new skin, the stret
ch and reforming of my whole body. White lights popped through my eyes. I screamed. My blood boiled. Then the wound was closing, the bloody cloth fell away.
I was on my hands and knees on the wood floor, Ondrog’s hands still around me, still holding the wound, Komu leaning in and gripping my face, kissing me, shaking as much as I was.
“Thank you,” Ondrog said in his own tongue, Lucannis. Then he said it in Vulpen, then in Tanana, thanking his goddess, Moon. Maybe thanking me also.
“You’re all right, it’s all right, Summit…” Komu kept holding and kissing.
I nodded, shivered, curled my face down into Ondrog’s chest, and squeezed Komu’s hand.
“Thank you for being so brave,” Ondrog murmured in my hair. “You should be well now.”
I didn’t care about that. I could hardly hear them.
“Demik? Mej?” I gasped. “What happened? Where are they?”
Chapter 2
Day 60
I paced that night after my healing, went to bed in Mej and Komu’s side of the den—though it was with Komu and Ondrog—then paced again after sunrise.
Mej came home in the early hours of morning, no Demik beside him—as they had warned me.
“You’re up—” Mej broke into a run when he saw me dashing from the den to meet him. “I kept telling Demik you were fine. I just … we didn’t know.” His embrace was the hold of the mountain, solid and eternal—not like Mej. As if he gave me a part of Demik. Or he made up for the times in the past when he had not held on and wished he had.
“Ondrog says I’ll have a scar. That’s all.” I clung to him in return, trembling. “Where is he? What are they doing to Demik?”
Mej let out a slow breath through my hair and did not answer for a long time. “Where are the others?”
“Ondrog and Komu are inside.”
Not anymore. They were out watching us.
It was too early to bang on Skeen’s door, Mej said. He would talk to us first, then tell Demik’s family.
Mej had been up all night with the humans. Worn out from them and the long walk back home, he crawled into bed with me curling against him. Komu sat up cross-legged on his own cot. Ondrog sat on the floor with his sleeping skins.
The den was dark, cold, the settlement still quiet, the slow sunrise lingering across the tops of mountains far beyond our birch forest.
“They told you what happened?” Mej asked, nestling his nose through my long hair as he settled. “Demik shot the man who shot you?”
I nodded against his chest.
“Well… I did all I could. Been at the jail, the hotel, talking with the Canadian Mounted Police, and everyone else in town—all I could think of. They know us. Demik’s never caused trouble before. We’re what they call ‘good Indians’ there. And, until yesterday, we’d been peaceful about them moving in here.”
“Moving in?” I asked. “Why were they here at all. Helping to build?”
“Helping themselves. Their scheme now is to take over a couple cabins for lodging their own men, build a new sawmill, and we ‘all win.’”
“What choice did Qualin have but to agree?” Komu asked. “We can’t fight the humans. We agree, or we fight and die, or pack up and leave. They did the smart thing.”
“What about Demik?” I spoke with more urgency.
Mej stroked my hair. “Demik’s fine for right now. I promise.”
“Even though he shot a human? They’re not angry?” Then I swallowed. “What do you mean ‘for right now’?”
Mej let out a breath. “Summit … they’re strict out here. It’s not even that they’re singling him out because he’s an Indian. The Northwest Police aren’t a bad lot, really. They’ve kept Dawson from becoming just the sort of place Demik thinks it is. Dawson City is not that bad either. But the sort of justice they hand down … the laws they make…” He paused. “If Jones dies—that’s the man who shot you… If he dies … the men will execute Demik.”
“Jones is alive then?” Ondrog asked.
I only shivered, struggling to breathe, unable to say anything.
“He is. Now,” Mej said. “But… A bullet to the chest, another glancing across his head… He’s hardly regained consciousness. His fellows are howling for Demik’s blood. Unfortunately, Jones is a well-liked man and Demik’s only defense is that Jones … shot a tame total fox.” Again, Mej let out a slow breath.
“Might as well say Jones clubbed a salmon to eat it and Demik shot him for that,” Komu said under his breath.
“Right.” Mej shifted more onto his side, facing me, rubbing my back gently where there were new, raw scars. I didn’t feel the pain of it. Hardly felt aware of any of my own body. “So … nothing. No defense. Which is a problem if Jones lives. It still means trouble for Demik, and for the clan. If he doesn’t live…”
“What about the wolf attack?” Komu asked. “All five of those men saw Ondrog go for Jones also.”
“I think I’ve smoothed that over. I told them that, besides foxes, there are a couple wolves we’ve raised who still drift about the settlement. One was spooked by the gunshots and happened to be around. That was all. No fault of Demik’s. I also said they’d be long gone, run off into the mountains now after a scare like that, so no use anyone hunting. His fellows were up in arms about it—how Demik sent a wolf at them. Fortunately no one else believes it’s an enchanted spirit wolf. The Mounties are more sensible than that. There are still hunters, though; going on about how they never saw such a large wolf and it nearly tore all their throats out. Since no one was even bitten badly enough to be in danger they shouldn’t go far with that one. We all have to stay in skin for a while. His friends aren’t just after that monster wolf, but a black fox pelt also. If there’s nothing to find we have nothing to worry about on that front.”
“Only the other fronts,” Komu said.
“We’ll have to wait and see about Jones,” Mej said. “Pray for him. It’s the best we can do.”
“And what about the clan?” Komu asked. “The sawmill?”
“They’re going right along with that. They’ll be back by this afternoon, I’m sure. Shhh…” he added in my ear as I shuddered. “They won’t hurt you. They have no clue what really happened.”
“But they want to kill Demik,” I said, breathless.
“Not yet.” Mej kissed my hair. “If Jones is all right… I’m not sure. They’ll keep him locked up, or make him work in the mines—or run him out of the region if he’s lucky…”
“The law might order those things,” Komu said. “How about the friends? How about Jones if he’s back on his feet?”
“We don’t have to worry about that right now,” Mej said, hushing him, a frown in his tone. “Jones recovering is all—”
“Yet he is correct,” Ondrog cut in. “One way or another, Demik will never be free here again. And what of his family? What of how Demik will feel about what’s happening here with the invasion? Even if Jones did leave him be, Demik would never return the favor. Your clan is rolling on its back while your territory is overrun and managed by humans.”
“What should we do?” Mej snapped. “What’s your solution? Fight them like Demik? Endanger the lives of our kits? Be run off our land all together, rather than demeaning ourselves to live alongside the whites?”
“If you cannot fight them, you should go. Your ancestors and mine roamed freely over this land to follow the salmon and caribou. I was preparing to leave, as you know. Now … perhaps you should all go.”
“That’s what Demik wants,” I said. “He never wanted cabins. He says those are human ways and human creations. Foxes should move with the seasons and live where hunting is best and the clan is strong. Now this place is making the clan weak. They’re trying to kill us—”
“They’re not trying to kill us,” Mej said firmly. “Jones was working here and saw what, to him, was a total fox. He took a shot. Demik dragged him off the roof and wrestled his gun away and shot him before the whole thing could be broken up
. That’s all—”
“But they want to kill Demik,” I said. “They’ll be angry with the whole clan.”
“No one—” Mej started.
“She’s right,” Ondrog said. “Rumors will already have begun. About how the men were settled to work peacefully with the Indian tribe, yet Indians turned on them.”
“Nonsense—”
“And what will they do?” Ondrog continued. “Even if Jones lives? Especially if Jones lives? In truth, it would be better for the clan if they hanged Demik and that was the end of it. Instead, it will grow beyond any such confines. You should leave here while you still can.”
“We can’t now!” Mej almost shouted. “We have kits! We’re preparing our caches. It’s practically September. We have nowhere to go, no hopes to find others. What is it we’ve been hunting in these past weeks? Another chance, another life, more shifters. And what have we found in a full summer of searching? Nothing. To leave now—abandon this home and our winter caches and set out with our families and kits—could be deadly.”
“You have few kits. Those families with any too young or too old to make long journeys, stay behind with the Hän settlement down south. They’ll have you. Next summer, if the clan has found a new home, bring your people together.”
“And gamble our lives and families on desperation to escape? For all we know we would run into worse humans. We might never see our young again. We might never make it to a better land, much less make it back. Then we would have no homes, nothing, with the humans having turned our riverbank into their next commercial endeavor.”
“And what have you now?” Ondrog snarled. “Have you so much more than that? Have you a paradise unspoiled by humanity already? You are a gambling fox. Do not merely consider what you have to lose, but what you have to gain. At what point does it become worth the risk?”
“Demik wanted to go,” I said again.
“Summit, Demik is in jail. He’s in a cage,” Mej said. “His ideas about what the clan should do or not do don’t count for much. If we leave it will be without him. We have no choice but to wait and see what happens with Jones.”
Fox’s Night: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 3) Page 1
