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

  “She’ll change in a minute,” Qualin said calmly. “Skeen? Maybe a dress or a wrap? Demik, will you see to the soup. I’m sure she’s exhausted. She can change as soon as she has her strength back and feels ready.”

  The others moved to obey, Demik still staring at me on the chair, his lips parted, shock and more—that need, that longing, whatever it was—all over his face and his smell, even the soft sound of him moving across the floor as if to avoid waking me.

  I wagged more, blinking against the sick pain in my head, then looked around to Tem, who was bringing her hairbrush for me. I longed to curl up, my brush over my nose, and stay that way for many hours. Right here in this chair would be fine. A blanket by that iron fire box would be even better. I couldn’t, it seemed. Not only because of the smell of fish soup, or Tem’s kindness taking the time to brush me, but because they were asking something of me. Asking me to … change? Change where I was? Change what I was doing? Change how?

  Much to my dismay, I had no idea.

  Chapter 4

  They kept talking about changing, but more to each other than me. Tem brushed me all over and I finally spotted the white tip on my black brush. The moon on a winter night. That made me smile again. It turned into a yawn. So tired I couldn’t follow what they said around me.

  Demik was calmer now, so I could be as well. He spooned up salmon broth and bits of vegetables into a cup carved from the joint of a bone.

  I jumped to the floor when I smelled this, darting to his feet at the iron fire box, forepaws on his moccasin as I gazed up at him, swishing my damp brush.

  Skeen brought fabrics, talking to Qualin. Tem said something but I couldn’t hear.

  Soup sang to me, dancing and giggling, beckoning me near. Green herbs and salt from the sea lived in that bone cup. Salmon, carrots, roots, garlic, and gooseberries. It had been first cooked out of doors, in sunlight and smoke, northern breeze, nesting ptarmigan, and tanned hides had all mingled their essence around the soup. It had been cooked in iron, leaving an exciting tang like blood, making my teeth click together as saliva rolled down my throat.

  “Here we go…” For the first time Demik smiled at me as he moved to sit on the floor. He wore soft deerskin trousers that were so old and worn they smelled more like a part of his body than that of a dead animal. He crossed his legs and held the cup down to me with both hands around it.

  The soup was warm, tasting of home and joy and the sort of love for a pure, golden sunset that felt like something I might have known before. With quick flicks of my tongue and snaps of my teeth, I flung broth, fish, and carrot down my throat, licked around the bone cup, and looked up to Demik’s eyes.

  He nodded, already holding up the cup. “Skeen?”

  Skeen refilled it.

  Demik held it down.

  I licked. I stared into it. It seemed there had been soup. Then there was no soup. Maybe there was a hole in the bottom of the bone? I licked inside again. I licked the floor. No soup on the floor. I stared at Demik. Something strange had happened.

  “I know.” Demik nodded.

  I rested my right forepaw on his left knee, gazing into his eyes.

  “Just when you think someone’s going to feed you in this place, they toss you an empty cup.”

  Skeen slapped his shoulder. “I don’t remember you being malnourished around here.”

  “You and I have different memories of growing up.” Demik passed her the cup.

  “Last one.” Skeen filled it and gave it back.

  My paws pranced in place on the boards, my teeth clattered, eyes wide, nostrils flaring with the waves of fish. I’d nearly forgotten about the splitting pain in my head.

  Tem laughed.

  I gazed into the empty cup and looked to Demik.

  He smiled, his head cocked.

  I licked my whiskers, one side, the other, then my nose. My whiskers tasted of salmon. A piece of carrot slid down my throat as I gulped. Yet … there was no soup in the cup.

  I touched Demik’s knee.

  This time, he shook his head. “That’s all. You’ll do yourself harm. Curl up and in a few minutes you’ll notice you ate—I promise. We’ll get you supper after you’ve changed and you can tell us what’s happened to you.”

  I wouldn’t get supper until I changed? But what did that mean?

  “What?” Demik looked concerned.

  Perhaps my ears had gone back. I stepped both forepaws onto his knee and stretched until I could touch his chin with my nose.

  “You’re welcome,” he said softly, stroking my flat ears and damp neck.

  I winced and Demik jerked his hand back. Sudden pressure felt like a knife into my head.

  “Sorry … are you hurt?”

  Qualin started telling about the river, how I’d been knocked about.

  I stretched my neck again to lick Demik’s hand. I yawned. My head throbbed. My stomach felt heavy. His skin tasted like wood and earth and salt, like a proud dog-fox on a solo hunt in moonlight, plus a warm embrace on a cold night.

  He was moving, turning out his legs, about to stand up.

  He tasted so charming I kept licking his palm, crawling into his lap. Yawn, lick, settle down. He would look after me now. There was someone … missing. Someone who had been like Demik. A previous strong dog-fox who hunted his own hunts and held my soup cup. But Demik was here now. Salt in his sweat tasted better than fish. His skin was smooth in places, rough and hard in others.

  Yawn again… I couldn’t … keep my … eyes…

  I turned a circle on the worn buckskin, discolored to deep brown, and settled carefully into a comfortable swirl amidst all my aches and pains.

  My stomach bulged. How had that happened? I felt almost warm as I drifted off to the feel of Demik’s hand stroking my fur like a lullaby.

  “—back to work. Let’s make a bed for her by the stove.”

  “No, she’s fine,” Demik murmured. “I can stay. You go on. I’ll call for you when she wakes and is ready to change. Father, can you take over for me on repairs this afternoon?”

  Soft steps, soft voices, while Demik’s touch lulled me to sleep with my moon-tipped brush across my nose.

  Chapter 5

  I stretched, yawned, listened to Demik’s stomach gurgles and lung swishes. These made me laugh. I rolled to my back, spilling from his lap at both sides while my tongue lolled and I made little catching breaths in my amusement. Wasn’t there another way to laugh? A bigger way? It seemed … perhaps once…

  Demik smiled as he watched, gazing down with his sire’s dark eyes but without the wrinkles. His face was narrower than Qualin’s, very … straight. Straight lines, sharp and pointed, and just so, like many a handsome fox. His long, black hair was pulled back. Sharpness of his face was softened by the smile, his white teeth looking bright as a new kit’s in his warm skin, which was like lingering sunsets in autumn.

  I loved looking into that face and making him smile. It seemed in those rigid lines that smiling was not something he made a habit of, much less laughing. But his face didn’t really matter. His smell: that was what mattered. That was what told me he wanted to be with me and I wanted to be with him. His voice also smoothed out life into a fluffy snowdrift: a serious, calm voice like his sire’s. I’m not sure what he said. I was busy.

  Dry warmth rolled to my bones. My skin felt loose and elastic. I could twist inside it while my coat remained light and fluffy, not clinging or stuck. Even my brush was dry. I knew as I swept it across the wood floor.

  The room smelled of hot iron, burning birchwood, fish, leather, feathers, and Demik—who smelled like life.

  I stretched again, hind toes pointed to their tips, forepaws ahead of me as if I were taking a leap across a chasm. A black fox arrow, long and lean, spreading beyond his lap as I lay crosswise over him, every achy, tight, bruised muscle stretching to take stock and embrace this new wellness. Another yawn, wide, head going back on the floor, muzzle upside down, tongue curling around, and whack—hit my head
on the boards.

  I yelped, leaping from my own skull, as fresh pain shot across my head and down my spine.

  Demik caught me, still talking.

  I climbed his chest to wrap my forepaws around his neck. While my vision sparked with pain, I tucked my muzzle against his throat to shut my eyes on his skin. His pulse beat against my eyelid, battling the beat of my own pain.

  The river? Yes, I’d hit my head plenty in the river. Yet there had been something else. Something before … worse. Another kind of falling, open air. I hadn’t been alone then. Pain in my head and … gone. Then … river … Tem, Qualin, Demik.

  There was something I needed to … something … I couldn’t remember.

  Demik let me remain with my forepaws around his neck for as long as I wished, stroking my back, talking about helping and “changing.” Was that all they thought of?

  At last I sat on his shins, one forepaw on each knee, and gazed into his face. He was helping me. I could help him by understanding what all this was about. What did he mean?

  Demik sat on the wood floor, back to the log wall, its bark still on, smell of sap in the air. His moccasined feet stuck toward the iron fire, so my back was also near warmth.

  Pain eased. Demik’s face was its sharpest again, mouth a straight line, pointed nose facing me, eyes intense on mine. Yet it wasn’t a challenge. I stared back.

  “You do know, right?” he asked.

  I cocked my head.

  “How long has it been since you changed? Has it been seasons?” He shook his head. “You must have lived in skin at one time.”

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to focus on the words more than the tone—more even than the smell of him.

  “Are you afraid to change? Did you take a vow you wouldn’t anymore? You know I’m a fox. We’re all foxes here. Well, aside from Ondrog. You understand what I’m saying to you. But you don’t want to change?”

  I held out my paw to him.

  Demik turned his hand and let me rest my paw in his palm. We both looked at the brown hand, young and strong, but rough with work and calluses, and the little black paw resting in the center.

  “You’re not scared,” he said softly and met my eyes again. “You’re one of us. Then … can’t you change? To tell us what’s happened, where your people are, how we can help? It will help your head and bruises also—allow you to heal if you change. Please, put your skin on, change to be in our form. Talk to us. Even if you don’t want to stay that way. Even if fur is your chosen form. Please.”

  In his touch, those words—skin, our form, change—something reached me like a spirit’s kiss. I stepped back, off his legs, my pulse speeding up. I could be like him. I could be that big. I could speak. I could have braided hair and moccasins on my feet and use my own hands to eat from my own dish. Couldn’t I?

  Demik thought so. It seemed insane … yet … skin, change … I knew those words.

  Demik was still talking. Asking about privacy: should he leave? He said Skeen had left something for me, that they would be having supper and would be honored for me to join them at the table no matter how I was, that it was all right to wait if this was too soon.

  He stood, also unsettled. He rubbed his brow with the heel of his hand and watched. I jumped to the timber-frame bed, smelling of Skeen and a dog-fox, jumped off and circled Demik, jumped onto the chair, off again and back around the iron fire to him, all while Demik talked.

  “Listen,” he said at last. “I’m rushing you. I’m sorry. How about you come with me and I’ll show you our home? You can change whenever you want to.”

  Change, change, change to be like him.

  Panting, heartbeat jittery as a snared snowshoe hare, I stopped at his feet and gazed up, pleading. I didn’t need to put this off. I needed to understand it. I needed to go on, to be tall like him. I was trapped on the floor and all I had to do was stand up. Stand up … how? Demik, please, tell me how.

  He shook his head. “Let’s go outside. Hot in here, isn’t it? I didn’t mean to upset you.” He walked past the iron fire. Leaving because I wasn’t in skin like him. Because I didn’t know this.

  So I tried. Longing, needing to be like him—like Skeen, Tem, and Qualin. Even with nothing more than wanting, I felt a rush and tingle through my blood, a twisting sensation like the river. I gasped, stared at him, and saw Demik turn to look as my vision blurred.

  Again, now with a will, I pushed the thought: Skin, become skin, make yourself into skin, be like Demik.

  Ripples through my body surged from my chest and out to tips of my fur, tingling my whiskers, setting my blood burning. The rush came with euphoria, release from pain, release from everything. A deep, emotional, spiritual lift of expectation: freedom. A feeling like finding a wish granted or a prayer answered. I could have lived in that feeling, ecstatic, sexy, burning—yet it lasted two seconds.

  I blinked and Demik was staring back at me, standing by the iron fire. He sank to one knee, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “You’re trying to change?” His voice was very soft. “I was right. It’s just … been a long time. Is that it? Go to your heart and see yourself in the form you want, not the one you have. See yourself emerging from that cocoon from the inside out, take charge of your own power and create the change within you. Don’t worry about turning claws into nails or fangs to teeth. You just have to find that place in yourself and start it, make the choice to be in skin, then demand and expect that change from your body. It will all follow.”

  As he talked I crouched, trembling, panting. I squeezed shut my eyes. I reached, I went way down into my core and turned me inside out: fur into skin.

  Then I tore apart.

  Chapter 6

  It was pain of the river, pain of fire, of my head: whatever had happened before the river. Pain of suffering without death, loss without reconciliation. It broke bones, tore skin, severed muscles, exploded eyeballs, smashed teeth, twisted organs, and burst the world apart until I was screaming, dying, vomiting, stumbling, falling—

  Demik’s arms pressed me.

  Then … it stopped.

  The roar died. Pain faded in seconds to aches and discomfort. Even my head felt better.

  “I’ve got you—”

  The ground was motionless, solid boards. Air played across my skin with nothing blocking it—dance of cool and warm. Demik’s tunic and callused hands pressed into an open, smooth covering of nerves and sensations without my sleek fur between us. That same hand, so rough and warm, once huge, covering my shoulders, able to lift me into the air with a few fingers, felt tiny. Even both his hands covered no more than a fragment of my back and shoulders.

  “It’s all right. I’ve got you.”

  I clung to his tunic, the sensation spinning into my nerve endings, the motion of my fingers as shocking as the sound of breaking glass in a quiet den. Grabbing, holding, the pain fading, the fingers long and bony. No pads, fur, or claws.

  “I’ve got you.”

  A great, tangled mess of black hair twisted around my face, down my shoulders, my back, my chest, all tumbling from my head like a waterfall. Bark of the wall stabbed my tingling flesh. I jerked away, more into Demik, and still he held on, resting on his knees against and over me. I twisted against him, clutching an arm, a shoulder, as if he were the one pulling me from the river.

  “You’re all right, you’re fine. It only hurts for a minute. I’ve got you. You’re safe here.”

  I came to rest, struggling to sort out bits of myself, on my hip, clutching his chest and arm, my face at his neck, curling up my knees against his, bunched as tight as possible, as small as possible: make him the giant again, the shelter.

  “I’ve got you.”

  He must have said it thirty times, fifty, until I heard. Until I believed him.

  Then … breathing. Then … pain faded. Then … Demik smiled again.

  I felt it on his face by my … ear? Was that my ear at the side of my head instead of on top? Such a peculiar place to keep
an ear. How could you rotate it to pick up a noise just ahead or behind? How could you make it face the same way as your other ear?

  “I knew you could do it. You’ll have to tell us when was the last time you were in skin. A good few seasons?” Smiling all the time, voice a gentle breeze.

  I sighed. I’d done it. Demik’s happiness seemed a perfect reason to be happy in return. I wrapped a massive arm, longer than my whole body a moment ago, around Demik’s back, returning the embrace. He wasn’t that tiny after all. At least he remained larger than me, his shoulders broad, his back all muscle as he held me tight.

  I loved the truth Demik told: I could change—and I had. I would be safe—and I was.

  I pressed my nose into his neck to inhale his skin. Shocked, I jerked back, a fresh wave of fear surging through my system.

  “What is it?”

  I stared into Demik’s face as he caught my shoulder, not letting me go. With my weird, long hand catching against my even weirder, incredibly long hair, I pressed my fingers over my nose, finding only a stump there. A knob on my face like a button on a shirt.

  “You can’t smell?” Demik’s gentle smile returned. “Yes, you can.”

  I shook my head, still pressing my nose, still horrified.

  He kissed the backs of my fingers over my nose, then abruptly pulled away, dropping his gaze, deeper color rushing to his neck. “Sorry. Uh … it’s only … you can smell in this form. It’s subtle. You have to hunt it more. Try this.”

  Demik held his wrist to my nose. I had to bury my nose in his cuff and skin, then hold his arm, breathing against his wrist, until I could sort out smoke and pitch and sweat and his own fox smell. I opened my mouth. Nothing. I licked his wrist. Salt, smoke, Demik … but … it was all on my tongue. It didn’t go inside. It didn’t mean much. I couldn’t even smell how he was feeling.

  I looked up with this new grief.

  Demik’s eyes had grown sad. “We don’t gather scent with our mouths in skin. But we have touch and taste, and strong eyesight. And speech.” Smiling a little. “Anyway, it’s not forever. We all go back and forth, skin and fur. You can also. At least until you can go home or back to staying in fur. If that’s how your people live?”