I hugged him, he was so … right. All of them. So perfect and together and right, I felt as if I were glowing with the joy of them, and our futures shining ahead.
“That’s at least a ‘maybe’ then?” Mej was pulling at my sleeping skins, kissing and trying to climb in with me.
“At least a maybe,” I agreed, laughing. But it was more. I was certain.
We opened up the blankets and furs, trying to merge our beds while also trying to warm ourselves. Electric build-up from the lightning made my skin tingle, adding to the giddy feelings at every touch and boom of thunder.
Mej defeated Demik with only a slight scuffle—no bloodshed—and was already feeling his way into me from behind while still trying to bundle us up together. Demik came to rest facing me, kissing my lips as Mej pulled my hips to him.
The whole den shivered with a clap of thunder like an earthquake. The lightning blazed. I hoped someone had found places to allow all the dogs into dens—just this once. It was a night for skulks, packs, closeness.
“We missed you so much,” Mej murmured in my ear. “You kept us going. You found this place for us.”
“You found it now,” I said. “Just in time.”
“Earth Mother guided us back to you.” Demik kissed me. “Back to her messenger.”
He soon traded with Mej, remaining where he was facing me. I wrapped a leg around him, pulling in tight. He moved slowly, drawing out our joined time, caressing with hands and lips.
It was many minutes, with the storm still rolling through the valley, before Demik drew away and I turned on my back, now warm and beaming, to welcome Komu.
He had blown out the tallow candle to save it. It was too early in the season to waste candles. I missed seeing his eyes, finding only the shapes in the new darkness, just able to make out who was who. Of course, I would have known even had my eyes been shut.
Komu was smiling at me. I knew that much and pulled his face down for a long kiss.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“I didn’t mean to overstep,” he whispered back.
“No, I needed you.” I kissed him again. “Always.”
I wasn’t sure how Ondrog felt about this whole thing. Perhaps we were a bunch of crazy, screaming, dancing foxes to him. Be that as it may, he followed Komu to me. Even if he only barely tolerated our eccentricities as a group, no one forced his presence. It made me love him more, made me feel for the first time that maybe he would stay after all—even be happy here.
Spent, weightless, wrapping around us all in spirit, I finally fell asleep in a tangle of them, unsure who was where. Of all the delights of youth, of discovery, of bonbons and sunlight and love and passion, in all my winters and summers, I had never been so happy as that moment drifting off in their arms.
Chapter 30
A new adventure began on winter’s border that year. The travelers had to recover from their journey. The hunting was good. So we remained, moving into the forest, but otherwise prepared to winter here by the lake.
It gave us time to build new and better dens for the snow, settle in together as a single clan, and say goodbye to Black Ice’s people—with a few changes in numbers between each as new mates had been found.
Mostly, for me, it was a time to welcome Demik and Mej here and enjoy their company the same way I had with Komu and Ondrog over the summer.
For Demik, it was bliss. I’d never seen him smile so much, never known him so at peace, as we walked or worked among his new family and watched the old one mingling.
He still held me up as the messenger, a blessed guide. He would, for example, thank me out of the blue as he watched a sunset. I didn’t like that part. I was only a fox. Earth Mother may have blessed us, Black Ice may have guided us, but that didn’t make me a divine being. Just a fox.
Demik would not be dissuaded, which I feared let him in for a future of disappointment or frustrations. Still, I could do nothing about it. I was too busy being happy right alongside him for any more worrying. Demik already seemed a part of this place, a spirit of the lake and mountains, grasses and sky, who had simply been missing before, now reunited.
So Demik was home. What of Mej?
Mej disliked hunting and fishing. He detested gutting fish and wouldn’t skin a deer or a snowshoe hare at all, recoiling from blood and viscera on his hands as if the dead thing bit him. I’d never seen such a fox. Yet it gave me some insights into the direction Mej’s life had tended until then.
One afternoon, with the leaves falling and the lake freezing, while everyone pitched in to help after a successful hunt, I led Mej away to my sitting stones on the lake shore.
We sat and I pushed both hands through his hair, loving the feel. He was the only grown fox in all the clans with hair so short. Did he have it cut one last time by a barber before he’d left Dawson City?
I smiled to touch him, smell him, feel over his hair and across his ears. Then had to remind myself of serious matters. Not much seemed serious anymore. Just like those first days when they took me exploring up the river in search of where I’d come from.
“Mej?” I sat back from him. “I’m sorry for what you had to give up to be here.”
“Give up?” Mej cocked his head, a curved smile on his lips. “I have you. A beautiful place to live, freedom, family around. I would give up an arm for such gifts. Fortunately, no trade was demanded.”
“Wasn’t it? Just a bit? Maybe you feel no great love for the pale humans, but your life was a part of theirs. And their world has so much to offer that we cannot. High stakes and gold dust, dance halls and store-bought clothes, tobacco and apple pie… Some wanted out. You were happy with the life you had. That’s why I’m sorry.”
Mej grimaced and looked away. “I don’t want you feeling bad about me being here. This place is heaven, Summit.”
“What’s that?”
“Heaven? It’s a human religious concept. Don’t worry about that. Just say this place is … bliss. It’s perfect. Sure, I had to give up a few vices to be here. But it’s still hardly a trade at all. I want to be with you, not back there.” All the same he looked away again as he said the last.
“I’m glad.” I slid my fingers into his. “Mej? Would you do something for us. I saw you brought a book here. A thick book? With that little one of Tem’s? And we do have chances for seeing and trading with humans sometimes, especially down south and east. We can make a point of it. Books, newspapers, clothes… We can trade for more than canvas and rifles.”
“And more than trade.” He glanced sideways at me.
“You brought gold?”
“All I could justify carrying.” He winked and I grinned.
“Good. Hang onto it. What I was thinking, what I wish you’d do for us, is teach us to read. All kits should grow up with English now. If we can speak English, and read, and have a bit of gold and trade goods, we can survive in their world when our paths cross, even if we stay mostly to our own.”
I met his eyes as Mej watched me. “Would you do that? Teach all willing how to read and get the kits, right up to yearlings, speaking English? Komu will help and some of us know a bit already. It’s the reading that’s entirely new. You wouldn’t have time to be one of our hunters or working on dens or caches all the time. We would have to talk with the elders about it, make it so everyone knew. Then … what do you think?”
Mej still watched me in silence. After a long quiet, he lifted my hand to kiss and said something in English that made me laugh: “Sounds like heaven.”
Before clearing Mej’s new lifestyle with the elders, we approached about intentions regarding ourselves.
Soon after they were back with us, Demik, Mej, Komu and I sought their council. We met no objections from the elders—though some confusion as to why three males would waste themselves after one female, no longer facing troubled times or need for such compromising arrangements.
Why only three? Ondrog refused to involve himself with such decisions, or orders, being placed on him
by a council of foxes. He recognized no “silver”—a leader—among our clans, and would have nothing directly to do with our ceremonies. Since the elders would never have approved the union of a wolf and fox—something which could produce no young, so went against Earth Mother’s plan—it was just as well that Ondrog held such a blessing in contempt.
I didn’t like the idea of Ondrog remaining an outsider, a lone wolf, all of his winters. At the same time, he did not have to be publicly sanctioned by anyone to have my love and the friendship of my official mates. It was an agreeable situation for him to stay out from under any attention, and for me to know he understood that he had our blessings in this relationship. Still …it wasn’t the same somehow.
No matter how much I loved Ondrog, maybe that was why I was excited to meet the wolves.
They were on the move as the first snows threatened. Because of this, the pack was in a rush to move to southern hunting grounds. They stayed only two days and nights, sharing stories and meals with us, singing to their goddess while we danced. Some spoke Vulpen, and a few of our own spoke Lucannis. Ondrog was free to spend his own time and conversations with them.
At first, he held back. That whole first evening I never saw him speak to them, watching, almost avoiding them.
It was the way of many a wolf, I knew. A fox would be right there, chattering and sniffing what the other was all about. Ondrog took his time, assuring himself of at least a neutral reception and gradually speaking first with some of the young males the next day—carefully avoiding the females lest he come off appearing challenging. By that night, he sang with them. By the time they left us, he waved as he watched them go. Several waved back.
I jumped at him, hugged him when they were gone on down the river. I couldn’t help it. “You’re sure you don’t want to winter with them? Just for a trial? They would have you.” As I spoke, I clung to him.
This was not lost on Ondrog, who smiled down at me. “While you will presumably be pregnant this winter? Settling in here? Everyone still trying to get on top of winter preparations?” He shook his head.
“You don’t have to stay for us. If you want to be here, that’s different. If you don’t…”
“What I want is to be with you.” He kissed me, but again looked down the river.
“They’ll be back. We see them, or others, regularly as the weather changes.”
He watched the horizon, looked at me. “Perhaps. A trial. Not now.”
I sighed into his tunic. “I’m glad.”
“Then why keep trying to push me away?”
I looked up. “Ondrog—”
But he was smiling. “I know.” He laced his strong fingers through mine. “I understand.”
“If it makes you feel better … it will be many months before I can put on fur and chew your hair.”
“Moon forbid.” He turned down the corners of his mouth. “If you grow too restless with your confinement to cope with one more minute, you may have a chew as you are.”
“You would do that for me?” I beamed up at him, so overcome with the offer it seemed I was spinning in a perfect dance.
“If it means that much to you. And if you promise to keep it a private matter.”
“I swear.” I hugged him as tight as I could, leaving me breathless, though not troubling him.
Then kits were running past. A dog barked. Clouds were rolling in. The first snow. Time to get back to work.
Now night has closed over our land once more. The long winter is upon us.
I am trapped by skin, my belly starting to grow. Yet this confinement is not so dreadful as I had feared. At least not yet. I have my four mates for company and love—one always about. I also have the friendship of other vixens going through the same ordeal this winter. Three of them besides myself—an unprecedented number for one season—and it gives me even more to look forward to: the shared experience next spring.
Ondrog will be here at least for that long. Then … who can say? I would love him to be with me always, yet I hope he finds his own pack again, and perhaps comes to split his seasons in the future.
Komu can’t wait to be a sire. Ready for his next milestone, he is my sunlight on the darkest winter nights. He lies by the hour, his ear on my stomach, and talks to me in English, or writes down lists of possible names on our den walls with charcoal, showing me how the letters look together. In fur, he is beginning to fill out, putting on a heavier coat and expanding his chest a bit so he no longer looks so much like a sapling. When he comes in from the snow in fur, he knows how much I love to hold him. He will stay that way all night sometimes, curled on my belly, or sleeping against my chest with his head tucked under my chin.
Mej has blossomed under his new responsibilities. He is busier than any of the others, usually out and entertaining the kits with lessons on these cold, dark days. He wants paper, pencils, books, and more from the trading post in the spring. An expedition is already being planned. Until then, Mej writes in the snow, shapes letters from the bones of small animals, pine tips, or icicles, uses his two books, and constantly keeps the kits busy with the demand that they speak to him in English or he ignores them all together. When home with us, he works on Ondrog and me with just as much diligence. Demik’s English is already very fine, but he can read no more than I, so all of us get swept up in lessons many a night. It not only passes the time, but helps keep me sane as I could not pursue such an interest in fur anyway.
Demik has settled in seamlessly with this new life. He knows I have my flaws, but he worships me anyway. He spends so much time with me he is often called away by hunters, wood splitters, or others seeking an extra hand. I push him out often, not wanting Demik to get a reputation for laziness. Everyone here seems to love Demik, though. He has lost much of the sharpness—and all of the gloom—that hung about him in the settlement near Dawson City. He is kind, willing, and a quick leader with a level head. It is impossible not to respect him.
It seems, through the blizzards and crystal mornings of blue skies and white forest, when Earth Mother holds her breath, that I am the growing embryo in winter’s womb. I am the one being born, ready to stretch and blink and uncurl in the morning of spring.
While their lives started over, my life was found. We will all be new again in the spring with this birth—in a way even last spring did not bring us.
No matter what we have been through, together we are a great light, a great love, and a great future. Each moment with my mates fills me with joy as they get me through this winter in skin. And most moments has at least one of them by my side.
Komu especially gives me comfort, while Ondrog and Demik give me strength in the now, and Mej offers confidence for our futures.
We are wanderers come home since last winter. We are lovers joined. We see through the darkest nights with the brightest gifts that we have learned to share between us: hope, joy, love, and always time for one more dance.
Thank You
Thank you for sharing this journey with Summit and her skulk! I know she would be proud to have you along. If you enjoyed the Foxes of the Midnight Sun trilogy, please drop a quick review for Fox’s Dawn, Fox’s Quest, or Fox’s Night on Amazon to let others know what you think.
You’ll find additional titles available on my author page, with more currently in the works. To be the first to know when a new series is on the way or a new book is released, please sign up for my mailing list at kralexander.com. You’ll get cover reveals, free exclusive novellas and shorts, and timely news—no junk!
It’s been a pleasure questing with you. Thank you for reading, reviewing, and joining in this foxy adventure!
Until our next hunt,
K.R.
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Fox’s Night: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 3) Page 13
