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“Y ou will have to ask my cousin and her husband,” Nene told me, sliding me a look from the corner of her eye as we walked along the creek.

“I already have.”

We held hands.

A couple of people who had just arrived in the valley kept sliding us sidelong looks and secretive smiles, but I ignored them.

Nene had my entire attention.

“And since we are still talking, I take it their answers were…favorable?”

“Kei is happy for us.” I grinned and tugged her to a stop. Looking around to make sure nobody was nearby, I leaned in closer. “But two women from the new fox family were there and I think I almost made them faint—something about not recognizing tradition.”

Nene lowered her eyes in silent laughter.

Tradition was one area where Chang had never been able to properly educate me. It’s possible he didn’t try very hard and it had never occurred to me to be concerned until Nene walked into our lives.

Perfect, proper, traditional Nene, now relying on Kai and Chang since the rest of her family was dead.

But Nene didn’t mind that I didn’t know the customs of her people. I might have lived closer to her home village for half my life, might consider her uncle my adopted father, but I didn’t understand their ways.

And she didn’t care.

When I had asked her why, she’d given another one of those silent laughs before meeting my eyes. “You are everything wild and free, . Everything I have ever wished to be. Do you think I would withhold my love because you are what I cannot be?”

“The foxes are scared of you,” Nene told me now, reaching up to touch my cheek gently.

Grunting in acknowledgment, I tugged her back into a walk, this time guiding her around so we could start back up the path toward the valley where we all lived. “I know. Why, when Chang is right there, I don’t understand, but it’s hard to miss the signs.”

The fox family looked at me like they were ready to urinate on themselves if I came too close. I tried to ignore them whenever possible. The small children didn’t fear me, though. The youngest girl liked to try and sneak up on me, pouncing when she thought I wouldn’t see her. Sometimes, I let her.

“Uncle can make himself seem…” She hesitated, clearly not wanting to offer insult.

“Harmless?” I suggested.

Narrowing her eyes, she stared straight ahead.

But I saw the smile twitching at her lips, as if she were amused as I was.

“If you like,” she said in a voice that betrayed nothing.

Dipping my head, I murmured into her ear, “Then they aren’t paying attention.”

She stifled another giggle.

Nene had had enough time around Chang to see him as he was. She couldn’t live under his roof and not pick up on it, even though he kept the full might of what he was buried. Nene, like Kei, wasn’t fully human. She had some trace of gift in her blood, watered down through the generations, but still present and it allowed her to sense those of us who weren’t fully human.

It was easy for me to see it. I’d known him longer than anybody else here, except for Kei. They’d known each other before he had brought me here, even if he hadn’t told me the truth of how they’d met.

Once, I’d heard them discussing my parents and Kei had mentioned how much she missed my mother.

“You look…sad,” she said softly.

Squeezing her hand gently, I shook my head. “I’m not. I’m just remembering.”

“Remembering what?”

How did I answer that? There were many things about me she didn’t know. Like that Chang had found me hiding like a wild thing a few years ago, when I was just a cub, my father’s corpse yards away, while I went half-feral, growing leaner and leaner as the food ran out and the trickle of water in the back of the cave that kept me alive slowly ran dry while the seasons changed.

That I used to run away screaming from this village, the walls of the house closing in around me and terror choking me because I knew, in my gut, the evil that had killed my mother and father would come for me—

A shiver raced down my spine.

The wind changed.

It brought with it a faint scent, one that didn’t belong here.

Slowly, I turned and looked back over the vibrant village that had grown in the small valley where Chang had made his home.

The children ran here and there playing and I glimpsed the pretty little female fox cub who liked to pretend she stalked me hiding in the trees.

Women did their work.

Men were in the fields working or out hunting.

Chang wasn’t here.

There was a family who needed him. They’d sent word, begging for aid, and sanctuary, if somebody could bring them safely here.

He’d left me in charge.

It was the first time he’d done so.

Father.

It came to my mind. If he’d been standing there, I would have said it out loud. That would have been the first time.

Straightening my shoulders, I braced myself.

He’d prepared me to handle battles on my own.

He was only a day out.

Turning to Nene, I cupped her shoulders. “Run and get Kei. Tell her to call everybody in, and send the first sentry you see to me. Now .”

Her eyes widened.

But she asked no questions.

She did rise onto her toes and press a kiss to my cheek.

“Yes, .”

As she turned to run off and do as ordered, a gust of wind slapped me in the face.

It wasn’t cold, wasn’t icy.

Yet a chill ran down my spine and a trail of foreboding followed in its wake.