Fox’s Night: A Foxy Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (Foxes of the Midnight Sun Book 3) Read online

  “Then what?” I asked. “If he dies, Demik will die? And if he lives … Demik will live in a cage?”

  “Something like that.” Mej pulled me in tighter, kissed my head. “We just don’t know yet. I’m sorry.”

  “I want to see him,” I whispered.

  “You shouldn’t. He’s locked up—”

  “Please, Mej. You saw him. I want to.”

  Mej sighed. “I’ll … see what I can do.”

  Chapter 3

  “How’s Jones?” Mej asked first thing as he stepped ahead of me into the city jail.

  “He was awake this afternoon,” replied a cheerful male voice within. “A tough customer. I think he’ll pull through.”

  All these words were in English, yet English had been coming back to me. I struggled, missing some of the meaning, but most of it made sense.

  “Good to hear, Riley. Listen, I don’t want to bother you fellows at all hours, but I’ve got the accused man’s wife here.”

  “Wife?” Chair legs thumped to the wood floor and a man stood up from behind a desk as I followed Mej around the door, into the dim room.

  “Newlyweds, actually.” Mej pulled his hat off into his hands. “I’m sorry, she doesn’t speak English, but she was desperate to come. I thought you might not take offense for a short visit.”

  The man, heavyset, with a black mustache and wearing a scarlet jacket, with a black hat on his desk, frowned at us. “Five minutes, through the bars, and she’ll have to let me search her. Can’t have anyone passing anything through.”

  “Thanks, Riley.” Mej turned to me, changing to Tanana instead of Vulpen. “He just needs to make sure you’re not meaning to pass over a weapon or anything, then you can see him for a few minutes.”

  I nodded, taking in the room, smelling Demik but unable to see him down the hall. Mej held my arm to keep me from starting off that way.

  It was a one-story timber building, windows only on the front, with a row of cells. A man reeking of whiskey slept peacefully on the floor of the nearest one. I couldn’t see into the other tiny cells with their doors of vertical iron bars. Wide enough apart to reach through and hug someone if you pressed up against them.

  I demonstrated I had no knives of firearms below my skirt. The man in red and black patted down my sides. My right side still hurt but I didn’t react, only stood holding Mej’s arm, shivering, a lump in my throat for wanting to see Demik.

  “All right,” the man said at last in English. “Five minutes.” He tapped his pocket watch and gave me a meaningful look.

  Instead of translating, Mej said, “It’s fine. I’ll keep him talking.”

  He stayed with the man while I hurried down the row of iron bars to find Demik. There were only four or five doors.

  He’d been listening to us, already pressed to the bars, waiting for me in the gloom.

  I slid my arms through to him, he wrapped his around mine, and we pressed our heads close, touching as much as we could—which was not much.

  We held on, saying nothing, for the first minutes while I felt my pulse ease and the lump settle back for the peace and love and joy of touching him, even through bars. At the same time, my eyes were wet. I wasn’t sure I could speak anyway.

  Demik’s breaths trembled through is lungs while the beat of his heart reached my ears in a frantic, thready pulse.

  “You’re safe,” he whispered at last in Vulpen. “Safe… When they shot you…” His voice cracked and he simply held on tighter.

  After a minute, he went on. “I’m sorry I got the clan in trouble. Right when we got back. When you should have been able to settle with us. I’m sorry…”

  I didn’t even remember I had anything to say until I heard the man calling to me. Time was up.

  Then, all at once, there was so much. So much and so important to know right now. So much for Demik to know about and so little chance to tell him. So much to do. So much for him to be a part of and have a say.

  “Demik… I love you…” That wasn’t what I’d meant to say.

  The man’s boots on wood boards. Mej talking to him.

  “Demik… We have to go…”

  “Go?”

  “Visiting hours are up. You can stop by tomorrow.” The man’s boots clunked over.

  “Summit? What do you mean?”

  Mej rested a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Summit. He says you can come back another time.”

  We hadn’t talked, hadn’t started. I’d just arrived. Our lives, the fate of the whole clan, stretched between us.

  “Summit?” Demik held on.

  But I couldn’t think, and Mej was pulling me away. Now Demik was scared, reaching after me, both arms through the bars.

  “Summit? I love you. But don’t come into Dawson City. Please. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “Go on.” Riley, unable to understand what we said, was losing patience. He tugged my arm.

  Mej brushed him off, putting himself between the two of us, though herding me outside all the same.

  Out front, in the evening sun, I yanked away from Mej. “I’ll wait.”

  “What?”

  “Until I can see him again. He can’t be in there alone. He’s in a cage.” My teeth were chattering. Tears I could hardly feel dropped from my lashes.

  “I knew you’d be upset about the cage, but there’s nothing we can do right now. Sounds like Jones is getting better. We do what they tell us, obey the rules about visiting, accommodate them at home, and this can still blow over.”

  “I want to see him. We didn’t talk. I’ll wait until they let me in again.”

  “No. You’ll come home with me and see him in the morning.”

  The morning? The morning was a night away, a life away.

  I shook my head and twisted my arm free to go back inside.

  Mej grabbed my shoulders and stepped in front of me. “Do you want to make life hard on him? Want to make this worse for you both? Want to make them decide to never let you see him at all? That’s the sort of thing they do when you upset them. If we leave them alone, do what they like, and make friends, things are going to be all right. If we anger them … things might not be.”

  “Mej—”

  “No, listen to me. The more they like us the more they like Demik, and the better things will go for all of us. Do you understand that? Actions and reactions? That keeping them happy means they’re good to Demik? We’ll go home. I’ll come back with you in the morning. I promise, Summit. But right now you need to do what I say, and what Demik wanted. Keep home and safe. We’re all staying in skin—especially you and Ondrog—and we’re all staying out of trouble and we’ll get through this. Right?”

  “I want to see Demik.”

  Mej pushed a hand through his short hair and blew out his cheeks. He looked away across the road for a long time. “I know you do.” He met my eyes. “But if you insist on seeing him right now it could hurt him. Waiting until morning to see him could help him.”

  I looked at the dirt. Of course I understood what Mej was saying. It just … didn’t help.

  He took my hand. He kissed it, embraced me, said he was sorry.

  We went home.

  But I had no intention of waiting until morning to be able to see Demik.

  Chapter 4

  Night 60

  Tweal was back. Ondrog had Demik’s space in the stray den. I could stay with Mej and Komu in their side, making it easy to steal away. Each had his own pallet. Once the den was collectively asleep, I had only to slip from Mej, pretend to be getting in bed with Komu, then creep outside instead.

  At the den flap, I rolled up my shift to leave on my moccasins, then dashed naked through the true dark of night, into the birch trees so they would not hear me change. It was not a loud noise, but a dreadful one with the contorting of skin and bone—loud enough for fox ears.

  I caught my breath after the painful change, sharply aware of the fresh wound down my back and side. It was healed over, though, and the change would be
good to finish off the process.

  After a shake and deep inhale of the night, I loped south.

  It was easy to hide with my mostly black coat in the dark. Men don’t seem able to hear or smell much of anything, although their eyes can be sharp.

  Imagining a dance to soothe nerves, wishing I was home with Demik, Mej, Komu, and Ondrog for a dance right now, I trotted to Dawson City without so much as the alarm call of a dog disturbing me. Then I had to face the jail itself. The hotels and saloons were still open, lights from oil and electricity spilling out windows and doors into the dark streets, now with some of the mud dried off.

  A similar light flowed from those two small windows at the front of the jail. Would there be a way in? Was someone in there? Or were the prisoners left with a lamp on?

  They must have a guard. If they had a guard, they had someone who could open doors.

  My claws clicked on the boardwalk. I slowed to a creep, pressed against the walls and walking on the backs of my paws so my furry pads moved silently from one structure to the next.

  I froze against the side of the jail as a strange sound met my ears. I’d thought it was music from the dance hall drifting down here. No … someone played a piano and sang inside the jail. How? I had not seen a piano in the tiny space. The noise was tinny, coming from far away, yet right inside at the same time.

  Did it emerge from a passageway? It might have come from underground or a hidden room the way it sounded distant and metallic. I slunk to the door, listened, but still could make no sense of the noise. Music, one way or another, came from within the jail.

  I listened at the dark door, hearing no step, no voice besides the distant yet close singer. A woman—one of their females. Also unusual. There had to be someone in there.

  I hopped from the platform and took no time to find a stone the size of a chicken egg that I could get my jaws around. I dashed back to the door with the muddy object and slammed it into the wood, sending it banging out of my grasp with a quick pain in my teeth. A sharp crack burst against the door, then bump as the stone rolled away to plop off the boards on the street.

  I crouched flat against the seam of wall and door, listening as boots stamped down inside. Someone had been startled by the noise. Yet the singer went on without a single hesitation.

  “Hello?” A different man’s voice, not Riley. His steps sounded like Riley’s as he clomped over. Thunk, thunk, thunk, and threw open the door. “What do you want?”

  The door flew into my face. I’d crouched at the hinge side, not latch side, and the thing opened outward.

  Heart hammering, ears pinned, body pressed close along the ground, I slipped along the door, then inside with my fur brushing the man’s shiny black boots.

  That music filled the room, bursting forth from … somewhere. It seemed to come from a second desk. As if the piano player and the woman singing lived inside or behind the desk. I could not pause to sniff or marvel.

  In a flash, moving like an otter slipping through the river, I shot across the room behind the man, who yelled outside to leave this place alone.

  I flew down the corridor along the iron bar doors just as he slammed the front door and his boots moved again.

  He muttered and mumbled in English, then flopped down to his wooden chair.

  The front cell was empty, as was the next. On a wood bench with a single woolen blanket, Demik crouched in the third.

  I paused, scented to make sure of him, then wedged my head between the bars. Odd, how, in my imagination, this gap had seemed plenty big to fit through once I put on fur. Yet … now … it was not so…

  Chapter 5

  Demik gasped as he sat up straight. The next moment he was on his knees by the bars, silent, though any small noises were hidden by that bizarre, metallic music from the front room.

  I pulled back to study the bars with nose and whiskers. Too close, these two, but I moved to the next pair, turned my head sideways, ears back, and pushed my skull into the gap as hard as I could. As long as I could get my skull through, the rest would follow. I must flatten myself like a weasel, compress ribs, twist hips, and I’d be in.

  “No, Summit, you shouldn’t be here,” Demik whispered in Vulpen. He pressed a hand in front of my whiskers in the dark.

  I heaved forward against the wood floor, digging in with all four paws, and bit his finger, clamping both sets of canine teeth around the joint and holding on as Demik pulled back. In this way, with a bar at my throat and another at the top of my head, me pushing and Demik pulling, I slid my head through the two bars with only some scraping off of fur. Lashing my brush, panting, thrilled with my own success, I twisted, writhed, and, in a second, popped my whole slippery body into the cell at Demik’s feet.

  Demik scooped me into his arms, pressing his face to my fur, thin with summer coat. I burrowed into his neck in return, forcing myself not to squeal and yelp and trill at him. Only wriggling, licking, swinging my brush.

  He sank onto the bench with the blanket and held me in silence for minutes while I pressed in close against him. All the time, the tinny, weird music played and the strange-voiced woman sang. Sometimes the man in red and black sang as well, though his voice sounded quite normal—right there in the room as it should.

  At last I pulled away, squirming from his arms and leaping to the floor.

  I met his eyes in the gloom.

  Demik shook his head, but grabbed up the blanket to wrap it and himself about me and block some noise. As I changed, he also had a coughing fit. The metallic woman sang, the hidden piano played.

  Again, we stood still. Demik held me tight through the blanket, nothing else between us now but his clothing.

  In the front room, the music stopped. The unseen man hummed as he moved about. Then music started again.

  “How do they do that?” I whispered. “Where does it come from?”

  “A trumpet that’s set on a box. There’s no one really here singing. It’s all from a box.”

  Singing from a box…? I couldn’t think what he meant. Couldn’t see how a woman could be singing through a trumpet in a box, but it didn’t much matter.

  “Demik, they’ve taken over the settlement. You were right.”

  “I heard. They’re offering to buy cabins and build their mill alongside us—instead of shooting first this time.”

  We moved together to the bench, myself wrapped in the blanket and Demik’s arms, snuggled down against him so he could speak under his breath in my ear.

  “Are you really all right?” he asked. “You seem well.”

  “I am. Ondrog saved me. I fainted from losing blood after I ran. They found me and held together the wounds and I was able to change. I’m better now. They’re back, though—the men. They’re right back to work on cabins. Now they’re angry about their friend. Mej and Vicos only want to soothe them, keep everyone calm.”

  “They’ll go on that way: keep the peace at any cost. It’s dangerous, Summit. That’s why they do it. If the humans wanted to, they could come in and kill us all in half an hour. We have a few old hunting rifles, a couple of handguns, a cluster of families living together. They have hundreds of men, thousands of bullets, a whole army to turn against us anytime they wish.”

  “What’s an army?”

  “A great number of armed men who can kill what’s in their way to get what they want. But they don’t need it. Not for people like us when we roll over and let them have the cabins, the land, our fishing grounds, our dens, anything they want without a fight.”

  “You would fight them?”

  “Of course not. The clan has to move on, as they were meant to do—as we should have many seasons ago when the men started growing Dawson City with the gold strike. Staying still, working and trading with them, shows how besotted by gold even foxes can become. We grow more and more like the white men with every passing year. Just look at Mej and Komu. They’d give up their fur for the ‘privilege’ that those men enjoy.”

  “No, Demik—” I pu
lled back, shocked.

  “They would. And they’re not the only ones.”

  “No,” I repeated. “They’re scared. They have a right to be. Mej sees a winning hand—and it’s not his. Most of the clan agrees with him. That doesn’t mean he’s forgotten who he is.”

  “It’s what he acts like. Turning his back on Earth Mother, more interested in gold than good hunting. It’s sickening. We are no more to white men than a colony of ground squirrels—to be swept aside when they want something. Now, they want a new sawmill. So they’ll have it.”

  “Ondrog also says to leave. We’ll find a new home.”

  “They won’t follow him. You have to get Mej and Vicos on his side. My sire will agree. Bring him in.”

  “No, you, Demik. You’re the one they’ll follow.”

  “It doesn’t matter about me.”

  “It does.” Again, I pulled back to look at him in the dark.

  Demik slowly shook his head. “I’m not coming with you, Summit. Even if Jones lives, they know sending me away would be no punishment. They’ll give me multiple seasons jailed and labor in the mines for what I did. If he doesn’t live…”

  “You’ll lead us,” I repeated. “You’ve always been the one who’s known the clan couldn’t stay here.”

  “Get others behind you. With you and Vicos and Mej… You’ll have to get them to understand. I can’t do that anymore. And, after what’s happened, they have to go—whether they see that now or not. Jones will carry a grudge. They’ll be driven from the land over time anyway. I don’t care what Erwin Cromly, or any of the humans say. They’re pretending to be our friends so they don’t have to fight about the land—offering to buy cabins and all that. It’s a matter of time before the whole clan is homeless and cast out. So go now. Before summer’s end. I tried to explain to Mej. He won’t listen and I haven’t been able to see anyone else. You’re the one who’s got to tell them. If they don’t go now, before another leaf turns yellow, before we know about Jones one way or another, their lives could be lost. They must go. And you must take them, Summit. Help them find a new home.”