Where Foxes Hunt with Wolves (Folk Lore 2)

The foxes didn’t fight, as if knowing that would cause Radek more distress. No one had ever been more in tune with him than these animals.

He laid down, curling into a ball, and every time he sobbed, the foxes cried with him, shouldering his heartache and just feeling it with him.

They covered him like a living, breathing blanket, comforting him with their warmth. Even their heartbeats aligned with his, and the foxes become a second skin, shielding him from the world he’d have to face.

Chapter 23 – Radek

The sun snuck through the curtains, shaking Radek out of sleep. The ache in his muscles and joints, which had plagued him in the past few days was a pulsing presence that kept moving, as if there were bugs under his skin, gnawing at flesh. He curled up, already sensing a headache looming at the back of his skull, and pushed his face into the pillow, humming in discomfort as a hot spike of nothingness pierced him between the ribs.

He’d had many of those random pains lately, and they made him watchful of the way he was moving.

Was it the result of physical labor he’d done at the fox farm since he’d moved in with Emil and Adam? On day one, he’d been too emotionally drained to do anything but accompany his hosts in their daily work, but he awoke on day two with the conviction that he did have a goal other than crying his eyes out over Yev.

The foxes helped him through the worst of the breakdown, and while their living conditions had certainly improved, they remained far from ideal. He navigated around his disability, but there was only so much he could do with one arm. It was his reality now, and while he allowed himself to sob into the pillow remembering tender moments with Yev, he refused to cry about the missing arm. He’d read up a lot about amputations, and it made him realize how lucky he’d been. The witch had healed it for him in record time. He could have had pain in the stump or damaged nerves, but less than two months on he was… fine. As if he’d lost his hand years, not weeks ago.

Working at the farm was satisfying, even though it left him tired, and the other men did not seem interested in befriending him. That was all right. He was there for the foxes, not people who used to fill the building at the back—the one Radek didn’t trust himself to enter—with the smell of blood each furring season. True, Radek had been the one profiting from it most, and he used to hunt, but could he have taken a living animal from a cage, looked into its eyes, and killed it for its fur? He wanted to think he would not.

The guest room was basic, featuring a bed and a small closet, but it was clean, warm, and smelled of wood. He liked it here, and if his hosts agreed to extend his stay, maybe he could decorate. Make it his home.

Something creaked on the other side of the wall, and Radek would have easily ignored it if the sound didn’t repeat over and over.

Then it hit him like a wall of pure heat.

Emil and Adam were having sex.

Radek rolled out of bed, intent on going straight to the shower, but the world spun around him so fast he stumbled forward and rested his hand on the wooden windowsill, with the radiator warming him from below and the curtains tickling his face. He pushed the thick fabric aside and squinted as daylight hit his eyes.

The snow was slowly melting.

Creak.

Creak.

Creak.

The annoying sound made Radek want to scream. Why was he so horny when his sadness should have killed off any arousal long ago? He wasn’t interested in fucking Emil or Adam, yet, his imagination offered a vision of being sandwiched between their sweaty bodies and taking both their cocks at once. Radek had slutted around in the past but never actually been spit-roasted. Emil and Adam had invited him in good faith, and their relationship was very much exclusive, so what the hell was wrong with him?

It would have been okay as a passing fantasy, one of those random things that came to a horny mind, but the vision kept pressing at him, fucking his brain with its throbbing heat.

He needed to make himself busy.

The icy shower did take the edge off the unexplainable arousal, but relief only lasted for a couple of minutes. Once his cool skin started absorbing his inner warmth, desire came back, even though he could no longer blame it on hearing a rhythmic noise in the other bedroom. Maybe he had a fever, and the insistent visions were the product of his brain overheating?

He dressed and ran downstairs, heading straight into the kitchen so he could get a thermometer from the med kit in one of the cupboards. Radek was now glad that he’d opted for wearing sweatpants, because they also served the purpose of hiding his half-erection much better than tight jeans would have.