Amelia flinched away from his touch. She couldn’t stand his hands on her face, his deep purple eyes filled with worry. Everything would change after she told him what she came here for.
“I need to tell you something, and I need to do it right now. Promise me you’ll listen to everything I have to say, and then you’re free to do what you must.”
Blake huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. This was it. It couldn’t wait, could it? Damn his Yako for forcing his hand like this.
“All right, all right, calm down,” he said in a low, serious tone. “Here’s what we’ll do: you listen to me first and then I promise I’ll listen to you.”
“What are you talking about?” What was even the deal with these people? Had all Sylfur fox-shifters fallen on their heads when they were little? “Blake, this is important!”
“I know it is, that’s why I’m going to be the first to talk.”
“I just… I don’t… Fine.” She shook her head, but gave in. After all, he was still her Alpha.
He turned around and she looked at him curiously. There was something about him today, something that hadn’t been there before. She studied his tall, athletic frame, narrow hips and slightly thin arms. He was wearing a gray shirt and an old pair of jeans, and Amelia realized how different Seth and Blake were. While Seth liked to wear tight clothes which emphasized his bulky muscles, Blake always went for loose jeans and shirts which hid the assets a woman would usually find sexy in a man. Maybe if he dressed differently, then Amelia would find him more attractive. “It’s too late now, anyway,” she thought. He didn’t seem to be doing anything, just thinking, so she was about to lose interest. She opened her mouth to insist he should let her talk first, when she realized he was unbuttoning his shirt. Her heart sank and she panicked. Surely he didn’t want to… Not now.
“What are you doing?” When he didn’t answer, she switched her weight on the other foot and eyed the door. “Blake, I really don’t think this is a good idea…” His silence was killing her. It seemed she had a special talent of ending up in weird and inappropriate situations. He started pulling his shirt off his shoulders, and Amelia realized she couldn’t look away. Was it curiosity? The shirt revealed the upper half of his back, and she gasped.
Blake let his shirt fall at his feet and turned around. He smiled when he saw Amelia wasn’t looking at his face, but at the thick cloth strips tightly wrapped around his torso. He reached for the pins which kept the entire thing in place and undid them one by one, then started unwrapping the cloth. By now, Amelia’s eyes were as wide as saucers and he couldn’t blame her. She couldn’t blame her.
“You’re…” The words died on Amelia’s lips. She felt her mouth dry and she swallowed hard before trying to speak again. The long, white layers of cloth pooled around Blake?
??s ankles. “You’re a woman.”
Her medium-sized breasts looked strange on her strong, well fit body. It was clear Blake had been working out for years to build up the muscle mass necessary to hide her feminine curves. Amelia didn’t need him… her… to take her jeans and underwear off to further prove that the fox-shifter standing in front of her perplexed eyes was, in fact, a vixen.
“Why… How?” Amelia finally looked up into the woman’s eyes.
Blake sighed. “It’s a long story and I couldn’t tell you the truth until I was absolutely sure you’re ready for it.”
“Are you…?”
“What?” Blake’s eyebrows rose in confusion.
“I mean… do you like women?”
“Oh, that!” She started laughing. “No, I’m very much straight. As straight as I can be.”
“Then why…?” Amelia lifted her hands in front of her, palms up, as if to show she was at a loss for words. She had been trying to form one complete, coherent sentence for the past five minutes and failed epically. She felt as if she was slowly losing her ability to speak. Sounds. She had regressed to sounds.
“The only people who know I’m not a man are my father, Seth, Aaron, and Elena. And now you.”
“Seth knows… Seth knows…” It all started to make a bit of sense now.
“Of course he knows. He’s going to become my Yako, so he needed to know this small, insignificant detail. Anyway, we all grew up together… Seth, Aaron, Elena, and I. When I was born and dad made the decision to lie to everyone and tell them I was a boy, he also chose my friends and future supporters. The only ones who were in on his stunt were his old Yako, Seth’s stepfather, and his two Ninkos, two loyal fox-shifters who had taken human brides. Yes, Aaron and Elena are their children. Everything worked out better than expected. Until I grew up and hit adulthood…”
“Seth has a stepfather?”
“Had.”
Amelia tried to wrap her mind around what she was hearing. It was all too complicated. And for what?
“But why? Why would Roman lie about you? It’s not like women being Alphas and ruling over clans is unheard of.”
“It’s not unheard of, but it’s rare, and for good reason: shifter females can’t have children, so they can’t produce heirs. The rare cases in which Alpha women have a clan under their command are when there are no male heirs to begin with. No brothers, no uncles, no cousins. It did happen after the war, and the only solution to ensuring the Alpha lineage was to adopt, usually the child of their Beta. It’s not the case with Clan Sylfur. We have more than enough Alpha males who could take my dad’s place. The only way to make sure they didn’t get that chance was for him to produce a male heir. Obviously, that didn’t happen. Dad knew my mother would not be able to have other children after giving birth to me. After a difficult pregnancy and a long labor during which she almost died twice, he knew he couldn’t expect her to ever offer him a son. So, he worked with what he had: he lied.”
Amelia looked at her dumbfounded. She couldn’t believe the Alpha who had bought her from Alma Venus was actually a woman. She was married to a woman. As much as she wanted, she couldn’t get past that. She had many questions, but her brain wouldn’t let her formulate them. It was like a broken record that played the same thing over and over again: “What the hell? How can this be?”
“Look, I know it’s a lot to take in,” Blake continued. “I wish I could have told you earlier, but you have to understand… We had to be sure. All of us. I need you, Amelia! I need you to help me pull this off. Do you know why I can’t get out of this bloody room unless it’s way past midnight and everyone is sleeping? Because they would smell me. As a child, and later a teenager, my scent wasn’t much different from any fox-shifter’s. But as I grew up and became… well, a woman, it changed. The only thing that can cover it is the scent of a human female. That’s why I needed a bride before my dad made me the main Inari of Clan Sylfur: to cover my scent.”