Fox’s Dawn: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 1) Read online

  Fox’s Dawn

  Foxes of the Midnight Sun

  Book One

  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 trilogy:

  Fox’s Dawn

  Fox’s Quest

  Fox’s Night

  More titles by the same author available on Amazon.

  For additional information on Foxes of the Midnight Sun please see the author’s note at the end of this novel.

  Chapter 1

  Day 1

  Twirl and tumble, paws toward the sky, ears toward the ground—yet no ground, no sky, only me and the water.

  I spun, crashed into rocks, clawed toward air, eyes bursting through light that was snatched away. My nose bashed slick river stones, head pounded rocks, side to side, as if falling down the shaft of a jagged ice cave—bang, bang, bang—breathless, dark, dying.

  Stars swarmed my eyes, explosions blasted my ears. Fire filled my lungs while the rest of me fell down the dark tunnel of cold to numbness.

  I was over. No longer breathing, no longer seeing, spiraling away. Even motion faded, leaving me done. Soon I would be back with … who? Someone and … somewhere. Someone who’d fallen down this crack in the world and gone before I had. Someone I missed. It didn’t matter. Even the burning faded. Stars vanished, spinning stopped, banging stopped. Then…

  Crash—into something new, catching me. Slam against a rope, a cloth, something not part of the river. Snatch, catch against the current, flying upriver. Up and out, into light.

  Sunlight exploded and whitewater filled my eyes and nose, while the roar of water and a scream that was not my own popped into my ears.

  Chapter 2

  “Gray, Gray!” she screamed clearly over the thundering river that poured over me while I struggled to drag myself up against thin ropes and keep my sharp nose above the flood. “Look, Gray! Look what I caught!”

  “Calm down, Tem. You’re a hunter, remember. What are hunters?”

  “Not now, Gray! This isn’t a lesson! Look!”

  The screaming drew focus, pulling me toward the voice: the way for air. Mouth wide, coughing water as more rushed in, I scrabbled on ropes that were everywhere, pinning me like a rabbit warren. I couldn’t climb, couldn’t back out, couldn’t go down. A few trout knocked me with their silver bodies as the whitewater clawed me with fury of the worst blizzard. If only I could reach that voice, that life.

  “Quiet, Tem. Hunters are quiet and careful. Not—Earth Mother…” Ending in a gasp my ears hardly captured over the river’s roar and water in them.

  “I told you, Gray! Help me! Pull him up! He’ll drown!”

  “Hold on, Tem.”

  I twisted back. A flapping fish tail lashed my nose. Water rushed over my ears. I tried to cry out as well, to call them, return a scream and show I was here—fighting, needing them. My voice was gone. I fell back.

  Splash, under the surface, flying, wrenched through white waves. Up, back, through, and burst out. This time really flying, sailing above the river, only fish fighting to get back while I fought to get up.

  Gagging, retching water, I bit and tore against the web of ropes to get higher, away from that cold death.

  “We’ve got you…”

  “What is it, Gray? Is it a fisher? Is it a great big weasel?”

  “Don’t be silly, Tem. She’s a fox. You know that.”

  “No—she’s black!”

  “That’s a silver fox. We don’t see any around here anymore. The fur trappers got them. Earth Mother knows how she found herself out here and tumbling down the river.”

  Through the air, over a rail of wood, a fence of some sort, and down toward wood planks. I found my voice in a choked scream as I bit and struggled. Still the water roared all around us. Was it a boat? I could hardly see, my eyes streaming, catching blurred lines of blinding light and muddy color, silver fish and wood slats and someone looming.

  “Careful, Gray! My fish will get away!”

  “Let’s not worry about that. We’ve got to let this poor creature go.”

  “She has to come home with us! She almost drowned!”

  My paws touched down through rope mesh and I scrambled, tried to move to him, but only fell in a thrashing heap. I clawed, vomited water, and kept fighting with my strength torn away. Terror for what could be happening to me, for death, kept me struggling more than any free will or power of my own.

  “No, no, Tem. She’s a total fox. She’s not one of us. She’s a wild creature and she wouldn’t care for us treating her like a pet. Look at her fighting. She still has strength about her.”

  “She’ll freeze!”

  “That’s enough. It’s summertime. She’ll be fine. It might be she has kits and a den to get back to. There now, silver lady, there now… I’ll let you out. No—Tem, stay back. She’s scared and she’ll bite if she can’t make a clean break. There now…”

  Big, strong hands descended upon me. One clutched the scruff of my neck, pinning me to the boards. One untangled ropes. A fish burst away and splashed into water rushing below. Then another. I lay flat, motionless besides the speeding buzz of my heart and open jaws as my tongue curled up around the force of my frantic panting for breath.

  “That’s it… That’s good. Now you’re facing the right way. Can you see? She’s dazed, Tem. Her pupils are full moons. In this sunlight they should be slits. She’s taken a good many blows to the head in that current.” He sighed.

  “She has to come home with us, Gray.”

  “No, no…”

  “Gray—”

  “We’ll see what she does. The way she was fighting I bet she’ll be able to run to the end of the bridge and go on her way. As long as she can dodge predators for a day or two she’ll be all right. If she has kits, she’ll have a mate who’ll look after her and bring her food.”

  “Not yet, Gray. She’ll fall off the bridge if she can’t see. Please bring her back and let her go on land. She’ll be even more scared trying to run from the middle of the bridge.”

  Another sigh. “She’s not going to like being carried to the trail.”

  “Please try. Don’t let her fall in the river again.”

  “All right there. That’s it…” Those huge hands wrapped around me. One still gripped my neck at the base of my ears, bunching up loose skin, pulling it tight across my face and throat, making me feel trapped, unable to move. The other wrapped around my ribcage and lifted me clear of the tangle of dozens of little ropes and one flopping trout.

  A very small person with small hands darted in and grabbed up the mess, including the fish. She followed while the big person with big hands and slow voice walked … across the bridge?

  All fuzzy and streaked, but I saw the two rail sides, the platform below. They’d pulled me up from the river onto a bridge. Now they walked to a bank vividly lit in sunlight, golden, burning my eyes so I had to shut them.

  “Poor little vixen. I can feel her heart beating like a caught mouse, Tem. All right. There you go. Now steer clear of rivers. And trappers. Understand?”

  “Gray—”

  “No, she’s a wild animal. We’ll only scare her more trying to take her home.”

  Down, down, drop, paws to ground. Rough, dry, sun-warmed earth on a path bursting with light. It was mo
rning. Songbirds called in every inch of tree and brush.

  I choked up more water, shook myself only as far as head and shoulders, even that making me stagger. I coughed again.

  Hands were gone. I sat, shaking, gasping, blinking fast, nose quivering. My muzzle burned with water I’d inhaled—a sharp pain nearly as bad as the one in my head. Hardly able to smell, I had to turn my head to see that the little person and big person were still there.

  At the end of the bridge Tem held the wet bundle of fish and ropes. Gray rested a hand on her shoulder. Both watched me, I thought. I couldn’t look up enough to see their faces or be blinded by light.

  If not with them … where was I supposed to find help?

  I stumbled to my paws, almost fell, coughed, and—dragging my soaked brush behind, limping and so weak I could hardly make the few steps—I stumbled to them and collapsed on Grey’s worn leather moccasins.

  Two gasps above me.

  “She’s someone’s pet,” Tem whispered.

  I nuzzled my face into dry warmth of a deerskin trouser cuff, still panting, shivering violently while water pooled down my coat. Praying he would lift me again, warm me, I wrapped both forepaws around his ankle and held on.

  Another catch of breath from Gray. “No, Tem. She’s no pet. She’s one of our own kind.”

  Chapter 3

  Bump, bump, bump, shiver in the dark, wrapped in a buckskin tunic, the big one’s arms around me. His heart beat, boom, boom, boom, with his bouncing strides as he rushed. I shivered, still soaked, as I nestled in tight to his chest through this blanket that blocked the breeze and felt like a deep den and Earth Mother’s welcome hug.

  The little one chatted as she ran after him. The patter of her feet over a trail of earth and stone was a melody in my ears, her voice like birds at dawn. My carrier gave glib replies. He didn’t sound calm and serious any longer. He sounded scared. It would have made me scared, yet … I was too tired. So exhausted, I wondered how long I’d been in that river. Spinning, spinning, spinning … ever since I could remember.

  “You said we’re the only foxes left in this whole Yukon River area,” little Tem panted, accusing, as she ran after. “How could there be one now?”

  “I don’t know, Tem. We’ll have to ask her. Maybe a new clan is moving into the area, or passed by, and she got separated. Something went wrong or she wouldn’t have been tumbling down the Aaqann like that.”

  I had my breath, just beginning to feel warmed in the tight hold. It was so blissful I could not keep track of their conversation. Before long it died out, the little one breathless and falling behind.

  Then, after a long time, or only moments, I smelled wood smoke, baked fish, dog droppings, leather and drying hides, resin, bear grease, iron, gunpowder, rust, and many more bigs and littles like Gray and Tem.

  “Skeen!” Gray’s shout made me jump in the darkness and firm embrace. Even so, I was safe. I knew … I couldn’t remember what else, but it seemed like I knew everything would be all right with Gray. Like my own family, though I’d never smelled Gray or Tem before.

  “Skeen! Tem, go find your mom. And Demik also. He’ll be working on the canoes. Hurry.”

  “Mama! Uncle Demik! Vuloo, where’s Mama?” Tem raced away, steps fading with the answering voice of another female.

  Gray moved without breaking stride and we crunched in the dark through stronger and stronger smells.

  “No, get out, ahh!” A harsh sound at the end. The dog smell was strong, many paws shifting around us, Gray snapping at them.

  I curled in tighter.

  A door opened, grate of metal hinges, then the sound of Gray’s footsteps changed from crunch to thunk, thunk, thunk on wood boards of a floor. We were inside a den.

  “All right, silver lady, let’s get logs on that fire and dry you out.”

  More iron screech, banging and thumping, all while I tipped and bobbed. Gray was bending and moving a great deal. I kept my face tucked against his chest to buckskin that smelled of woodsmoke and his sweat and wet fox. I licked the buckskin. Damp, warm, pleasant—smooth but not too smooth. I licked more.

  Then—light! I blinked and shivered.

  “Here we go.” Scrape of wood on wood. Gray sat on something with me in his lap. He had on only a woolen undershirt since he’d given me the buckskin tunic, but he smelled sweaty from the run so I didn’t feel bad. “Now we’ll get you warmed up, catch your breath, and you can change and tell us what’s happened.”

  More running footsteps. Tem shouted.

  I blinked dazedly around. We sat in a den made of logs, very close to a black iron thing that gave out heat. Inside embers glowed below fresh sticks of wood Gray must have thrown in. An indoor fire in a box. I marveled, tipping my head as I sniffed and listened, assuring myself that was it. Yes: walls, roof, ladder to a loft.

  A human den? It did not smell of humans. Did it? I couldn’t think what that smell might be, yet it seemed I would know. Why would Gray and Tem live in a human den?

  Still … it seemed the sort of thing humans would do to their dens. Surely a fox would never put a fire in a metal box.

  This, and the sharp pain in my head, kept me so preoccupied I was startled by steps on the floor behind us. I jumped and looked past Gray’s arm.

  Tem had returned with a grown female in a dress of wool, not deerskin, laced boots, and ribbons in her braided black hair.

  “Father? Tem says you found a silver fox?”

  “A black fox, Mama, look.” Tem ran in front of her grandsire and reached to touch my face.

  I leaned an ear into her hand. She was warm and breathless. She smelled like fish.

  Her grandsire? Yes … voices, smells, things they’d said. This was sire, grown daughter, and granddaughter, I decided as I sniffed at them from my nest.

  “Tem caught her in a net while she was plunging down the river.”

  The grown female gasped, facing us now behind Tem. “She must be someone’s pet—tame.”

  Gray shook his head. “No, Skeen. Look at her. No total fox is this tame for strangers. She wrapped her paws around my foot, wanting us to help. Tem saw.”

  “She did, Mama. She’s smart.”

  “But she can’t be… A silver fox?”

  “Suppose we wait and let her tell us. Now she needs warming up and her strength back.”

  “I’ll get a towel!” Tem dashed away.

  “I’ll heat soup.” Skeen’s voice remained distant, breathless.

  “She could use that too. Weighs as much as a crow—soaking wet. She must have been separated from her people for a while. Out here on her own, or she’d never have been in there and she’d have meat on her bones. She’ll have to tell us.” He looked into my eyes at the end and I smiled up at him.

  He was so warm. His eyes were black as my limbs, his black and silver hair pulled back, his jaw square and his face gently lined around mouth and eyes. He smelled like a fresh hunting ground at dusk and looked like springtime.

  I parted my lips to better return his smile, feeling his breath on my whiskers, tasting his scent on my tongue, eyelids soft and corners of my mouth drawn up. The damp buckskin stirred and I realized I was wagging my brush. I wagged it more.

  He grinned. “You’re a fine spirit to go through that and come out wagging, silver lady. My name is Qualin. Pleased to meet you.”

  I shut my mouth and cocked my head. What did he say?

  He chuckled. “My granddaughter, Tem, calls me Gray. But you call me Qualin. Don’t kits call their grandparents Gray in your clan? Common around here. ‘My Gray’ to distinguish who’s who.”

  Yes … that sounded right…

  Tem raced back to us. She flung a scrap of old blanket over me and rubbed my fur like a tanner fleshing a deer hide.

  “Hold on, don’t skin her—”

  “That’s how Mama dries my hair in the cold. She’s still shivering, Gray.”

  “She’s right,” Skeen said. “Don’t hurt her, but a vigorous rub will keep the ci
rculation going and dry at the same time.

  “Let’s have you on here and out of the wet.” Qualin pulled me from the rubbing storm while he stood up.

  Lifting with a hand below my ribcage, he drew away the wet buckskin and set me on his wood chair. The metal box fire was warm and very close. Tem hurled her towel at me once more and started thrashing it down my ears, back, sides, and brush like a blizzard. It was whitewater all over again.

  Although her touch on my head sharpened the pain, and many bruises down my body were nearly as bad, I leaned in. I arched my back, almost falling off the chair when she changed her pressure. She squeezed water from my ears and rubbed the less painful side of my head. I shook myself and leaned more. Warming, buzzing, stimulating massage right to my toes.

  Qualin watched us. Skeen also stepped over.

  Tem was talking to me. “You’re a pretty, pretty fox. A midnight fox with a moon-tipped brush. What were you doing in the river? It’s full after the spring thaw. You should know that.”

  Did I really have the moon on my brush? I tried to look around but almost fell off again as the whirlwind ripped through my coat.

  “There—” Tem stepped back, panting, an air of dramatic finality about her as she flung down her hands. “You’re all pretty again.”

  Just as another set of steps arrived, accompanied by a voice. “Tem? I heard you were looking for me. Everything all right?”

  “Look.” Tem pointed in my face.

  I licked her finger, which tasted of trout. I looked around to see another grown male, but young, like Skeen. Skeen’s brother, I knew at a sniff.

  His mouth fell open. He looked … not happy to see me.

  I wagged my brush, this time intending it, putting back my ears and glancing to Qualin.

  Qualin did not smell concerned.

  “Earth Mother,” the newcomer whispered. He took a step closer. “You…? Where did you come from? Will you change? Tell us?”

  Definitely unhappy to see me. I knew in the tone, the look in his almost-black eyes, matching his sire’s. He was … desperate. He wanted something from me.