The paw moved slowly, steadily carrying out the smoothing motion from the tip of the dark nose, over the whiskers, and all the way back over the long muzzle. The fine teeth of the comb set every strand of orange fur perfectly in place after the twenty-fifth stroke, allowing the fox to turn her attention to the other side until similar results were achieved. Neveen watched the vixen in the mirror groom herself, attended to every detail with astute care that she had not taken since she began her rise to power. Generally, the details of her city took too much of her time and while she certainly tended herself and kept herself more than prese

    The upbeat tune did little more than drift through the dimly lit room, even drowning out the sound of rustling papers and almost managing to drown out the creak of the under oiled office chair as the figure sitting in it rocked back. Whistling was a good way to keep the stress down, he had found. That was the theory, anyway. At the very least, it required a bit of focus that otherwise might have been spent grinding teeth or chewing on nails or some other habit that would best be avoided. As a male who had never wanted to be in the position he had settled into, bad habits were an easy thing to come by, a fact that his wife often pointed ou

Chapter 20 Complete    They changed cars three times in fifteen minutes.    She had seen this sort of thing happen in the movies but had never expected to be doing it herself. They returned to the office to give her a chance to collect anything she might have needed to continue investigating on her own while he was gone, a time during which he had made a phone call that even her sensitive ears picked up as light muttering. After announcing that she had everything she needed and following him outside again, she had been surprised to find that the car waiting outside wasn’t the same one they had been driving around in for the past wee

    “Pardon me, Administrator,” came a deeply masculine voice, drawing her sparkling gaze to the large white-tailed stag who sat regally above the foxes nearest to him. He met her gaze and tilted his antlered head in a slight bow when she nodded for him to continue. “While I think most of us agree that the lawyer is of interest to the Council, shouldn’t we begin with the topic of our fallen member? There have been no leads, no claims of responsibility, and no seeming reason for the sudden move against the Council.”    The vixen gave him a warm smile that she reserved for those who she enjoyed having seated at w