“Why was it so important that Daniel be sent away?” Now I knew him better, now I knew a lot of things better, I realized there was a reason for everything.

“Remember what I just told you not to do?” I blinked at that, then nodded when he repeated, “You can’t control the future?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“That was me. Trying to control the future.” He cleared his throat. “No good will come of Daniel remaining with the Highbanks.”

“Do you know why?”

“No. But I know you’re the Moon Child, which is a catalyst.”

“For what?”

“The birth of the Sun Child.”

“What will they do?”

“Change society forever.”

“Oh, not much, then?” I teased gently, resting my hand on his chest, and finding myself surprised by the pounding of his heart.

Infinite knowledge was a burden, but it spoke to me of this man, told me of his goodness, his wrongdoings. It told me of his strengths and his weaknesses.

He didn’t want to be pack alpha.

But he knew there was no one good enough for the job.

He was holding it…holding it for our child.

Crazy how only a few days had passed since I’d first met him, and already, I could think these things without wanting to puke.

Just being in the same room as him had been too much. Going to a diner had been an attempt at proving to him that we were wrong for each other, that he was wrong about who I was to him.

Now?

I couldn’t get close enough. Skin to skin was too far apart.

The thought had me rolling onto him, straddling him and sandwiching his hardening dick against my belly.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his lips curving into a smile.

“If you have to ask, then I’m not doing it right.”

He snickered, reached up and cupped my breasts. As he tested the weight of one, he nipped the tip of the other. His fingers slipped down and along my waist, settling between my thighs where he managed to slip two between my labia and began to rub my clit. Hissing, I jerked up higher onto my knees, rocking my ass back so I could give him better access.

Letting my hands rest on his thighs, arching my spine, I spread my legs wider, watching him watch me as he played with me.

He rubbed my clit before he slipped the digits down, pushing the tips of two into me. The heel of his hand ground down, making me arch my pelvis some, and I groaned as soon as he hit the right spot.

Head falling back, I rocked my hips against him, loving that my juices were leaking onto his cock, lubing him up for when I was ready to take this to another level.

He teased me for a long time, and I let him, loving that he was connecting with my body, that he was learning me as much as I was learning him. His calmness, his innate sensibilities might not have been a turn on for a woman who liked things rough and raw, but I didn’t.

I loved how he moved, how he touched me, how each caress was for a reason. Purposeful.

He made love to me, and it made me fall for him just that little bit more.

He was right in a sense, but wrong in others—I’d been scared all my life. Of my feelings, of other people’s feelings, of how they affected me, and of what I could see and hear. I’d been petrified of being locked in a psychiatric ward, and I’d felt sure that was how I’d end my days. Locked up, believed to be crazy.

But I wasn’t.

I was very sane.

Everything happened for a reason, and I’d found my reason. He was here. Beneath me.

The need to connect rammed me hard at that moment, and I reached for his dick, nudging his fingers away, and slotted him into me. As I did, I saw the fox in him, the spirit that had told me from the start that he was lying to me, that he wasn’t telling me the truth, and I watched it unfurl from its resting place inside him.

The creature’s ears perked up, and its tails speared into life, all nine forming an erect circle as he leaped out and onto me.

I didn’t scream, didn’t jerk back and away as he plunged into me. Todd’s hands grabbed my ass, and he urged me into moving, into riding him, and I knew then that this was normal. Even if, deep in my psyche, I’d known it too.

As I rode him, I felt the fox, the kumiho, inside me, as real a presence in my soul as Todd’s dick was in my pussy.

The fox marble I’d swallowed, the energy that I’d consumed that was a gift, a burden of knowledge, burned in my chest, and I saw the light shining between my breasts. Todd leaned up on one elbow, then pressed his fingers to that point.

As he touched it, I groaned like he’d rubbed my clit and rocked my hips harder. His heat funneled into me, and I felt his knot start to come to life. The vibrations that followed had me tensing and relaxing as I powered through the intense sensations he urged me to feel.

As I rode him faster, I could feel my heartbeat starting to pound, and as I surged toward a peak I’d only ever felt with him, the light burst out of me, the kumiho with it. But when I looked, I saw the light was shaped like a hyena.

I gulped at the sight, but there was no time for revulsion. If anything, Todd’s fingers on my clit wouldn’t allow for that. My shoulders rounded as I pushed my hands onto his chest, shifting position slightly. In front of me, as I rode my man, as his knot did all kinds of wicked things inside me, I watched the kumiho circle the hyena, his tails swiping left and right, moving faster and faster, until I felt sure he was spinning us both into a trance.

The hyena twirled in a circle too, moving so rapidly that I couldn’t even see any sight of it, until the light died, shadows crawled over it, until, with a bang that stunned me, because it had me screaming out with my orgasm, I could no longer see anything other than the pleasure my mate granted me.

My head fell back, and my hips twisted and writhed as I wrung every ounce of ecstasy out of us both, but when his cum spurted inside me, I felt every drop and sagged on top of him. A limp, ragged, exhausted, ecstatic mess.

Todd’s breath was rough and loud in my ear, but he managed to gasp out, “Look.”

I twisted my head to the side, but didn’t gape when I saw the hyena—she, it?—now looked distinctly foxy. Her snout was more pointed, her ears pricked high on her head, and her eyes gleamed like silver pennies. Her fur was also a touch redder than before.

Blinking at the sight, I muttered, “What the fuck?”

He laughed. “For every year we’re mated, she’ll look more and more like a kumiho. She’ll gain more tails too.”

I didn’t bother peering up at him, just burrowed my face into his throat as I recognized that the ‘thing’ inside me wasn’t all that had changed… My left ear? The perforated ear drum that was a gift from my father? I could hear again.

Tears pricked my eyes, but I shoved them away, not wanting to spoil this time with thoughts of him, and rasped, “That’s a good thing? Isn’t one tail enough? Or are kumiho just greedy?”

He hummed but he was smiling. “When you get your ninth tail, you’ll be able to shift.”

“I don’t want to.”

Another laugh escaped him, and I almost purred as his hands ran up and down my back. “You will. Eventually.”

“How does it work? A hyena and a fox walk into a bar and—”

“We’ll be the first cross-species couple to produce a child,” he told me, rocking my world before he distracted me by cupping my butt, jiggling my ass, which tested the knot that was burrowed into my flesh, and murmuring, “Perfection.”