Chapter Five
Caylan finished zipping his jeans back up as he watched Tansy walk back toward his house from the fire pit. His mind drifted back to her hand running over his fur while he was a fox, and his chest was filled with an intense heat. Her touch had been gentle and her hands were soft as she had touched him. Deep underneath that hard, cold exterior that she put up in front of everyone, he knew she had a gooey and soft center. He didn’t want her to stop touching him while he had laid next to her. She obviously had a soft side when it came to animals, and he had wanted to soak up what he could of her affections.
He jogged to the house after her, closing the door behind him as he crossed the threshold into his home. He was pleasantly surprised to see her curled up comfortably on the sectional waiting for him to come inside with a smile on her face.
“So… This is bizarre. I don’t even know where to start with you. I’ve never seen something like this before…” Tansy rambled on as she spoke before Caylan interrupted her.
“One step at a time, Tans. Let’s start with the obvious. I’m what my people call a foxen, a man that also shifts into a fox.”
“Why are you so big?” Tansy asked, clapping her hands over her mouth to prevent any further outbursts.
Caylan frowned, “You’re right, I am much larger than an average fox. Most of my kinsmen are only slightly larger than a normal fox. I’m technically a hybrid. After my mother had my older brother Cieran, she cheated on the man I thought for the longest time was my father. No one had been able to figure out for the longest time how I had turned out so much larger than the other boys. When my mother was killed, we’ll come back to that later, my presumed father found her journal. Inside it she had detailed who my biological father was and how it was a one-time only tryst while she was insecure about her body from her postpartum depression. Problem was, my birth father was a bearen, a man that can turn into a bear. When my father found out, he was ashamed of me. He treated me differently than my older brother. I was only five when he found out.”
“Oh, Caylan…” Tansy whispered.
He walked over and sat down on the edge of the couch, “He was too proud to admit it out loud to anyone though that she had cheated. So he didn’t cast me out or send me to live with my real father. Instead he pretended he didn’t notice me growing larger and stronger than the other boys. When I turned eighteen, I was able to leave home and make a place for myself out here.”
“You were so young. Have you contacted your birth father since you’ve been out here?”
“I looked him up once before, but when I went looking for him, no one had heard from him since shortly after my mother had been killed.”
“Okay, so you mentioned that a minute ago. Who killed your mother?” Tansy frowned.
Caylan lifted his eyes to meet Tansy’s and could see the concern there. She was listening to what he had to say and wanted to know more. Maybe now she would listen to him.
“To explain that, I have to tell you everything. You have to promise to hear me out though. What I have to say can sound crazy to someone who doesn’t know the story already, but I swear every word of it is true.”
Tansy nodded, “Okay.”
“Promise me,” Caylan said gently.
“I promise. I’ll listen to what you have to say.”
When Caylan began to speak, his voice changed tone, much like he was telling a story, “In the beginning there was The Light. There were many things that happened that lead up to the creation of humans and shiften. But the shiften were created as the goddess, Rhen, and the demon, Khain, battled on the Earth. Rhen wanted to protect the humans. She loved them as The Light did. Khain claimed he was killing them out of mercy because they were miserable. Rhen went to battle against Khain, and they fought for months. One night as they were fighting, they crossed into a territory that belonged to a pack of timberwolves. When Rhen cried out for their help, they came to her aid. As they distracted Khain, she took advantage and delivered a finishing blow to Khain. He disappeared into the Pravus, a world between worlds, weakened, but not completely defeated.
“Rhen gave pieces of herself to the wolves as a way to thank them for their help. This created the first shiften, the wolven. As she walked the Earth, she came across bears trying to put out the fires that she and Khain left in their wake, so she also gave them pieces of herself. With every piece she gave away, she grew weaker. Even though, she was weak she pressed onward, running alongside the wolven through the forest. At one point, she almost ran over the edge of a cliff, but a mountain lion stopped her just in time with a scream. Rhen gave a part of herself to the mountain lion as a way to thank it, and together, they found others for her to give pieces of herself to as well.”
“But what about the foxen?” Tansy asked, canting her head with curiosity.
Caylan’s mouth turned into a frown, “Khain grew jealous when he came back through the Pravus years after Rhen had gone to her resting place and saw that the shiften were millions strong. He took wolven women and forced them to breed with him so he could create his own army of shiften. The result was the foxen.”
Tansy held up a hand to signal for Caylan to stop, “Wait...are you saying the foxen exist because Khain…”
“Raped wolven women? Yeah. Foxen lore claims that it was only one and that it was consensual, but I think that they changed the story to make themselves feel better about the situation. As far as I know, there’s about five main foxen lineages. Which means there was five forced matings that created the foxen line.”
“So, what happened to the females then? Why are there only male foxen left?” Tansy inquired, trying to swallow past the sick feeling that was crawling up her throat. Somehow, she felt she knew the answer already, but she had to hear Caylan say it.
“Khain feared a prophecy. The prophecy has said that someday the shiften would grow strong enough to finish Rhen’s fight and end him once and for all. In his state of fear, he plotted to kill off all of the females. There was a good amount of foxen that encouraged this idea. The less shiften there were, the stronger the foxen would seem. Problem was, the prophecy never specified which shiften would contribute to overthrowing Khain. In his paranoia, he felt that he needed to make an example of the female foxen, so as to prove his strength to whoever doubted his power or had disloyal thoughts. Khain gathered all of the women in our community. He commanded through the blood bond that we couldn’t move, scream, or do anything to save our women. We all stood there as he summoned enough fire to burn a small village to the ground, and he threw it at the women. I was five and wasn’t strong enough to completely break his hold until it was too late. I remember standing where my mother had been, crying and begging for her to come back to me. I was too young to know what death was, yet this had been my first experience with it…,” Caylan’s voice caught in his throat as he tried to choke back the tears.