The Alpha In The Fox Kingdom

The werewolf pup won't stop crying.

She keeps wailing into the night until one out of three elders, Beta Sam, pats her back and says, "Shuush, shuush, little girl."

But she increases her wailing and they honestly don't know what else to do. The elders don't want to sell her off as a slave, this beautiful wolf, this cute pup with the angelic chubby cheeks and pretty hazel eyes.

But what choice do they have? She must be sold. It's why they are in the forest. The prophesy says she'll be worse than her dead parents, and her parents had truly been terrible. The late Alpha king and his luna enjoyed watching their critics burn alive. They cut off fellow werewolves' heads like it's a hobby and generally preferred partying to actual leadership. To get rid of them, the senate sat together and connived with the royal cook to poison their food, which killed both the king and queen slowly within a week. Now that they're gone, no one wants a replica of them. It's why their wolf pup must be gotten rid of.

So the elders keep advancing through the forest in the middle of the night like ninjas, ignoring the pup's cries, carrying her as they make their way past twigs, shrubs and giant tree roots.

The full moon shines above their heads like a ball of creamy stone. They track nearer and nearer to the forest's boundary where the baby will be given away to foxes.

Warrior werewolves have died fighting foxes at that boundary, since werewolves and foxes are perpetual enemies. Hundreds of bones currently lie there at the boundary as a testament to this fact, but tonight won't be for fighting.

"Be careful," Beta Sam whispers to one of his colleagues whose foot just caught a twig. "Don't drop the baby." Despite the evil plans they have for her, at the end of the day, she's only just a child.

The plan initially was to kill her, but kinder werewolves like Beta Sam had strongly objected, banging the table to make his point at the last council meeting. "Are you no longer ashamed of yourselves?" He had asked. "Trying to murder a harmless pup?"

"The prophesy says she'll be harmful," replied one elder named Beta Dirkhead, stroking his thousand-year-old moustache. "She has to die."

"If anyone has to die," replied Beta Sam, "then it should be you, old fvcker!" He turned around to face other elders in the room. "Don't tell me you are shitting your pants over a child. Even if we must punish her for her parents' crime, death isn't an option! Look, I've thought long and hard about this. Why not sell her off as slave to the foxes? She'll grow amidst those savages and forget her identity as a wolf, but at least she won't die. At least she'll have a shot at life there and even if she ends up dying, we won't have her blood on our hands. The foxes will."

"Done," said the head of the council and pointed at Beta Sam. "You and two other volunteers will take the pup to the boundary. I'll send word to the fox Queen myself. We want no issues. We only want to get rid of a wolf.".

In few more minutes, after over an hour of slipping through the forest in the moonlight, they are finally here at the death boundary and dry skulls crush beneath Beta Sam's feet.

The elders stop at a clearing to catch their breaths before noticing one important fact: the foxes aren't there yet. They're meant to be around to receive the pup.

Beta Sam's heart starts beating like a drum. What a moronic bunch of werewolves they are, he thinks. Walking straight into a clear trap. The foxes, with their age-long hatred for werewolves, must have planned an ambush, an attack on three adult fools.

But Beta Sam calms himself and awaits with bated breaths. Then out of the blue, without warning, some parts of the forest starts to ruffle, and one by one like ghosts in an urban dark, out from behind slim tree trunks and tall shrubs, the foxes emerge with eyes shining like torches in the moonlight.

"We're here in peace," Beta Sam quickly says and throws up a hand.

"What choice do you have than to come in peace," asks one fox whose voice is unnaturally deep, too deep it sounds like a giant's fart, Beta Sam notes. This fox must be their commander. He's got a red cape flowing from his shoulders down to the back of his legs. "Is that the child?" he asks.

"Yes, she is," says Beta Sam.

"Drop it."

"She," Beta Sam says to the fox. "She's a she and not an it."

"Drop it," repeats the fox. "Don't push your luck. We're in good moods tonight, but we could change our minds."

Beta Sam looks around the clearing. There must be nothing less than twenty foxes spread about the place like bats. Do they plan on eating the poor pup? Kill her? Tie her up to a pole and torture her?

Beta Sam changes his mind. What had he been thinking suggesting they sold her into slav.ery?

The deal is off.

He decides these foxtards should in fact go fox themselves up.

"We're no longer interested in selling," he says and tries turning around.

"Drop the child," the fox commander replies, his sloe eyes now narrowing into sinister slits, "Or I'll have your head rolling off your neck to join the skulls beneath your feet."

Beta Sam shivers.

With tears threatening to detach from his eyeballs, he drops gently on one knee and leaves the pup carefully on a collection of dead grass.

"Good," says the fox lord. "Now you and those two pieces of shit beside you, turn around and run along."

Sam and his colleagues hesitate. "Remember," he says with a stammer, "our deal regarding the pup. She isn't meant to die."

"Run along," the fox repeats himself, tightening his fists now. The werewolves turn around with slumped shoulders, walking away,

"I said run," the fox lord billows, bringing out his sword, his voice ricocheting deep into the night

Without thinking twice, the werewolves shapeshift into their wolf forms and gather momentum, flying like arrows into the forest and disappearing from sight.

PRINCE VAUGHN

"Don't come!"

"What?" I ask my girlfriend.

"Don't bloody come," she repeats herself.

There she goes again. Don't come? Don't bloody come? It's almost as if sex is her food. We're both naked in the bathroom and she's bent over the bathtub, holding on tightly to its brim as I stand behind her pumping away. We've been at this doggie thing for an hour plus now. But Bigail, my fox girlfriend, is asking me not to come.

"I'm cooommmmming!"

"Fck you, Vaughn," she says.

But I go ahead anyway. I quickly withdraw my unnaturally long blubber from her pu*sy and direct it towards the bathroom tiles, watching with heightened pleasure as a fat load of cream bursts forth from me, as if an angry teenager has squashed out toothpaste from a toothpaste tube.

Exhausted, I drop into the water in the bathtub and Bigail stands erect with her hands on her waist, watching with utter displeasure as I take laboured breaths beneath her in the tub. "Is it work stress?" she finally asks, her nip.ples pointing down at me, as if accusing me. "You usually aren't this weak."

"Weak?" It's funny. Of all the adjectives available to describe me. Weak? I'm a powerful fox with powerful arms and ripped abs, six foot eight tall, as athletic as they come. I am not "weak". It's just that Bigail's monstrosity during sex is simply scary. She shakes her head and steps into the bathtub too, sitting gently between my thighs in the water and resting her back on my chest, so that the back of her head is now on my shoulder.

"So," she says, running her fingers on the surface of the water as if playing on a piano. "You won't be visiting the field today, right?"

My continued silence answers her question. I'll be visiting the field.

She sits up, turns her neck around and stares at me. "You promised you won't be there. You said today is meant for us both."

"A construction complication came up," I explain.

"A construction complication always comes up!" Bigail slaps the water surface, creating a little splash. "It's why you've got slaves and taskmasters and fox engineers. They're there to handle construction complications. Not you."

"You didn't have to repeat construction complications that much though," I say, massaging her redhead to calm her down. She rests her head once again on my shoulder. "It's okay, baby," I whisper in her ear. "Today will still be for us. I only need to check the workers. In less than thirty minutes, I'm back here at the palace to you."

We are building a wall around our nine mountains.

It's the most grandiose wall the world will ever see. It will go round and round and will shield us from our prime enemies. The werewolves.

The werewolves are our existential threat, and I won't rest until that wall, which we've been building for over a year now, is complete. Currently the wolves give birth in large numbers like fowls, an obvious strategy to someday conquer our realm. Their teeming population keeps shifting the frontiers of their territory, threatening year by year to encroach into ours.

But that won't happen on my watch.

My name is Prince Vaughn Dal Saar, son of the Fox Queen Saar, heir to the throne of the spirit fox mountains.

I kiss Bigail on her slim neck and grab a soapy sponge, beginning to bathe us both, starting from her shoulders to the base of her breasts. When we're done, we towel our bodies and I ogle at her long hair falling over her shoulders like wet grass. Her best features are her legs, which currently stick out from her towel like they belong to the greek goddess Venus. We step out of the bathroom into my royal crib that is as spacious as half the size of a battle arena.

It has chandeliers, wardrobes and doorknobs made of gold. Bigail, with her towel still tied around her chest downwards, falls like a log on the king-size bed while I slip into my royal attire, preparing to step out.

"Don't be long," she says, her face pressed on a pillow.

"You have my word," I say and punch my left chest to assure her. Two fox guards as huge as palm trees suddenly walk towards me like toy soldiers. The flank me and stand at attention. Then I swagger out of the room, with them following closely behind.

The sun outside is preternaturally bright.

It burns my eyelashes until one of the soldiers brings out an umbrella and flaps it open above my head.

I can see the worksite in the distance, with the workers still as small as ants. I wonder what it would mean being a slave working under this scorching temperature. Yet when I reconsider that the slaves aren't actually foxes but are witches and elves and ogres and neanderthals, I am fine.

Perfectly fine.

People say we are savages. Our gut is annoying. But it's funny because we foxes are realists, one of the few species in the universe who have accepted that life is brutal, and only the cunniest survive.

We go to war, capture these lowlives and bring them back as spoils.

Few metres away from the worksite, my presence gets noticed. Foxes start to shout and chant my name. Prince Vaughn, Prince Vaughn. My head swells. I raise my right hand and begin to wave.

I practically have to do nothing on the field actually. My presence simply inspires bravery and loyalty. I just stroll around and fox taskmasters and engineers, and even the slaves, all get the adrenaline rush. And perhaps if I decide to be naughty, to practically murder someone with excitement, I just approach and touch the person. One fox once shouted from a scaffolding that he hasn't washed his right hand ever since I last shook him.

Then the excitement dies down and everyone resumes working.

I'm offered a royal seat under a short tree, and I know I'll be here for only a while before returning to Bigail.

In few minutes, pandemonium arises several feet away from me.

An old witch, who is wielding a hammer, falls to the ground from exhaustion. Nobody wants to attend to her, not even her fellow slaves. Then a girl with long, brown disheveled hair approaches the witch to help her up, offering her a pouch of water to drink from. I know that girl.

She's a werewolf.

There are thousands of slaves in the fox realm. Yet among them, she's the only werewolf.

How lonely that must feel.

Our paths once crossed around the palace, when I was walking along its monstrously wide corridor and noticed how dirty she was, like someone who hadn't bathed in decades. It was nauseating, to say the least. After she had passed, I called upon a house mistress, asking her to come over. "Go wash that girl up."

"My prince," the mistress said. "The girl is a slave."

"Look around you," I replied "Where are we?"

"The palace, sir."

"Good. Now slaves in the palace shouldn't look that way. The girl deserves some dignity. Go wash her up right now."

"Your highness." The mistress bowed and left.

Now I admire her bravery on the field. No slave would help their fellow slave up in the presence of a taskmaster.

The taskmaster, a bulky fox, is obviously displeased. He orders the girl to stand, and he brings out his whip. He tries to strike the old witch first, but the girl steps in-between them, receiving the lash instead.

Her scream pierces my eardrums, even if she isn't that close. I stand from my seat under the tree and ask the taskmaster to stop.

Then I approach the girl and ask her to stand up.

But she just lies there crying, her body arched over the witch as if protecting her.

"I said stand," I repeat myself. The taskmaster is about going to force he up when I hold up my hand, motioning for him stop

The girl stands up on her own and looks at me.

Just like the last time, I see it. The bloody beauty beneath all those dirt.

Her eyes are grass-green, too unnatural, too piercing when she stares at you. And her hair is brown. Shoulders are angular from her daily labour. In my four hundred years as a fox, I have never seen anyone, neither fox nor pixie or wolf or human, as pretty as she is.

But she's a slave. A werewolf too. A girl from the clan of our number one enemies. It's a miracle she's survived this long.

And certainly there'll surely be foxes currently plotting to take her out.

I know this.

JOJO

Gods shouldn't be seen but we regularly see one here.

The fox Prince Vaughn himself.

I don't like him yet people treat him like a rare piece of art. Ever since the wall construction started a year ago he's been coming around to grace us with his presence, to remind us of why the wall must go up asap. Our enemies, the werewolves, are encroaching. They are coming.

But I'm a werewolf, and it feels funny being used to build something against my own people. Yet when I think of it, about the fact that my kindred especially my parents sold me to slav.ery, I realize the foxes are right. Werewolves are vile and deserve a wall separating here from there.

The Prince's presence on the field gets me startled every bloody time. I never get used to it, especially after what happened last week.

Back in the palace Hall, a mistress accosted me without warning and pulled me aside. I honestly thought I was in trouble, not until she ordered me to follow her to the washing room for a thorough bath, "on the Prince's order," she had added.

"On the prince order?" I asked, a bit flummoxed. "Like, the prince Vaughn?"

"Yes, the prince Vaughn," she said. "I was surprised myself. A lowlife getting his attention? But then I reconsidered that it's for the wrong reason. You stink!"

"Oh," I had said, immediately looking down at my brown dress and muddy feet. They were actually dirty. "I'll go wash them up myself then," I said to the mistress and wanted to turn around.

"You follow me," she retorted. "You're wasting time and it's absolutely insulting being found speaking with a slave werewolf like you in public. I would have spat if these weren't tiles we're standing on."

She turned and left, and I scuttled behind her.

The washing room is for lower-ranked foxes. They aren't slaves, but perform the palace's menial jobs. I walk in there to see a large hall with something like a swimming pool at the centre. This was the female section with lots of naked foxes.

The foxes were stunned beyond words when I walked in behind the mistress. Their initial background hum of discussion and smiles and washing up all died down as soon as they saw me.

The mistress clapped three times. "Out everyone," she said. "Give us thirty minutes. The prince commanded it."

"Why's she here?" a fat fox asked. She looked irritated, refusing to follow the other foxes who were on their way out.

"Out now, Bafe," the mistress said gently. "I won't repeat that the third time."

Bafe tightened her towel around herself and flounced out, giving me a deathly stare as she approached the exit.

"Pull off your rags," said the mistress. "Step into the pool."

"I should go naked?" I asked, a bit puzzled. I shouldn't really be puzzled, though. Nakedness is as normal as day and night here in the palace. It is said that seven fox females have been designated to bathe the fox prince. All seven of them go into his pool naked and sponge his entire body with the calmness and deftness of a masseuse. I used to wonder how the Prince's girlfriend coped with it, seeing your boyfriend being washed up by females with bu.tts and breasts bigger than yours.

On the field, the sun scorches our backs as if someone has grabbed it from space and pulled it down a little closer to us.

Today's task is back-breaking. We break up rocks into tinier pieces, work like camels, until either the sun sets or we die from exhaustion. I am given a sack of boulders to break.

Of course, it's of no relevance if you're a witch or an ogre or pixie. You'll be handed your own hammer or digger or axe, and off you go to your portion of the field, working continously without rest.

While leaving the palace underground this morning, I strapped a tiny water pouch to my waist, covering it up well with oversized clothes. And by the time we've laboured hours on the field, I often stop to steal sips.

So now, I see the old witch, a witch as familiar as myself, breaking her portion of a rock in front of me. With each stroke she takes, she gets weaker and weaker, until she runs out of strenght and simply drops to the grass like a puppet whose strings have been cut into two

As a rule, no matter what happens to another slave, you mustn't abandon your own work. The taskmasters will decide what best to do with your fallen colleague. To put a sword to their neck? To just rest them momentarily, giving them double workload when they're resuscitated?

You have no say. Just pretend you aren't there and let the taskmasters decide.

But this particular witch? She isn't just a random slave to me.

She's my mother. Even if not by birth, but by chance. She raised me. I grew up in the palace's underground in her impossibly fair and caring arms. She's a white witch, the best living person in the entire fox realm and I daresay in the entire universe. It's utterly ridiculous she has been reduced to the level of a slave by the foxes.

I gained consciousness early in life as a slave. I was born a slave-according to what the folklore will have me believe. It is rumored that a certain fox lord found me in the middle of the night seventeen years ago in a forest at the boundary between this realm and the werewolves'. I'd been abandoned there to die. The giant fox lord, according to these stories, had brought me to the palace wrapped in leaves. Instead of presenting me to the royal fox family, he took me directly to the underground to be with the slaves, where I reportedly got handed over to a random person, which luckily happened be this witch.

We call her Madam Mia. She's old and stressed, but you'll still want to make her your mum. She fed me with ogre's milk from a nursing ogre mum and gave me the name Jojo.

"You were this little cutie," she used to say over my little bed. "Even though you were brought in here in human form, I knew instantly you were a werewolf."

"So," I would often ask in whispers as she carressed my hair during bedtime, usually half awake half asleep from the sound of her soothing voice. "Why didn't the fox lord just kill me? He should've straight up eaten me in the forest or something."

"A werewolf pup?" the Madam Mia would say. "What in the world is more satisfying than seeing a werewolf pup as their slave? You're the current manifestation of things to come. They hope to someday conquer your entire realm and make your kindreds slaves."

"I hope they do," I'd say, often snorting under my breath. "I wish my parents were captured too so they'll feel a the pain I have so far felt. Do you know who they are? My parents?"

"Unfortunately," Madam Mia would reply, "I don't."

"I thought you are a witch?" I'd say. "Why don't you engage your powers to see my past? There're probably few hundreds of you captured witches here. Why don't you all gather around someday, you know, to use your magic to conquer the foxes?"

"Their queen is a spirit fox," Madam Mia replied. "Having lived for over a thousand years, she's extremely powerful. The Fox Queen Saar's presence casts an unbreakable stronghold throughout the fox realm. It's like a protective dome. When you're in it, you lose your power. No witch, pixie or whatnot can practice their magic in her presence. And it's how we even get captured. Whenever their queen stands before their army to lead wars against other realms, they get their victory on a platter of gold."

By this time, most times, I might have slept off listening to Madam Mia talk.

I always wanted to tell her. You may have lost your magic, but your soothing voice remains magical, Madam Mia, and no fox (no matter how powerful they are) can steal that away.

No matter how stressful my day has been, Madam Mia, just being at the basement listening to you makes the stress gather like candle smoke and vaporize into thin air.

So, it's an absolute no-brainer that I'd give my life for you.

This is the same Madam Mia that falls on the ground from work exhaustion. And the taskmaster in charge of our section sees me going to help her up, and also offer her water from my water pouch.

He approaches and pushes me away, bringing out his whip to first beat Madam Mia into rising up to work, and then to whip me for stopping my own work.

But I had to stand in the way to receive Madam Mia's lash, the singular deathly whip that I'm certain may've instantly zapped life off her.

Yet when the whip lands on me, it doesn't consider that I'm playing hero. It sends a searing pain across the whole of my back, as if the sun has collected its heat together and focused it on me. The pain shoots along my spine. Like a projectile vomit, the scream escapes from deep within my belly to my mouth. I let it out like it's the last thing I'll ever do. It is a maddening pain I must say.

The taskmaster almost gives me a second lash when the fox prince, who I hadn't even noticed was watching, instructs him to stop it.

The prince comes close and asks me to look up. After a couple of refusals from me, I eventually do look up.

Something is off with me.

Particularly with my inner wolf, Gratsia.

I'm seventeen years old. Will be eighteen in a month's time. My inner wolf tells me she craves the prince.

I find it laughable and plain stupid.

Gratsia is ridiculously ambitious. "Gratsia," I say to my inner wolf. "You have a crush on the prince? I don't like him. I generally don't like foxes. But even if I have to grant your request, where do I begin telling a prince I like him? It's even a rare chance to currently be at his feet, to have him look at us in pity."

I stare back at him from my position on the ground, arching my body over Madam Mia so no one touches her. As I look into his brown eyes, I really need to ask the prince this question: Why did you ask for me to get bathed the other day?

You want to sleep with me? You catching feelings? But I'm a slave. You have a girlfriend, don't you? Or perhaps, you simply dislike seeing dirty slaves walking around the palace, so I'm probably overthinking this. I believe my eyes are starting to water up from staring too much at the prince, or perhaps from the pain I still feel from the lash.

Out of the blue, just at the nick of time, his girlfriend appears from no where and stands behind him on the field.

"Vaughn?" she says over his shoulder.

The prince himself gets shocked, because he practically spins on his feet to face her.

"Ah," he struggles to speak, clearing his throat. "When did you get here, Bigail? I was just about asking the guards to lead these two weaklings away." He point at Madam Mia and me. "And then I'd have started heading home to you.."

"I've been waiting at the palace," the girlfriend says. "You promised thirty minutes."

"Yes, I know," replies the Prince. "I'm done now."

I watch him walk away hand-in-hand with the girlfriend until they both disappear into the working crowd.

I'd have been angry he called my mother and I weaklings, but my back hurts, and now I feel like faint headed.

A royal guard in green approaches to whisk Madam Mia and I away, leading us back to the palace underground on a chariot.

This is the second time the prince is coming through for me.

And I'm counting.

Seriously counting.