1. Mia

Your appeal has been denied.

The words swim in front of my eyes as the familiar burn of tears blurs the letter in my hands.

Of course my appeal has been denied.

I don’t know who the mountain lions paid off at the Supernatural Bureau, but whoever it is, I hope they’re enjoying their newfound riches.

Because of the lions, and because of the way our stupid shifter politics work, my family lost our home. We lost everything, if I’m being honest.

I don’t even want any of the stuff back, necessarily. The cars, the houses, and even all of the farm equipment, can be replaced. The only thing I need are the bonds hidden in the safe buried deep underground. They’re… lucrative.

We held the water rights to our little valley in between Taos and Santa Fe. That’s no joke. And there’s no way that I can get to them. Not with the lions blocking any return to the pack lands we once held. The ones that some of our family died to protect.

Hostile takeovers are technically illegal. In order for a pack to gain territory, it is supposed to approach the other pack, and both agree to file with the Supernatural Bureau. They’re supposed to agree to the change of territory.

Reaching that agreement is where it falls apart.

If a smaller pack says a larger pack is welcome to their land, no one questions it. No one asks if there was coercion. No one asks if the members of the larger pack came in the middle of the night and burned houses down, or if they forced the signature on the agreement at the sharp end of a tooth.

You can file a grievance, a petition to say that you want the land back.

However, there’s only the one agency that regulates the process, and they’re not exactly up to the task. For one, they’re susceptible to bribes. For another, they’re definitely going to believe the word of a big pack of mountain lions over a small family of fox shifters—mostly because they’re comprised of six people, and at least one of them has to be comprised of a stack of mice in a trench coat, because there’s no way they’re real.

There’s no way that my testimony of what the lions did to us is falling on deaf ears.

Not everyone has such a soft heart.

I squeeze my eyes shut against the tears that are threatening to fall. My mother warned me about this, years ago. That the way I saw the world would just keep making me angry. That the rose-colored glasses I seemed to be born with taint how I see other people. That I’m just a natural sucker.

She was right.

The incident with the lions proves it, and I’m bound and determined to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

Hence, why I keep trying to appeal this decision. We’re settled here in the Oakwood pack land, and they’ve been fine. Briony, their social worker, has even been really nice. We hang out and go to the library’s happy hours together, which is a fun thing to have here in Oakwood.

The kids go to school. The older foxes gossip at the grocery store. I’m the only one who is between the ages of 16 and 63, at least until my brother turns 17, so I can’t speak to the social life of anyone but myself in that regard, but I know for the most part we’ve settled in well.

It’s not that being here is bad. It’s that I can’t count on the Oakwood pack, no matter how nice they are. I’ve learned better than to have faith in someone else’s kindness.

Securing the documents to those water rights, which will allow us to receive a profit no matter who is on the land itself, is the only way to ensure that we can be independent.

Mountain lions aren’t the only ones who know how to place a bribe.

“What’s that?” My little brother’s voice is way too close. Quickly, I crumple the letter and turn, dabbing at my eyes.

“Nothing. Just thinking about home,” I lie.

Josh nods. “I miss it, too,” he says quietly.

I tug him in for a hug. I’m nearly a decade older than Josh is, which means that although he’s my little brother, I helped raise him. Even more so after our mom died.

And then when our dad was killed…

I push him away. “You stink,” I tease gently. “What were you doing? Running around in the woods?”

Josh’s eyes flash, and they look a little gold, like his fox. “Maybe.”

Ugh.

I’m wildly unprepared to be in charge of a teenage fox. There’s a specific set of challenges that come with shifters of that age, anyway, since our first shift hits us somewhere in that age.

But foxes? Foxes are notoriously bad.

I think maybe hyenas are the only other shifters who even come close to rivaling the types of hormones and insanity that fox shifters experience.

Normally, there’s a whole bunch of adults in each leash—the term we use for fox families—to take care of the situation. Now, there’s just me and about six elders who are fast past teenage-wrangling years.

I frown. “Maybe? What does maybe mean?”

“Maybe I was out running in the woods.”

“Or maybe you were what? Causing havoc downtown?” My eyes widen. “Josh. You didn’t go to the human parts of town, did you?”

He flashes me a grin with teeth that are too long. “I don’t know which parts are the human parts.”

Oh, for the love… “Josh. No humans. If you smell a human, you run.”

“I did.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You did?”

“Well. I would’ve if I’d smelled one.”

I don’t know how my father did it. I obviously couldn’t have been as stupid as Josh. There’s no way that he would have let me live to adulthood. “Josh. Tell me the truth. Did you go to the human side of town?”

He kicks at something on the dirt. “We didn’t go there with the intention to go there.”

I do a very good job of keeping my cool. “What did you go there for?”

He sighs. “Tony said he knew a guy who could get us some moonshine.”

“And who is Tony, again?”

“One of the wolves,” Josh says with a menacing gleam in his eyes.

Great.

“How does Tony know someone on the human side of town who can get moonshine?”

“He got stuck there. Once. As a wolf. He got drunk and shifted and then got stuck in Iris’ rehab center.”

“And this is how he met someone who would sell a teenager moonshine.”

“Well, he got drunk on the moonshine first.”

I can’t follow the logic. “You are never going to hang out with Tony again.”

“Why?” Josh flashes me yellow eyes.

“Because he’s a bad influence.”

“You don’t get to say that! You don’t know how hard it is!” he shouts.

That hits me right in the chest. “I don’t know how hard what is? Living here?”

“No. You don’t know how hard it is because when you were my age, you still had them around!”

This clearly has nothing to do with Tony, or his moonshine. And, as usual, Josh has found the weakest part of my armor. I’m terrified that I’m fucking everything up with him. That he, and the other six kids, are enduring traumatic childhoods because of me.

More than that, though, grief clutches my throat. I breathe, trying to loosen the fingers it has on my windpipe.

The silence gives Josh a chance to swoop in.

“Besides,” he says with a distinctly teenage sneer. “You’re not my mom. You’re not my dad. You’re my big sister, and you don’t have any right to tell me what to do. You’re not in charge of me!” he ends on a yelp.

Then, suddenly, there’s a big red fox in front of me.

Josh barks at me before sprinting into the woods.

I resist the urge to shift and run after him. Currently, he’s probably a lot faster than I am, fueled as he is by righteous teenage rage and a hormone cocktail that would terrify a human endocrinologist.

I also just don’t want to run after him. Because he’s being a dick.

The comment about our parents bothers me. I know I’m not a great substitute as a parent. I’m sure that my dad would know exactly what to say to put Josh in his place. He was good about stuff like that. Mom was, too, but she died when Josh was five and I was fifteen, right before my first shift. I had my fair share of teenage angst about that, for sure.

But for him to just come out and say that…

I sigh and pick up the pieces of clothing that he shredded in his hasty shift. I hope that when he shifts back, he’s got some sweatpants or something. Maybe I should leave some out on the porch…

Movement at the edge of the woods catches my eye.

We’re right at the edge of Oakwood pack territory. There are some elk shifters who live nearby, and though I’ve smelled them, I have yet to see them. Could this be…

The wind shifts, and I smell wolf. Then, steel-blue eyes blink at me from the darkness.

I can’t help the chill that runs down my spine. Zander Black.

What the hell is he doing here?

Alpha Thorne removed Zander from fox-watching a couple of weeks ago. Previously, the pack’s beta, Thorne’s brother Evander, had tasked him with it after he…

Well. After he was a total asshole to us.

He was supposed to guard us for a while, against naysayers in the pack. But the alpha’s word is law, and even begrudgingly, the pack has started to accept us.

So no, I haven’t really seen Zander around for a while. And the fact that he’s here now…

I put my hands on my hips and glare at him. “What?” I holler.

He blinks at me once, dips his head in a motion that looks like a barely visible nod, then disappears into the woods.

“Do something useful and send my stupid brother back!” I yell after him.

Behind me, in my little cabin, I hear one of the babies start to cry. I sigh, then turn to head back into the house.

I need to get those water deeds. If I bring those before a human court, then the Supernatural Bureau will have no choice but to force the mountain lions into paying us. Then, if I’m a terrible pseudo-parent, at least I’m one that can give my little leash some options.

With a lingering glance, I look at the spot where steel-blue eyes hovered just minutes ago.

The baby screams louder. I grit my teeth.

Then, I put on a smile and go to help.