Fox Around and Found Out (Snowy Cozy Shifter Romances #5)

Chapter 1

MARY

It’s too warm in the stronghold.

That’s the first thing I register when I step down the stone corridor, boots echoing over floors worn smooth by centuries of quiet footfalls and war-bound returns.

The heat presses in like a wool blanket pulled too tight across the chest, suffocating despite the biting cold outside.

A fire roars in the main hall—Cassian’s doing, no doubt.

He’s never known moderation, not with battle, not with drink, and certainly not with firewood.

The others sit clustered around it like moths who forgot the flame burns, their silhouettes cast long and flickering against the log walls and high beams. It’s a scene that should feel like home.

Brotherhood reunited, wounds stitched—some metaphorically, some literally—and the next phase of resistance beginning.

But I don’t step closer.

I linger in the archway, half-shadowed, arms folded across my chest, jaw tight with a tension that hasn’t left me in a hundred years. Everyone’s here now. That should mean the hard part’s over.

And yet, I’ve never felt more alone.

Tessa sits beside Darius, her fingers curled over his like she’s anchoring him to the earth, and maybe she is. He leans toward her unconsciously, like his center of gravity changed without asking him. They make it look effortless—trust, affection, vulnerability.

Across from them, Rafe lounges with Kaleigh practically in his lap, his usual scowl softened to something almost tender.

Cassian’s got Angie tucked against his side, quietly talking her through something—no doubt something reckless she’s trying to convince him to let her film.

Malek and Jennifer are seated across the long table, deep in whispered debate over battle plans, or politics, or who knows what else they turn into foreplay.

Every single one of them has someone now. Even the ones I never thought would. Even the ones who swore off softness.

I don’t envy them. I don’t resent them either. That would be easier, cleaner. What I feel is murkier, like wading through snowmelt that numbs the skin and stings the bones. Like watching something break open in everyone around you and realizing there’s nothing left inside you to crack.

The stronghold smells like cedarwood and smoke, like fresh-baked bread and leather oil.

There’s laughter in the room, real and full-throated.

The sound doesn’t quite reach me. It diffuses by the time it hits the edges where I stand, dulled by old stone and the weight of memory.

I shift my stance, letting my shoulder rest against a timber beam, fingers toying with the silver cuff on my wrist—a gift from a sister long gone, or maybe just lost in all the years that followed.

“Cold over here?”

The voice draws me back to the present. Tessa, soft-spoken and sharper than anyone gives her credit for.

She doesn’t wait for an answer as she climbs the short flight of steps to where I’m standing, her footsteps light despite the heavy wool socks peeking out over her boots.

There’s always something unassuming about her—no posturing, no effort to command a room. And still, somehow, she does.

“It’s Alaska,” I reply dryly, keeping my gaze out the frosted window. “Cold’s part of the charm.”

The corners of her mouth tug into the kind of smile that doesn’t quite touch her eyes.

It’s sympathetic without being pitying, and somehow that makes it worse.

She leans casually against the wooden railing beside me, close enough so that I can feel the residual heat from the hearth still clinging to her coat.

“You don’t have to be out here, you know. Darius has every inch of the perimeter warded. Angie’s drones are running night surveillance. Malek even upgraded the shields.”

“I know,” I say, voice low. “Someone should still be watching.”

“You’re always watching.”

I glance at her then, eyes narrowing slightly. “And you’re always reading people like books you think you’ve already finished.”

“Maybe,” she admits, with that soft shrug of hers. “But the ending always changes on a reread.”

I huff something between a laugh and a scoff, rubbing at the back of my neck where tension knots like iron wire. “It’s not the ending I’m worried about.”

“You’ve always been the one keeping everyone else upright,” she says gently, eyes not leaving mine. “Even when no one noticed. Especially then.”

The silence stretches. Behind us, someone starts tuning an old violin—I recognize the distinct sound of Angie fiddling with it like a puzzle she’s determined to solve—and the hum fills the air like a ghost of something we forgot we used to love.

“I dreamt of chains last night,” I murmur.

Tessa doesn’t flinch. Just nods like she’s been expecting that.

“Chains?”

“Foxfire. Smoke. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.”

She doesn’t dismiss it. That’s not her way. “A vision?”

“Maybe. Or just the past bleeding through.”

“You think it’s Roman?”

“I think something’s coming.”

She follows my gaze out the narrow window. Snow falls like it has for weeks—thick, relentless, soft as breath and sharp as bone. The mountains beyond the trees are jagged silhouettes, half-swallowed by storm clouds. Isolation has always suited me, but lately it feels like being buried alive.

“He’ll come for us again,” I say. “For all of us. But not the way he did before. This time it’ll be quiet. Smarter. Closer.”

“You think it’s about you,” she says, and it’s not a question.

“I think he knows I’m the last piece he doesn’t understand.”

She places her hand lightly on my forearm. The touch is gentle, almost reverent. I don’t pull away, but I don’t lean in either. I don’t know how anymore.

“You’re not just a piece of the Pact, Mary. You’re not a relic.”

“I feel like one.”

“You feel like someone who never stopped fighting, even when the war was over. That’s not the same thing.”

For a moment, the ache behind my ribs flares, hot and sharp and far too close to the surface. I swallow it down, let the silence settle back around us like snowfall.

Eventually, she squeezes my arm once, then turns to go. “Get some sleep,” she says over her shoulder. “Even ghosts need to rest.”

I don’t sleep.

Not in the common rooms, where the hearth’s too bright and the conversation too full of hope.

I climb the northern tower, the one Cassian reinforced himself after the last siege.

It creaks in the wind, groaning under the weight of frost, but I like it up here.

It’s high enough that I can see past the trees, out to the frozen lake and the black spines of pine that claw at the sky.

I lay my blanket down on the wooden floorboards and sit with my back to the stone wall, knees hugged close, breath fogging the air in short, even bursts. There’s no insulation up here, just raw wood and cold stone, and it suits me better than the warmth downstairs.

I close my eyes, and the dream finds me fast.

I am chained to something ancient—stone, maybe, or bone—but it burns like iron.

There is firelight flickering, not warm but searing, strange colors that shimmer in and out of the edge of my vision.

The smell of smoke is sharp and cloying, threaded with the distinct musk of something alive. And then I see them.

Eyes, golden and sly, watching me from just beyond the reach of the fire.

When I wake, the wind has stilled and the scent of fox lingers in the air, so faint I almost think I imagined it.

But I don’t.

Because the wolf in me, the part I try to keep buried under duty and control, growls low in my chest like it recognizes something coming.

And it doesn’t like it one bit.