Page 37 of Witchbane

“I smelled werewolf.”

He put his hand to his chest. “Werewolf.”

“Hot werewolf.”

“Your werewolf. No more running,” he said, kissing the tip of my nose.

“No more running,” I promised.

“How’s the kitsune?” Liam asked quietly.

“Calmer? Still intense. But touching you helps.”

“The mate bond.”

“Yeah.”

“We are mates. The kitsune knows that.”

But I did not have faith in myself, or at least that part of myself. It was not an evil thing. Not really. It was a wild thing. Like a baby tiger, alive and awake, wanting to explore the world, hungry for adventure, yet not understanding its teeth and claws were dangerous things. It was the first time I’d really separated the idea of the kitsune from myself. I had thought it was another form like my fox, but that wasn’t it at all. It was raw power, awakened after years forced into slumber. “Huh.”

“What?” Liam asked.

“Apabound my kitsune when I was little, right?”

My mate nodded.

“It feels like a child, curious, wild, a bit reckless, not willing to be controlled because I tell it to be.”

Liam let out a long breath, seeming to think for a few minutes. “That makes sense. If the power was meant to grow with you naturally, but was bound, leaving it asleep, yet still expanding. Sort of like a newborn baby waking up with the power of a full-grown adult.”

“And me powerless to stop it because I haven’t had a lifetime of learning to adapt to it, like I have the fox.”

“The wolf is that way,” Liam said suddenly. “When you first change. It’s a monster of power, intense and strong, but new and uncorrupted. It’s why it’s hard for a lot of people to accept the wolf. Some people’s nature is to let it rage and terrorize, though that isn’t the beast’s normal inclination. Some push too hard to control it and wind up destroying themselves.”

I stared at my mate, wondering at his strength. “Do you feel like this all the time? At war with yourself? Like there’s something inside that needs to get out?”

“Not at war, no. Not anymore. Not most of the time, anyway. We are better balanced now. But at first, those first few months even, after the change? It’s intense, and a little terrifying. Again, like a child awakening to power. Our human side realizes we have intense power and it’s a draw, not always in the right direction. The wolf is more instinct. Food, family, security. It’s taking the intense power that is meant to protect and opening it up to human fallacy.”

“It’s a wonder all werewolves aren’t raving madmen.”

“Right,” Liam agreed. “It’s more about the character and strength of the human, than their wolf. Those who don’t make it is because of their human side. Not the wolf, as many would lead us to believe.”

My relationship with the fox had never been like that. Maybe because I’d been able to change since I was a baby? If I’d had the kitsune as a baby, would it be as much a part of me as the fox? “What if this kitsune thing is like a kid? Growing in power. How do I control it?”

“You don’t control kids,” Liam said. “The harder you work to rein them in, the more they rebel. You need to train him. Set boundaries, rules, consequences if the rules are broken, and punishment when they fail, to create a learning experience. No one likes pain of any kind, and we forget it easily enough. However, the lessons we learn with it often stick.”

“Korissa is a good kid.”

“Most of the time,” he agreed. “We’ve had bumps in the past. A lot of times worse after she gets back from visiting her mom. Little challenges to see if I still hold the reins.”

“Part of that is security.” That I knew for a fact. My mother made me feel insecure. That insecurity made me seek Liam out for safety. “She tests the boundaries to make sure you still care about keeping her safe.”

“She does,” Liam said.

“Then we have to treat the kitsune like raising a kid. Except how do I send it to its room when it lives inside of me?”

“Isn’t that sort of what the forest god did? I think the problem is knowing when and how to end the punishment so you both can learn and grow, rather than keeping it locked up. Come to an agreement. It wants some freedom; you don’t want to eat all the power left in the world. There has to be some balance, right?”