Silver Fox (Silver Shifters 2)

Xi Yong bowed his head. “This has been my hope. She is seldom wrong, but I trust that she is in this.”

“It’s a shame that the current cultural pressure in China is against men loving men, in particular,” Mentor Fox said. “But remember how very old Chinese history is. It was not always that way. Consider the story of the emperor who so loved his beloved he cut off the sleeve of his priceless robe rather than disturb his lover’s sleep.”

It was a story of love and tenderness, Xi Yong’s favorite—not just because the emperor and his beloved were what westerners called gay (he liked that word, with its connotation of happiness), but because the meaning of the story corresponded deeply with the qilin principle Do no harm. It also honored affection, and the sacrifices one made out of generosity of spirit.

“You have introduced me to a new life here,” Xi Yong said. “I will keep faith that you are right in your conviction.”

“You’ll see. It might take time. It certainly did with me, as you can see,” Mentor Fox said, laughing, and his aura shimmered with the brightness of sunlight on water.

He leaned over and patted Xi Yong’s shoulder. “Get some rest. We’ve a long day ahead tomorrow.”

In the morning, they would be traveling to the mountains in search of the dragon Cang. Xi Yong felt eagerness leap inside him, light as his qilin. He couldn’t help feeling as if some sort of destiny awaited him there.

***

All four woke before dawn, ate, and got ready.

They left their cell phones behind as the twins wouldn’t be able to use them in their wolf form. By the time they shifted back to their human form once their hunt was successful, they would probably be far beyond cell towers. Mentor Fox was certain that the red dragon would hide somewhere far from cities.

Xi Yong had learned to drive on old, battered vehicles, so the Jeep was easy to adapt to. They drove in silence, the cold air whipping through their hair. It seemed strange to Xi Yong to smell the familiar ocean brine on the air, but to see palm trees and plants native to California. It was every bit as strange as looking west for glimpses of the ocean instead of to the east.

At Mentor Fox’s direction, he took a narrow road into the hills overlooking San Clemente, where the treacherous red dragon’s lair once lay. They reached a grand manor and parked.

Xi Yong waited by the Jeep as the twins shucked their clothes and shifted to their wolf selves. Though they, like most shifters, cared nothing for human nakedness around other shifters, he looked away to grant them the privacy they did not think to ask for.

Instead, he watched Mentor Fox shift. Mythic shifters did so in characteristic ways, often as an expression of personality. Mentor Fox was jaunty and graceful as his form rippled into shimmering silver. And then there was a prancing fox, forelimbs sprightly, head cocked at that inquiring, smiling angle that had become so familiar ever since Xi Yong’s father had introduced Mentor Fox to their family.

Foxes ordinarily were small. But as a mythic shifter, Mentor Fox was larger than ordinarily foxes—no smaller than the two wolves who sat side by side, tongues lolling. He had not even brought all his tails out of the mythic dimension into this world—just the one—but even so he was magnificent.

Xi Yong had rarely seen Mentor Fox with all his tails plumed. That sight was awe-inspiring, never forgotten—stories about nine-tailed foxes went back a couple thousand years, some expressed in poetry about how the fan of tales brought shimmering light into being.

Mentor Fox turned to the twins and gave a soft yip. He and the two wolves loped toward the house whose aura was still tainted with violence and twisted desires. They took a last sniff around the estate, making certain that the scents had not been overlaid with fresh ones.

While they did that, Xi Yong gazed up at the slowly vanishing stars. He drank in the peace and beauty of the sight, though his heart sent up the silent question, Is there a mate for me somewhere, looking at these same stars?

The click of toenails broke the reverie. Mentor Fox rejoined him, shifting between fox and human between one step and another. “We’re ready.”

The twins flanked him, still in their wolf forms, jaws grinning as they quivered with anticipation. Though they didn’t look alike in their human forms, as wolves they were very similar, big and gray, beautifully streamlined in form.

Xi Yong climbed into the Jeep and started the engine.

Mentor Fox shifted back to his fox, and Xi Yong sensed in the golden glimmer of his aura how the world enchanted him with its astonishing variety of scents. He sensed how Mentor Fox’s heart, though still heavy with defeat, beat stronger: he would not give up on his mate. He would never give up.

But this quest had to come first. For now.

Mentor Fox and the wolves bent their noses to the driveway that revealed the distinctive aroma of Cang’s human minions in their vehicle.

As the three hunters began to run, Xi Yong followed.

***

And then there came the encounter with Mentor Fox’s mate, and the necessity of hiding their true selves and their mission while staying with the human woman’s family. They were good people—any qilin could tell—but their rowdy, boisterous nature was very different from what Xi Yong had grown up with. He found himself enjoying the hours of guard duty in the forest, keeping an eye on Cang’s lair while basking in the solitude.

Xi Yong loved the slow exhalation of trees. He knew that the sough and hush of foliage was the wind whirling its way around the world, but it sounded like the breathing of those stands of sky-reaching pine. Their air was so pure it made him heady.

As a qilin, he walked tranquilly in the air a few inches above the snow. He could not fly, but he could run with the wind without touching down. His heart sang as he ran lightly across the top of the snow, smelling wood and water, and watched the last of the silver-edged clouds drift toward the sunrise still a long ways off. In beauty such as this his spirits lifted. But duty did not permit him to roam the forestland as he willed.

He was on guard duty when Mentor Fox came up the hill, following a pair of wolf shifters whose spirits roiled with the yellow of greed and the red of anger. Xi Yong withdrew into the mythic realm so that the two would not smell him. Mentor Fox had the wolf shifters covered, so Xi Yong circled the compound, checking to see if anyone else went in or out.