Where Foxes Hunt with Wolves - K.A. Merikan Page 0,122

scent of fur, recognizing the different animals present before he even saw them.

The shivers that would have preceded a stress-induced turning weren’t there, and he took a deep breath, taking in the cages, which looked over three times larger larger than the ones he’d seen when he came here the first time.

The foxes became increasingly vocal, as if they knew he wasn’t here to hurt them. That he was one of them,

He approached the first cage to his right and opened it, then the next, until he had to watch his step because of the growing crowd of long, furry bodies swarming around him as if they understood him to be their savior.

Their voices had so many questions as they followed him. The animals that hadn’t yet been freed began barking in anticipation of their turn, but the more of them were on the ground, rubbing against his calves and squeaking, the more urgently he needed to spill the tears choking him.

He didn’t have to communicate that he was the one behind them getting better care, vet treatment, and simply not getting killed. Somehow they knew and greeted him among them. Radek was in no way their master, but as one of them, he was more respected than a human they feared ever could be.

When he let out a sob at the last cage, the foxes howled in sympathy, even though they didn’t know what had upset him. The details didn’t matter when one of them suffered. Radek’s chest was tight when he sat on the floor among several dozen furry bodies that twisted around him as each of the animals wanted to lick his face, rub against his arms or sit in his lap.

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