Page 36 of License to Kill

Foxes couldn’t cry, not like humans could, and the sounds I had denied myself stuck in my throat. I had no skulk, and Jake had chosen another to be his mate. I had asked too much of him. My misery choked me as though I drowned despite my head remaining over the surface of the water.

Jake turned his ears back, flattening them along his skull, and watched me from the shore. Another step back led me deeper into the water.

The cold seeped into my fur. With nowhere left to go, I sat and I waited, hoping they’d leave or finish me off and be done with it. As long as they didn’t stay, as long as I didn’t have to endure their presence much longer, I didn’t care.

Either I had grown or he had shrunk, but Jake wasn’t much larger than me. He waded out into the water, ignored my bared teeth, and breathed in my scent. I snapped my teeth at his nose, but he avoided my bite, huffing his annoyance.

I stood, and the cold cramped my muscles. Tripping on the rocks hidden by the water, I submerged. Jake snagged the scruff of my neck and lifted his head, and I chittered my agitation at his interference. I stood and yanked free, snapping my teeth at him and shuffling away, staying as deep in the river as I could without submerging.

Every step hurt.

Jake followed with a huff.

Maybe if I kept walking, he would eventually understand he needed to go back to his own species and leave me alone. I fixed my gaze to where the river curved out of sight through the trees and forced one paw in front of the other, not caring where the waters led.

I walked until I couldn’t anymore, the cold and my exhaustion wearing away at me in equal measure. Time and distance did nothing to deter Jake or his pack.

Staggering to a halt, I panted to catch my breath. Whenever I tried to angle for the other shore, Jake shunted me away, refusing to allow me to go any deeper than my chest, enforcing his edict with bared teeth, low growls, and strong shoves of his shoulder.

Maybe I wasn’t much shorter than him, but I was longer in the leg and far narrower in the body, despite being broad in the chest for a fox. He outweighed me by at least fifty to a hundred pounds, and he wasn’t shy about using his bulk against me. On the shore, the pack, consisting of at least thirty wolves, kept close enough to the river to ensure I wouldn’t make it far before they stopped me.

I hated wolves, especially the ones who masqueraded as humans. Without them, I would’ve forgotten I was a fox. Without them, I would’ve died long before my ma had turned her gun on me and my pa.

Without them, everything would have been different.

I hated them, because without them, I would’ve still believed I was just another human.

Sitting in the water, I flatted my ears and refused to budge. Jake pressed his shoulder against me, but instead of rising, I toppled. The water closed over my head, and if I had had my way, I would’ve let it flood into my mouth and nose.

Jake seized my scruff and dragged me through the water towards shore. Instead of fighting, I went limp, shivering as the winter-cold air iced my fur. Once he had me on dry, snowy land, he released me, and I thumped to the ground, staring at nothing in the distance. I waited.

Jake nudged my throat with his nose, and I flinched at his touch and closed my eyes.

Why wouldn’t he either leave or finish me off? He had wanted me to stop asking him for what he couldn’t—wouldn’t—give me, and had told me if I couldn’t give it up, we were as good as through.

There was no we anymore.

At the insistent nudge to my neck, I cracked open an eye. Jake pawed at my shoulder, and the moment he caught me watching him, he dragged his tongue over my muzzle. I lifted my foreleg and batted his head away.

I should have chittered, but I remained silent.

Pushing his head with my paw didn’t keep him away for long. He annoyed me into staggering upright, shuddering from the cold. I snapped my teeth at him, clamped my tail between my legs, and ducked my head to cover my throat.

While the wolves surrounded me, they kept their distance. Jake twisted an ear back and stared at me. I wobbled to the shore and drank the bitter cold water, keeping still in an effort to muster enough strength to either return to the river or try to break through the pack.

Waiting didn’t change anything, so I curled in a tight ball and shivered.

Some of the wolves became human, all part of Jake’s pack, and they forced a muzzle over my head and buckled it in place. A sharp, metallic scent filled my nose. Too cold and tired to fight them, I stared at the distance, silent even when they wrapped a tight collar around my throat.

By the time they got around to clipping a leash to me, the humiliation of being captured and treated no differently from a wild animal smothered me. I thought about making one last effort to escape, but I abandoned the idea. One by one, the wolves left and returned as humans, and I flinched away whenever anyone came too close, pulling on the leash in my effort to keep a distance.

Jake and his parents were among the last wolves to return as humans, and I struggled against the leash, dragging the Fenerec holding me several feet before he dug his heels in and held me in place.

“Problems?” Sebastian Thomas asked.

“No, not as long as we stay back. She doesn’t want anyone getting close to her, not even Mason.”

I remembered Mason; he worked within the FBI, like most of the Thomas’s pack, although he didn’t work in the field. He analyzed data for field agents, and the few times I had interacted with him, he’d been good at his job.