Fox Around and Found Out, page 45
FOXED AROUND AND FOUND OUT
ZORA BLACK
MILLY TAIDEN
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2024 by Zora Black
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
CONTENTS
1. Mary
2. Silas
3. Mary
4. Silas
5. Mary
6. Silas
7. Mary
8. Silas
9. Mary
10. Silas
11. Mary
12. Silas
13. Mary
14. Silas
15. Mary
16. Silas
17. Mary
18. Silas
19. Mary
20. Silas
21. Mary
22. Silas
23. Mary
24. Silas
25. Mary
26. Silas
27. Mary
28. Silas
29. Mary
30. Mary
1
MARY
It’s too warm in the stronghold.
That’s the first thing I register when I step down the stone corridor, boots echoing over floors worn smooth by centuries of quiet footfalls and war-bound returns. The heat presses in like a wool blanket pulled too tight across the chest, suffocating despite the biting cold outside. A fire roars in the main hall—Cassian’s doing, no doubt. He’s never known moderation, not with battle, not with drink, and certainly not with firewood.
The others sit clustered around it like moths who forgot the flame burns, their silhouettes cast long and flickering against the log walls and high beams. It’s a scene that should feel like home. Brotherhood reunited, wounds stitched—some metaphorically, some literally—and the next phase of resistance beginning.
But I don’t step closer.
I linger in the archway, half-shadowed, arms folded across my chest, jaw tight with a tension that hasn’t left me in a hundred years. Everyone’s here now. That should mean the hard part’s over.
And yet, I’ve never felt more alone.
Tessa sits beside Darius, her fingers curled over his like she’s anchoring him to the earth, and maybe she is. He leans toward her unconsciously, like his center of gravity changed without asking him. They make it look effortless—trust, affection, vulnerability.
Across from them, Rafe lounges with Kaleigh practically in his lap, his usual scowl softened to something almost tender. Cassian’s got Angie tucked against his side, quietly talking her through something—no doubt something reckless she’s trying to convince him to let her film. Malek and Jennifer are seated across the long table, deep in whispered debate over battle plans, or politics, or who knows what else they turn into foreplay.
Every single one of them has someone now. Even the ones I never thought would. Even the ones who swore off softness.
I don’t envy them. I don’t resent them either. That would be easier, cleaner. What I feel is murkier, like wading through snowmelt that numbs the skin and stings the bones. Like watching something break open in everyone around you and realizing there’s nothing left inside you to crack.
The stronghold smells like cedarwood and smoke, like fresh-baked bread and leather oil. There’s laughter in the room, real and full-throated. The sound doesn’t quite reach me. It diffuses by the time it hits the edges where I stand, dulled by old stone and the weight of memory. I shift my stance, letting my shoulder rest against a timber beam, fingers toying with the silver cuff on my wrist—a gift from a sister long gone, or maybe just lost in all the years that followed.
“Cold over here?”
The voice draws me back to the present. Tessa, soft-spoken and sharper than anyone gives her credit for. She doesn’t wait for an answer as she climbs the short flight of steps to where I’m standing, her footsteps light despite the heavy wool socks peeking out over her boots. There’s always something unassuming about her—no posturing, no effort to command a room. And still, somehow, she does.
“It’s Alaska,” I reply dryly, keeping my gaze out the frosted window. “Cold’s part of the charm.”
The corners of her mouth tug into the kind of smile that doesn’t quite touch her eyes. It’s sympathetic without being pitying, and somehow that makes it worse. She leans casually against the wooden railing beside me, close enough so that I can feel the residual heat from the hearth still clinging to her coat.
“You don’t have to be out here, you know. Darius has every inch of the perimeter warded. Angie’s drones are running night surveillance. Malek even upgraded the shields.”
“I know,” I say, voice low. “Someone should still be watching.”
“You’re always watching.”
I glance at her then, eyes narrowing slightly. “And you’re always reading people like books you think you’ve already finished.”
“Maybe,” she admits, with that soft shrug of hers. “But the ending always changes on a reread.”
I huff something between a laugh and a scoff, rubbing at the back of my neck where tension knots like iron wire. “It’s not the ending I’m worried about.”
“You’ve always been the one keeping everyone else upright,” she says gently, eyes not leaving mine. “Even when no one noticed. Especially then.”
The silence stretches. Behind us, someone starts tuning an old violin—I recognize the distinct sound of Angie fiddling with it like a puzzle she’s determined to solve—and the hum fills the air like a ghost of something we forgot we used to love.
“I dreamt of chains last night,” I murmur.
Tessa doesn’t flinch. Just nods like she’s been expecting that.
“Chains?”
“Foxfire. Smoke. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.”
She doesn’t dismiss it. That’s not her way. “A vision?”
“Maybe. Or just the past bleeding through.”
“You think it’s Roman?”
“I think something’s coming.”
She follows my gaze out the narrow window. Snow falls like it has for weeks—thick, relentless, soft as breath and sharp as bone. The mountains beyond the trees are jagged silhouettes, half-swallowed by storm clouds. Isolation has always suited me, but lately it feels like being buried alive.
“He’ll come for us again,” I say. “For all of us. But not the way he did before. This time it’ll be quiet. Smarter. Closer.”
“You think it’s about you,” she says, and it’s not a question.
“I think he knows I’m the last piece he doesn’t understand.”
She places her hand lightly on my forearm. The touch is gentle, almost reverent. I don’t pull away, but I don’t lean in either. I don’t know how anymore.
“You’re not just a piece of the Pact, Mary. You’re not a relic.”
“I feel like one.”
“You feel like someone who never stopped fighting, even when the war was over. That’s not the same thing.”
For a moment, the ache behind my ribs flares, hot and sharp and far too close to the surface. I swallow it down, let the silence settle back around us like snowfall.
Eventually, she squeezes my arm once, then turns to go. “Get some sleep,” she says over her shoulder. “Even ghosts need to rest.”
I don’t sleep.
Not in the common rooms, where the hearth’s too bright and the conversation too full of hope. I climb the northern tower, the one Cassian reinforced himself after the last siege. It creaks in the wind, groaning under the weight of frost, but I like it up here. It’s high enough that I can see past the trees, out to the frozen lake and the black spines of pine that claw at the sky.
I lay my blanket down on the wooden floorboards and sit with my back to the stone wall, knees hugged close, breath fogging the air in short, even bursts. There’s no insulation up here, just raw wood and cold stone, and it suits me better than the warmth downstairs.
I close my eyes, and the dream finds me fast.
I am chained to something ancient—stone, maybe, or bone—but it burns like iron. There is firelight flickering, not warm but searing, strange colors that shimmer in and out of the edge of my vision. The smell of smoke is sharp and cloying, threaded with the distinct musk of something alive. And then I see them.
Eyes, golden and sly, watching me from just beyond the reach of the fire.
When I wake, the wind has stilled and the scent of fox lingers in the air, so faint I almost think I imagined it.
But I don’t.
Because the wolf in me, the part I try to keep buried under duty and control, growls low in my chest like it recognizes something coming.
And it doesn’t like it one bit.
2
SILAS
My bones ache like they remember every kill I never wanted to make.
The training mats are slick with sweat and blood that isn’t mine, though the knuckles on my left hand are cracked raw from the last sparring rotation. Harrow had me running drills with three of the new recruits—jumpy, underfed wolves pulled from mercenary stock and half-trained in Syndicate tactics.
They moved like they’d never been in a real fight, all bravado and no instincts, and now one’s nursing a dislocated shoulder and another’s leaking blood from a busted brow. The third didn’t get up at all. I didn’t bother checking if he was breathing.
He shouldn’t have lunged like that.
The floor smells like iron and burned ozone. Somebody's using stun fields again. The hum lingers behind my eyes long after the field's dropped, a low-frequency buzz that makes my teeth itch. I crack my neck once to the left, then to the right, and let the cold settle back in under my skin where it always belongs.
The base is deep in the Blackridge sector—an abandoned military compound repurposed with reinforced steel doors, UV-stabilized security glass, and shifter-grade restraints built into every goddamn hallway. It's quiet now, except for the faint hiss of recycled air and the occasional clatter of weapons being cleaned in the next room over. The sound of discipline.
I grab a towel off the wall rack, scrub it over my face, and spit blood into the drain just to feel something normal. The mirror across the room shows me what I already know—dark circles, sweat-slick hair tied back tight, amber eyes rimmed in something that looks too much like exhaustion to be anger. I ignore it.
I have a meeting with Roman.
Harrow catches me before I make it to the inner corridor. He’s wiping blood off his boots with an expression so flat it might as well be carved in granite.
“You broke the kid’s ribs.”
“He shouldn’t have left his flank open.”
Harrow grunts. “Roman’s waiting.”
“Figured.”
I don’t wait for him to escort me. I know the way. Through the reinforced gate, past the silent guards in their composite armor, and down the long hallway lined with high-efficiency glass panels that look like windows but are anything but. On the other side of them—subjects. Test cases. The Syndicate’s version of progress. I keep my eyes forward. I don’t look at the cages.
Roman’s office is built into the old command tower. It’s too high up, too well-lit, glass on three sides, like he wants to be seen from every angle and doesn’t give a damn who’s watching. He stands with his back to me when I enter, his tailored coat draped over a high-backed chair, shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, forearms bare and marked with the same runes that branded all of us once.
“You’re late,” he says without turning.
“I was busy keeping your soldiers from dying stupidly.”
He turns then, slowly, like this whole exchange bores him and he’s humoring me for practice. He has that look again—half-priest, half-king, the smile of a man who knows he's the smartest one in the room and enjoys letting everyone else catch up.
“You’re testy today.”
“You keep feeding me pups who think growling counts as training.”
He chuckles, low and smooth. “They’ll learn. Or they’ll die. Evolution in action.”
“Efficient.”
Roman steps closer and studies me for a moment, the way a scientist might study something between glass slides. I hold still. He likes that. Control. Stillness. Performance.
“You’re restless.”
“You pulled me out of a six-month infiltration op to babysit this place. I’ve got a right to be.”
He waves a hand. “That op's done. I have something more important.”
I already don’t like where this is going. Roman only says “more important” when he means “worse.”
“I need someone retrieved.”
There it is. His voice changes when he gives orders. It gets quieter. He thinks it makes him sound more reasonable. It doesn’t. It makes him sound like someone who’s learned exactly how far he can push before things break—and how to enjoy it.
“Who?”
“Mary Crane.”
The name lands like stone in water. Cold. Heavy. Unmoving.
“She’s not exactly low profile,” I say, careful to keep my tone flat.
“No,” he agrees. “But she’s vulnerable right now. Too many moving pieces in that little reunion of theirs. Darius has blind spots, always has. I want her brought here. Alive. Unharmed.”
That last word is a loaded pistol.
“You want her dead and gone, there are easier ways. You want her here breathing, that’s… new.”
“She’s more valuable breathing. We have plenty of corpses already.”
He walks to a table in the corner, flips open a leather folder, and pulls out a single sheet of black-banded paper. The kind we only use when something’s off the books. I don’t reach for it. He holds it out anyway.
I take it.
Coordinates. Timing. Surveillance footage. Her patrol routes. Even the strength of the wards protecting the Brotherhood’s current den. It’s all here. Detailed. Efficient. Terrifying.
“You’ve been watching them for months.”
“Of course I have. I always keep my enemies close. And their women even closer.”
I grit my teeth.
He notices.
“You’re not questioning me, are you?”
“Never said that.”
Roman steps in close. Too close. His voice is a breath now, full of heat and venom. “You were raised for this. Trained in it. Sharpened like a blade. You forget that when you start bleeding conscience all over the floor.”
“I haven’t forgotten a damn thing.”
“Then prove it. Bring me the wolf.”
I don’t respond. I take the file, turn on my heel, and walk.
The hallway stretches out in front of me like a throat waiting to be swallowed. I walk past the cages again. This time I look. Cell 4B has a young girl—witchblood, maybe twelve, maybe younger. She’s not crying. That’s what bothers me.
I keep walking.
In my quarters, I throw the file on the bed and pour a glass of the cheap synthetic whiskey Harrow stashes in the walls. It tastes like ash and chemicals, and that’s fine. I sit on the edge of the bunk, elbows on my knees, glass in hand, staring at nothing for a long time.
Mary Crane.
I remember her from the old days, before the Pact fell, before Roman turned our world upside down. I remember the way she looked at us—like we were barely holding together, and she’d be the one to stitch us back up whether we wanted her to or not. I remember her sharpness, not cruel but exacting. The way she didn’t flinch from blood or sorrow, only from empty words.
She was the only one I didn’t lie to back then.
Didn’t tell the truth either. Just didn’t lie.
Now Roman wants her in chains. Wants her here. Not dead or broken.
Used.
I don’t know what unsettles me more—the fact that he’s targeting her, or the fact that I don’t immediately feel like obeying.
A fox who stops trusting his pack is one thing. A fox who stops believing in his alpha… well, he’s just a rogue waiting to die.
But I’m still here.
Still in it.
Still following orders.
I down the rest of the drink, slam the glass down harder than necessary, and start stripping off my training gear. I’ve got a mission.
Tomorrow, I hunt a wolf.
But tonight, I stare at the ceiling like it might give me a way out.
And when I finally sleep, I dream not of fire, not of blood, but of green eyes and a voice I haven’t heard in years whispering my name like it still means something.
3
MARY
Dawn isn't here yet, but I’ve already been awake for hours.
The stronghold is quieter in the blue hour before sunrise, before anyone else is up rattling dishes or sharpening knives, before anyone says anything that might force me to talk back. I move down the hallway with a practiced stillness, the kind that comes from years of learning how to disappear in rooms full of noise. I carry my boots in one hand, the other tugging a wool-lined jacket over my shoulders as I head toward the kitchen, where the fire is still low and the air smells like burned coffee.
He’s there. Of course he is.
Darius sits hunched over the kitchen table with one hand curled around a chipped mug, shoulders drawn tight like the weight he used to carry hasn’t let him go, even now. Even with Tessa upstairs and the Pact gathering like a long-lost storm finally coming home. The wolf in him still doesn’t rest. I guess mine doesn’t either.
I step past the counter and pour myself what’s left of the coffee in the pot, knowing without looking that it’s probably bitter enough to peel paint. I don’t make a sound, but Darius still glances up like he’s been expecting me all along.
