A Fox's War Read online




  A Fox’s War

  Part XII of the American Kitsune Series

  Brandon Varnell

  Illustrated by

  Kirsten Moody

  Edited by

  Crystal Holdefer

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  American Kitsune 12: A Fox’s War

  Copyright © 2020 Brandon Varnell

  Illustration Copyright © 2020 Kirsten Moody

  All rights reserved.

  Brandon Varnell and Kitsune Incorporated supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use the material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  To see Brandon Varnell’s other works, or to ask for permission to use his works, visit him at www.varnell-brandon.com, facebook, twitter, Patreon, and instagram.

  ISBN: 978-1-951904-06-7

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  Dedication

  This page is made in dedication to my amazing patrons. Without them, my characters would never get lewded by so many wonderful artists:

  Aaron Harris

  Alarinnise

  C.L. Holgrahm

  Chace Corso

  Dominic Q Roddan

  Edward Lamar Stephenson

  Emery Moore

  Feitochan

  Forrest Hansen

  Jacob Flores

  Jacob Wonjo

  James Leon-Moore

  Kevin

  Kevin Aulinger

  Lane Watkins

  Lucid Fayt

  Matthew Wallace

  Max A Kramer

  Michael Moneymaker

  Peter Barton

  Rafael Eriksen

  Seismic Wolf

  Syed Hamdani

  ToraLinkley

  Travis Cox

  William Crew

  One

  Morning Shenanigans

  It was early in the morning. The sun hadn’t even risen yet.

  Justin sat in the back of a military transport vehicle with Jack and Jill, the brother and sister team that had been with him since he’d gone after Kevin. They weren’t twins, though they looked close enough that he could see the resemblance. Jill was older by about two years.

  The vehicle they were in had no windows in the back, which meant that he couldn’t see outside. It didn’t matter anyway. The driver would let them know when they were at their destination.

  While his breathing was even and his heartbeat was steady, Justin felt his stomach twisting itself into knots. Ever since his defeat at Kevin’s hands, Justin had been thinking about what his friend had said:

  “Then maybe you should think about that before deciding to become our enemy. You don’t have to do what someone says just because you were created by them.”

  Kevin’s words played over and over again in his mind. He’d thought about them for the past several days, and he had come to the conclusion that his friend was right.

  I don’t want to be someone who goes against his own beliefs because the people who made him don’t believe the same thing.

  “We’re almost there, Lieutenant,” the driver called out from the front, snapping Justin out of his introspection.

  “Right. Thanks.”

  Jack shifted in his seat, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “So, we’re really doing this?” he whispered.

  “We are,” Justin confirmed. “Are you two ready?”

  “I still do not approve of what we’re about to do,” Jill admitted quietly. “However, I approve of this war even less.”

  “Good to know,” Justin said, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms.

  Justin felt the vehicle slide to a stop. The driver up front rolled down his window and began speaking with the guard on the other side. While he couldn’t see anything, he was familiar enough with the process to know that the driver’s ID was being scanned and their names would be catalogued as “on-site.”

  The window rolled up and the car started moving again. It stopped once more several minutes later, and the door was opened a few seconds after that. Justin, Jack, and Jill vacated the vehicle, which had been parked in a vast underground military garage. The driver also got out and saluted them.

  “At ease,” Justin said.

  “Sir.”

  “Go and report to the Transport Division,” he continued. “Afterward, take a break. You’ve earned it.”

  The driver relaxed. “Thank you, sir.”

  He, Jack, and Jill watched as the driver walked away from the car and toward one of several exits. They waited until he was gone to begin speaking.

  “Do you two remember the plan?” Justin asked.

  “Who do you think you’re talking to?” asked Jack. “Of course I remember the plan. I’m the baddest mother—doof!”

  “We remember, Lieutenant,” Jill said, retracting her elbow from Jack’s gut. “Do not worry. Jack and I shall create a distraction, while you do what you need to.”

  “Glad to see you’re on the ball,” Justin joked before getting serious. “We’re only going to have a few hours to do this. Once Commander Paine comes back, any hope that we may have had at completing this mission will go up in smoke.”

  Commander Paine was currently in Washington DC, where all of the military bigwigs were currently having war talks with the US President. The commander was going to use this meeting to push his plan forward. Justin didn’t know what his plan was, but he would bet Eric’s entire collection of eroge that it wasn’t going to be anything good.

  I’m working with a limited amount of time, with only two other people against an entire base, and I’m betraying the people who created me.

  Justin barely withheld his self-deprecating chuckle.

  Let’s do this.

  Someone else was in her bed.

  Having lived her whole life by herself, Christine was accustomed to sleeping alone. She knew exactly how much her bed sunk underneath her weight, and she could sense the minute shifts in aspects of her bed such as temperature, mattress firmness, and changes in elevation caused by unusual circumstances.

  Such as someone else being in her bed.

  The only question Christine had was: Who?

  Who the hell is in my bed? Whoever it is, they’re a dead man.

  Wanting to find out who’d been so brazen as to slip into bed with her, Christine turned around. Her mouth was open to verbally lash at the soon-to-be-dead person. She paused, however, upon meeting a pair of crimson eyes.

  “Good morning, Christy,” Iris greeted with a devious smile, her eyes glimmering like a cat’s after they caught a mouse. In a situation like this, Christine did the only thing she could think of.

  “KYA!”

  Shrieking, she leapt out of bed, not even bothered by the cold in her panic. Iris winced at the sound. As a fox, her ears were quite sensitive, so the shouting probably hurt—not that Christine cared about something like that, given what the vixen was currently doing.

  “Could you be any louder?” Iris grumbled. She sat up in bed, the blanket slowly sliding off to reveal her bare breasts, and raised a hand to her ears. “Honestly, you’re so loud.”

  Christine ignored the vixen’s blatherin
g and pointed an accusing finger at her. “What the hell are you doing in my bed?!”

  By this point, the blanket was pooled around Iris’s waist. Christine dipped her gaze downwards and noticed that Iris truly was naked. While she couldn’t see anything past Iris’s hips, there was no cloth to indicate that the vixen had anything on—not even underwear.

  “Lilian and Kevin went to bed sooner than me,” Iris informed her. “I thought about slipping in with them, but I felt like they deserved some time alone after what happened yesterday.”

  Yesterday she, Kevin, Iris, Lilian, and several other people had traveled to Lake Michigan and rescued Heather and Phoebe. The mission had been more dangerous than anything that she had ever done, yet somehow, they’d succeeding and come back alive. A large part of the reason for that had been Kevin and Lilian, whose teamwork had stalled the creature calling himself Hebi long enough for Orin to arrive and defeat him.

  After the successful rescue mission, they’d returned to New Genbu, where a party had been prepared in their honor. Christine couldn’t remember much of what happened during the party. She remembered spending time with Kevin and Lilian, and she remembered Iris being her usual self, but a good deal of her time after that was blank.

  It must have been the alcohol.

  There had been alcohol at the party. Christine had partaken in some of it at Iris’s behest, but yuki-onna were not tolerant of alcohol, and Christine, being the tiny slip of a girl that she was, had even less tolerance. She’d gotten wasted after a single drink.

  Christine groaned and covered her face with her hands. She must have blacked out after that one drink, then Iris had probably taken her to bed and slipped in with her.

  This… this is the most humiliating moment of my life, she concluded. I can only hope I didn’t embarrass myself in front of Kevin.

  “By the way…” Iris began.

  “What?” Christine snapped at her.

  “Are you going to stand around in the buff all day? Not that I mind the view, but I thought you didn’t like the cold.”

  “What?”

  Staring at the two-tailed vixen in her bed, Christine wondered what she was talking about. What did she mean when she said standing around in… the… buff…?

  … After a painfully long and awkward silence, Christine looked down.

  “Kya!”

  Then she squeaked when she realized that she was, indeed, bare as the day she’d been born. She tried to cover herself up, but all she had were her hands—and now that Iris had mentioned it, she was positively freezing! With nothing protecting her from the elements, her body temperature quickly plummeted.

  Before she could complain, two black tails extended from the bed and wrapped around her. Christine was instantly engulfed in their warmth. She would’ve sighed in relief, but these tails belonged to Iris, and she didn’t trust the vixen as far as she could throw her.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Christine demanded.

  “Warming you up until we can find your clothes,” Iris announced as she stood up. Unlike Christine, she had no qualms about being seen naked, and so she bared her voluptuous body before Christine. Her pink nipples were partially covered by several strands of hair. Christine, unable to stop herself, suddenly looked down.

  Huh… bare…

  For some reason that she couldn’t explain, she hadn’t expected this vixen to be the kind of gal who shaved, though she felt like she should have.

  “I know I’m gorgeous, but you might want to stop staring,” Iris said, grinning. “People might get the wrong idea.”

  “W-whatever!” Christine blustered. “I wasn’t looking at you cuz I like what I see. I was staring because you’re so damn shameless.”

  “Damn right I am!”

  “That’s not something to be proud of!”

  Growling, Christine said nothing and gathered her clothes. Her outfit lay scattered about the room. Her slippers were by the entrance. Her socks lay on the floor near her bed. Her lolita dress was sitting haphazardly against a chair, and the bodice ended up being underneath her bed. After locating everything, the tails Iris had been using to warm her up retracted and Christine hurriedly got dressed, keenly aware of the eyes that were staring at her.

  “Could you stop that?”

  “Stop what?”

  “Stop staring at me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it makes me uncomfortable!”

  “I don’t know why you would be. We’re both girls and it’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before. We’ve been in the hot springs together several times already.”

  “This time and those times are completely different!”

  “If you say so.”

  Iris shrugged and stopped talking. Christine grimaced as she tried to tie her bodice. It laced in the back, which meant she had to reach awkwardly behind her. While she could manage, it usually took her awhile to lace her outfit together.

  I should think about getting one that just zips up…

  “Here,” Iris said, coming up behind her and grabbing the laces, “let me do it.”

  Christine could’ve snapped at her, but as Iris began to gently tie the laces together, tightening it so it was tight but not uncomfortable, she couldn’t bring herself to complain. For all her faults, Iris had done a lot for her, including saving her life at the risk of her own.

  Even though it had happened over half a year ago, Christine still remembered that moment like it was yesterday. How Iris had shoved her out of the way of that three-tailed fox’s light spear. How the spear had impaled Iris as the vixen took an attack that had been meant for her. More than anything else, she remembered the gentle smile that Iris had given her as she asked if she was all right. Iris was crude, rude, and completely shameless, but Christine counted her as one of her greatest friends.

  “Thank you,” Christine whispered as Iris finished tying her bodice.

  “You’re welcome. Now, let’s go see the stud.”

  Christine was about to nod, but then she realized something. “Iris?”

  Iris looked at her. “Hm?”

  “You’re still naked.”

  Iris looked down at herself. “So I am.”

  “Put some damn clothes on!” Christine shouted and facepalmed at the same time.

  Iris was not in bed when Kevin woke up. Whenever he slept these days, it was always one of three ways: either on his back and Lilian and Iris sleeping on either side of him, on his side spooning Lilian while Iris spooned him, or spooning Lilian while his mate spooned Iris. Last night he had slept on his side, but the familiar feeling of Iris hugging him close had not been present.

  It somewhat bothered him that he’d grown so used to her presence that he actually noticed when she was gone. It bothered him even more to realize that he actually missed her presence.

  Have I really become so used to her sharing my bed that it feels weird when she’s not around?

  He didn’t like entertaining that thought. Having more than one significant other was wrong, and the fact that he’d been sleeping with Lilian and Iris bothered him. Iris always said it was because he let human society dictate his beliefs on right and wrong, but he didn’t think there was anything wrong with that. If society said that something was wrong, then there had to be a reason for it.

  And yet I still let her share my bed with Lilian.

  Maybe there was just something wrong with him. Perhaps he gave in to the demands of others too easily. He wondered about that, but he quickly decided that couldn’t be it. The only people he’d ever given into were Lilian and Iris, and that was because they had double-teamed him. No healthy teenage male would have been able to resist even one of them, much less both of them at the same time, so he could hardly be blamed for what had transpired—or so he told himself.

  Shoving those thoughts to the back of his mind, Kevin sat up. The chilly morning air hit his skin, and he immediately wanted to crawl back under the covers. Glancing around revealed a mostly empt
y room. Cien and Polydora were no longer sleeping in their hut. Cien had his own hut now, and Polydora was sleeping with the other yama uba.

  That means Lilian and I are alone.

  How long had it been since they were alone? It couldn’t have been more than a few weeks, but it felt like so much longer. A lot had happened: Their mission to California, the attack from the Sons and Daughters of Humanity, their search for Orin, and the mission to rescue Phoebe and Heather. With everything that had transpired, it felt like months had passed instead of a few days.

  Looking down, Kevin felt his heart melt at the sight of his sleeping mate. Lilian lay on her side. Her red hair looked like fire licking at the white sheets. He could only see her face. Her eyes were closed, allowing him to spot how long and thick her eyelashes were, and her mouth was partially open as she breathed. She was drooling a bit, but Kevin thought it was cute.

  Rolling Lilian onto her back, Kevin took another moment to admire the girl who had chosen him. Seeing her so vulnerable like this, knowing that she allowed herself to be this vulnerable because she loved him, made his heart turn into a pile of goo. He really was one of the luckiest people around.

  What did I ever do to deserve her?

  Lilian mumbled something incomprehensible, then shifted to get more comfortable. As she did, she partially kicked the sheets off, revealing the large T-shirt that she’d worn to bed. The hem had risen, exposing a good portion of her flat stomach.

  Last night, they’d been too sore to have sex. It was only natural. They had gone on that rescue mission the other day and nearly died fighting against that man who called himself Hebi. Still, seeing her like this now made Kevin grow hard.

  I should wake her up…

  Straddling Lilian’s legs, Kevin slowly pushed the hem of her large T-shirt further up. As more of her taut stomach was exposed, he felt his erection grow even harder, and his breathing felt slightly hitched. He also felt somewhat embarrassed, but he pushed that aside and focused on his mate. She always enjoyed it when he woke her up like this, and he wanted to make her happy.