“What do you know about fox shifters?”
“That they don’t exist,” Damon said blandly. “Answer my question.”
“Vyr doesn’t want to be caught.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t answering the question either. Check-fuckin’-mate.
“Nice try. Do you have any new leads?”
“I met a girl.”
Silence greeted him from the other end. Finally, Damon took the bait. “And she’s a fox?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you’re fucked. Go fall in lust with someone else. Foxes don’t give up their own, and they aren’t going to let a grizzly into their den. I’m not paying you to stir up a fox den, Nox. I’m paying you to find my son.”
“I want to know why.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong. It’s me out here risking my neck to track down your out-of-control fire-breathing dipshit son. There is a ninety percent chance I’m going to be charred and eaten. I should at least know why his own fucking father is trying to send him to shifter prison.”
When Damon sighed, it tapered into a prehistoric rumble over the phone that tickled Nox’s ear and made him pull the cell away from his face until the noise stopped. God, he hated dragons.
“Have you not seen the news?” Damon asked.
“I hate TV.”
“Right. Well, here’s the facts. My son burned Covington, which you know, because you broke the line with him. He then ate several gorilla and lion shifters on camera, scorched the earth for twelve straight hours after the battle like he was claiming the Appalachian Mountains, also on camera. He also ate an entire ranch worth of cattle when he finished burning the land. And then he curled himself around a barn and started defending it like it was a castle. When a massive police force was brought in to neutralize him, he blew up four police cars.”
Nox snorted. It was kinda funny. If Nox was a dragon, he’d be doing the same kind of destruction. Vyr was a dumbass and Nox still hated him, but at least he was an amusing dumbass.
“All eyes are on the dragons now. There is a lot of heat on Dark Kane, Rowan, Harper, and me. It’s even trickled down to Diem. And if that kind of attention stays on us, it stays on our people.”
“Eh, that’s bad. There is a hundred percent chance of the Gray Backs screwing up.”
“Boy, I like how you blame the Gray Backs for bad behavior when your father has been arrested twice this week for spray-painting twelve-foot penises on billboards. They’ve caused three wrecks because people get distracted—”
“Dick-stracted—”
“This isn’t funny!”
“Disagree, and I know which signs he tagged because I was supposed to do it with him. It was supposed to be our father-son prank of the month, but instead, I’m out here in boring-ville trying not to get eaten alive by your son! Dude!”
“I’m a millennia old, boy. Don’t call me dude.”
“Dude! Vyr isn’t going to skip off to shifter prison because one grizzly shifter, who he hates by the way, told him he should.”
“Well, that’s what I negotiated, so he has to. One year was better than a lifetime in there. It’s better for all of us this way.”
“My dad wouldn’t put me in shifter prison even if I ate a hundred gorillas. He would’ve handed me a Tums afterward.”
“Well, your father is a delinquent just like you, and he’s also not in charge of my mountains with dozens of people depending on him.”
“Your parenting skills need improvement. Oh, my God.” Nox stared out the window at the flickering neon sign of Essie’s Pantry as something hit him like lightning. “That’s why you want me to convince Vyr to come in, isn’t it? You don’t want to be the bad guy to him. You want me to be the bad guy.”
“Enough.”
“Either way, he’s going to hate you.”
“I said enough! It’s family business, and I’ve told him a hundred times he has to be careful with the dragon. He doesn’t try to control it, and there have to be consequences for his actions. He’s a grown man now, and he should have control, but he doesn’t. He never even tried. I’ve told him over and over this would happen, and now I can’t protect him like I used to. I can’t! He’s put shifters everywhere at risk with his behavior, and he has to be punished or the government will make all of our lives a living hell. Find my son, Nox. And leave the foxes alone.”
“Oh, the ones you said didn’t exist?”
“You have no idea what you’re getting into with that. They aren’t submissive like they’ll convince you they are. Foxes are very clever and very good at staying unseen. They also hunt en masse. You could disappear, and no one would ever know what happened to you. They are the piranhas of our kind, and they are completely silent killers. They govern themselves, and their law is to kill any threat to them, ask questions later. Leave the vixen alone and get to work. You have two days.”
The line went dead.
Nox barely resisted the urge to chuck the phone through the front window. Two days and then what? The blue dragon would eat him? But if he tried to take Vyr in, then he was Red Dragon food. Add Nevada and claiming marks and a bone-deep need to keep her safe into the mix, and he was totally stuck. He was like a duck that had fallen asleep on a pond in a snowstorm and woken up to find his feet frozen in the water.
The longer he stayed in Foxburg, the harder it became to leave.
Chapter Ten
Okay. She could do this. Nevada was going shopping during the day and would make herself talk to one person while looking them in the eyes. And she would smile and pretend to be a normal, functioning adult.
One person.
Bleh, she wanted to puke. Just do it. Be the fox, not the chicken.
Her hand shook as she reached for her apartment door. She hadn’t even left her apartment and she was already breaking out in hives all over her face. She would look like she had chicken pox by the time she got to Essie’s Pantry. I f she didn’t have a full-blown panic attack in the grocery store, it would be nothing short of a miracle.
Determined, she yanked the door open and almost stepped right on a bouquet of what looked like yellow weed flowers. The stems were tied with a pink satin ribbon. Outside, it had started to snow, and there was a thin layer of white all over the yard, but on her welcome mat was a little bundle of springtime.
“They’re dandelions,” Nox murmured from where he sat against the wall by her door.
He didn’t wear a jacket, only a tight black T-shirt with another Bone Ripper logo in white over his left pec. His jeans were worn at the knees, and his black leather boots were scuffed. His blond beard covered most of his expression, but she didn’t miss the shadows in his eyes when he’d lifted his attention to her.