Hidden Fox

Two

For one, I never had to worry about wasting clothes when I shifted. They never shredded. So, when I returned to the pack house—once the sun had disappeared and the stars had begun to glitter in the sky, reflecting back at me across the lake—I could just stand on my hind legs and morph into my human form, returning to the red one-piece swimsuit I had been wearing all day. The only thing I couldn't save was my phone, even if it were securely in my pocket. I tried it once, when I got curious after finding out that my clothes didn't shred. Both times—once when the device was in my hand, and once in my pocket—it merely dropped to the ground next to me, never damaged or scratched or cracked, just appeared there in the dirt.

I experimented with other items too, like scrunchies on my wrists, or bracelets, or necklaces, or even earbuds in my ears. Necklaces stayed with me—not appearing on my fox form, but they were there when I shifted back—and so did bracelets or scrunchies on my wrist; it counted as clothing I assumed. But headphones or earbuds? They dropped to the ground just like my phone. I had yet to try other items, but it seemed pretty straightforward to me: anything attached to me stayed, anything I was holding or carrying dropped like a stone.

While I had been exploring what I could do with my fox over the past two years, I still didn't know everything. I figured out what could be determined by trial and error— such as the phone thing—but questions like where I came from, why I wasn't a wolf, how I wasn't a wolf. . . those couldn't be answered that simply.

My parents had dug around, explored the subject, researched about me, but it only got us so far. We had gone through the Werewolf Information Volumes—the books the royals had provided to all of the Packs of the Moon—cover-to-cover several times over. They, too, only got us so far. Still, I liked to read them through for fun, maybe for comfort too. Even though they didn't give me the information I sought about myself, they explained a lot about packs and the hierarchy and how they run. It brought me a sort of peace.

That was where I headed now: up to my room—located on the 3rd floor, the Alpha Floor—to shower, climb into bed, and flip through one of the volumes.

It didn't take long for me to skim through it, to relax. That one talked about the royal pack and how they were different from the rest of the packs. I knew it was outdated, though, because it mentioned that the Menai Moon pack was located deep in the heart of Alaska, buried in the forests for protective seclusion. Now, everybody knew the royal pack was thriving in the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia. And that our current Luna was Queen Natalia, daughter of Anne Livingston (who was the last royal born in the Alaskan palace). I heard that a few years ago, Queen Natalia lost her mate and had to appoint some kid to be her heir. He was related to her mate, but still. It was a little upsetting that the royal line wouldn't be carried on by the Livingston's bloodline.

Another reason it could be fun to move East: I could possibly get to know the royal pack. Even just being that much closer would be cool. I had heard rumors that the royals were magical. Like, that they possessed certain powers. Though, I wasn't sure how much of that I believed. I mean, we were already born with the ability to morph into an entirely different species, how much more magical could it get?

I closed the book and pushed it aside, reaching for a different one. This one wasn't an official information volume, it was just a book on the mythology of shifters, all kinds from all over the world. I was never sure how much I believed in these myths and legends, but I mean I existed, so it was always a shot.

I started with foxes, my eyes breezing over the words I had read so many times now. Basically, the myth stemmed from Asian folklore and portrayed the foxes with often having nine tails. They were mischievous and cunning, shifting into beautiful women for the purpose of seducing men.

It made me grimace. While being a shifter didn't mean the animal had its own voice, name, and personality, I still knew that what this book described was not who my fox was; who I was. Still, I read.

That folklore claimed the foxes could live to be up to 900 years old, one tail for each hundred years of life. But they couldn't shift until they reached 500 and those tails stayed attached, even in human form. The book explained that these shifters weren't as powerful as wolves, but more magical. I wasn't sure what that implied. As far as I knew, I didn't have magic in me at all. According to the Information Volumes, only royals possessed such magic.

Ugh. All that information on wolves, but hardly anything accurate for non-wolves. Am I the only one? There had to be more, whether they were foxes or tigers or bears for all I knew. For all any of us knew!

I slammed the fox book shut and grabbed the next one off my desk. That one about Tigers.

Originating from Indian mythology, they were more commonly males than females. That book mentioned that the moon had no effect and the bite of the shifter was not contagious. But of course, neither is the werewolf's, despite popular human belief.

I skipped down a few paragraphs, where it started talking about shifting. According to this legend, tigers didn't shift like wolves, they merely projected their essence into a tiger form while the human counterpart slept. They acted as a guardian, a protector for their human.

I read and I read. Over each letter, each word, each paragraph, each page until they all started to blur together and I could feel myself slipping. I needed to blink several times in between paragraphs to keep myself from submitting to the black wall closing in around my eyes. Suddenly, the words were gone and instead were they replaced with images of foxes like me, tigers like the myths, and even jaguars and hyenas, and a dragon.