Black Fur Black Heart Chapter 4 – Her Flower

1912, New Orleans The Mists of Avalon

Just a couple hours after dawn and the Mists of Avalon was eerily quiet. That was unusual. Mordred’s senses were far, far stronger in death than they ever had been in life, so even when he was far from the main room he could still hear the music. He kept musicians at it all night, playing to entertain the patrons of his club, so during the few hours when the main room was closed to be cleaned, the place was silent as a crypt by comparison.

That wasn’t to say it was entirely silent, though… there were always the screams.

The Mists of Avalon had no windows, of course… no matter how brightly the hateful sun shone outside, not a ray of its light ever made it inside. Every hour here was the same as any other, but during some of them only a few of the girls were getting fucked. The rest, like now, were allowed to get some sleep, or to be part of one of the details charged with maintaining the place, keeping it clean and organized for his extremely wealthy guests who would tolerate nothing else when enjoying the services Mordred offered. Even if it didn’t need to be cleaned, he would make them do it anyway… a busy slave was an exhausted and helpless one that would be more malleable to his needs, and drilling in a regimen of complete obedience and housekeeping was one of the many ways he maintained order here.

The brothel was extravagant by most standards… but only where the guests could see. From the outside it looked like nothing special, the better to blend in to the busy streets of the French Quarter of the city. It was fine, but from the outside most of the club was barely more than an office building. In the main rooms, however, he was happy to display his wealth more openly… tall marble walls and doorways, beautiful chandeliers hanging over the main room and its doily-covered sofas. A very fine grand piano sat untouched, being polished by a girl who looked like she was in her twenties. Once there had been candles all over the place here, but now Edison’s Electric Lights ruled the world, and Mordred had to say he preferred it… less chance of damaging the priceless artwork that hung everywhere. The lavish home also featured an array of rare ancient artifacts from ancient Judea all through the Renaissance. These artifacts were kept in their untouched original state, a collection preserved through time, startlingly intact.

As well they should be. He had been there to know the story of most of them.

The club was beautiful, always filled with the best people, the most beautiful art, the most skilled musicians… but anyone rich enough to pay for a membership here wasn’t coming for that. It was the selkies.

Selkies were some of the most beautiful women on earth, and they came with a lovely collection of traits… most notably that they healed from bad treatment far more quickly than a human woman and lived for centuries and centuries. Men would kill to possess them… and if they would kill for them, they would certainly pay for them. If there had been one thing true throughout history, it was that men would pay any price for beauty… especially when that beauty was a woman. If they just wanted a fisherman’s wife or a sex slave, however, they could go to Savalas in Chile, or Paradisium in Mongolia, or Edwom in Ghana… you could buy several for the price of a single year’s membership here. Men didn’t come here for Meat… if they wanted that, they could bother the dragon. Men came to him for perfection.

The hedonistic rich who shivered to look at the vampire came to see him because he offered them something no one else could. Sure, they could buy themselves a selkie… but could they take most of a century to train one? They didn’t come here just because the selkies were some of the most beautiful women on earth… they came here because the fae bitches didn’t age. They were able to keep their youth and beauty for hundred and hundreds of years, and thanks to their ability to regenerate they could recoup after every torment they were put through… and with that age and long practice came experience. Mordred didn’t care how old the sluts were when he bought them… he counted their age in how long they had been training. Not a single one of the whores he let work the floor was less than thirty years old, several decades worth of being fucked and fucked and fucked again, trained and beaten and tamed until they knew how to offer a man an unbelievable level of pleasure. There were probably succubi in hell who hadn’t practiced as much as his whores had, and that was why men who could afford his rates would travel all the way to Mordred’s brothel. His selkies gave them the most exhilarating experience they could ever imagine. So they paid Mordred’s prices, no matter how high.

These men weren’t paying to fuck a selkie, they were paying to be fucked by one.

Mordred had an expressionless look at his face as he strode through the halls, a stern, demanding presence that seemed to warp the walls he moved past. He wasn’t particularly threatening to look at… in life, he had been a large man, but that had been more than two thousand years ago, and the height that had made him tall and wide then left him decidedly average now. It didn’t matter – Mordred was surrounded by an aura of dominant energy that made people cower from him as he walked through the dim light, graceful and serene as he passed room after room of selkies being fucked.

There were some that were still serving late clients, of course… but they wouldn’t be back here. No guest would be back here, in these plain, featureless halls. These were the young ones… selkies younger and dumber than his minimum standards… being trained by his staff. As happy as Mordred was to fuck each and every one of these cunts, he just didn’t have the time to give them the attention they needed, so he had hired crews of brutal men. In the two centuries since he had founded this place, many of them had come from the bloodlines of those who had served him in those first days on the American continent… hereditary lines of loyal servants, bred for his service one after the other… but while they provided the hard cocks and enthusiasm, they weren’t the ones in charge of planning and leading the training. They didn’t have the experience to know how, not to his standards.

Where was that furry jizz rag?

In one room, a selkie was sucking the cocks of three trainers one after the other while they burned her with cigarettes. She was free to scream all she wanted, but not to stop sucking, not to stop moving her tongue and lips and head. Four broken fingers on her right hand showed the times she had failed. In another, a blond fae girl was bouncing up and down on a cock at a frantic pace, while a line of other men waited, one of them with a pocket watch… no doubt she had a certain amount of time to wring the cum out of all of them, or else some punishment would befall her. A third room had a selkie giving a relaxed, elegant tit fuck to a single man while she whispered obscenities at him, begging him, driving him on, and there was something so elegant about her practiced movement that Mordred paused for a second to watch. She was almost forty, he was sure… soon, the only time she would spend back here would be when someone complained. A fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and a twentieth door were all filled with the same, one after the other, until he felt the tiny tug of the necklace he wore towards the thirty-second one.

Mordred pushed the door open and smiled as he watched his nogitsune fuckpet mounting a naked man laying calmly on the bed, letting her do the work as his thick, engorged manhood slid deeper into the nogitsune’s pussy. He could see the blood dripping from her virgin cunt, and it made him want to lick his lips. He didn’t; instead, he snorted. “I should have known you’d be trying to skip out of your duties, cunt. You’re supposed to be seeing to the training… do you remember that, or did someone fuck the meager brains you had out of you?”

Yuki cringed at his voice. It wasn’t a big thing… if he hadn’t known her for centuries, he might not have even noticed it… but she cringed. That was only a few decades old… it had taken her hundreds of year to get to this point. The nine-tailed fucktoy was stubborn, he could give her that much. It was the only thing that kept her interesting enough to be worth keeping alive. “I… I was doing it, Master Mordred,” she said, and even though he listened carefully he couldn’t detect a hint of a growl in her voice. They were getting rarer and rarer. “But your childe, he…”

Mordred snorted. It was one of his vampires she was fucking, of course… He didn’t sell her body to his wealthy patrons. Even when some of them offered him large sums of money for a chance to fuck that sexy fox bitch. Mordred had refused. One of the men had even offered him half his fortune if only he lent her out for the night. Again, he had said no. No one but a vampire was permitted to fuck this bitch.

It wasn’t any kind of jealousy or possessiveness that stopped him from selling her like any other whore, and it certainly wasn’t any desire to protect her. No, it was just too likely that if she were with a human, she might find some way not to be miserable for every single second of the experience, and he couldn’t have that. Even being that close to one of the human souls she craved so much seemed to nourish her a little. The most recent time she had begged him, some three centuries ago, she had described it like the feeling of being underwater for hundreds of years, drowning and drowning only inches from the surface.

Mordred rather liked the sound of that.

No, Yuki wasn’t to be shared around like that… she had a very special place in his brothel. He’d had long term slaves before, a few times in his life, but never one for so long. He always grew bored with one before now. The nogitsune, however, was simply a delight to watch fall apart with agonizing slowness. It was like watching a fine marble statue be carried away by the rain, one drop at a time over the course of centuries. The stone was hard, but eventually the water always won. Some days, there was still some strength to the black-furred fuckdoll. Other days, there seemed to be little left of the woman he had stolen away from Japan about four centuries ago.

But those centuries had been put to use. She had been the one who had thought to train the selkies like this… the one that controlled their education and breaking. Every sex-slave that passed through his doors was her responsibility to bring up to his standards, as quickly as possible. Mordred’s face showed a tiny frown as he witnessed Yuki continue bouncing on the vampire’s hard cock. “Are you blaming him for your own laziness?” he said, very quietly.

There it was. The barest hint of a growl… too quiet for a human to hear, but music to his ears. The sign that there was still a bit left of that piece of Japanese meat. Mordred knew perfectly well that his childe hadn’t given her a choice when he had pulled her aside to fuck him. Yuki knew he did, as well. She also knew it would make no difference. “No, Master Mordred. This stupid slut is sorry, Master Mordred.”

Elgin, a childe a little over a century old, started to moan with pleasure as Yuki’s pussy tightened and gripped the thick veiny prick she was stabbing herself with. Mordred smiled as he watched. “Then hurry the fuck up,” he commanded her. “One lash for every second you make me wait for your furry ass.”

Yuki began riding the childe in a frenzy, fucking him silly. Elgin let his cold hands grab at her fit body, probing her luscious tits with his cruel hands and scraping her with his long nails, bringing tiny trails of blood to the surface that would lead to him yanking her down by her nipples so that he could lap them right off her skin before the scratches healed closed, slapping at her face and body while she worked her entire body on that thick cock that would have been far too thick to fuck so roughly even if the vampiric blood swelling through it hadn’t made it even bigger and more painful. She didn’t cry out, however… getting more than a gasp or an aborted scream out of his pet was a serious ordeal, but he enjoyed knowing that she was miserable anyway.

The muscular vampire was nearing the cliff edge, making his eyes turn white as they rolled back in his sockets while Yuki maintained her frantic rhythm, slamming her ass down on his legs over and over hard enough to make a slapping noise. “Yes…” Elgin growled. “Take it! Take it, you fucking whore!” He squeezed her tits viciously enough that Yuki gasped just before he began to unload his seed deep into her cunt. “Fuck yes…”

Yuki actually moaned a little bit… and not entirely in pain. That was to be expected… after he’d been edging her for centuries and centuries. The nogitsune liked sex, or had once… someday, before she died, he might strip that away from her entirely, but for now as the nogitsune felt the vampire’s cum fill her insides it made her body shake as she felt an intense orgasm begin to take shape… one she had to fight down, starting to breathe heavier and deeper as her black foxtails stretched and straightened out a bit. Mordred smiled to watch it. Four hundred years of being raped, and not a single orgasm to speak of.

The vampire was finally able to empty out all his masculine juices before he shoved the slut off him, standing and giving a small bow to Mordred. He wasn’t at all bothered by his sire’s presence. Mordred, for his part, had to resist a short, involuntary urge from his curse to rip the weaker vampire’s throat out and drain him dry. The urge left when the vampire did, and he was left alone with Yuki.

“Three minutes, thirty seven seconds,” Mordred said coldly. “You’re getting soft. Make that two lashes for every second tonight, instead.”

Yuki clenched her fists as her side, but said nothing, save for a weak. “Yes, Master.” Then he turned and walked away, letting the naked fox follow him.

No, he would never sell Yuki… not to a customer and not to the dragon… no matter how much they offered. He didn’t need the money… didn’t really need any money ever again, actually. The real purpose of bringing the rich and powerful to him was the favors, the influence… he had more money than he would ever be able to spend already. For all his other faults, Karakostas knew that… money was only a small part of power. He would never give a rival a tool as useful as the fox, and he would never permit her to have anything resembling a free life again. Someday, he would tire of her and finally drain the black-furred condom dry… but not today.

Mordred didn’t look back, but Yuki still sank to her hands and knees before following. It was just what was expected. She would be allowed to rise before she reached the slave he was taking her to, but his consideration to her extended no further than making her training more effective. She could feel the cold, dead seed of the vampire running down her thighs as she crawled naked down the hall. “We have a newborn for you,” Mordred said without looking back at her. “She’s going to be a good addition to our little family.”

Yuki didn’t quite grimace. That was the third one this week… so much work she had to do. Not that Mordred cared how hard he worked her, of course. Protesting would be worse than pointless. Instead, she just looked down while he gave her instructions, and all the nogitsune could muster was a silent nod in agreement. There wasn’t much of a real choice to begin with. Yuki had to do what Mordred told her, or else she’d suffer.

Suffer worse, anyway.

Yuki followed the vampire down the hallway. “Get her started,” he ordered her. “Our normal rooms are occupied by the other… recruits… so I’ll have her sent down to your quarters. That won’t be a problem… will it?”

Yuki grimaced. Her quarters. Like an obvious slave didn’t have enough of an issue getting some respect around here. Still, there was only one answer. “No, Master.”

“Good!” Mordred said with a fanged grin. “I’ll have someone take over for you after you make her role here clear. Meet her there.” He turned and silently walked away down the hall, thinking nothing of turning his back on her… a mistake that had been the final one of hundreds of enemies. Mordred had nothing to fear from her, though… he had her fire.

He was gone, so she was able to stand, at least… Yuki pushed herself slowly to her feet. She wasn’t any weaker than she ever had been but she just felt so exhausted all the time, so… hopeless. Sometimes, she thought about running. An attempt to flee could only end one way, and she knew it… but the idea only grew more tempting with every passing day. At least the last choice of her life would be her own. Four hundred years… and how many more waiting for her in the future. It would be better to let it end, probably. In the end, however, the one thing no one had ever accused Yuki of was a lack of stubbornness… the black-furred fox pushed herself up.

She began walking down the stairs, traveling further and further down into the basement of the brothel, the halls growing darker and filthier with each passing step. Unlike the gorgeous brothel above, her living space was cold, dark and damp. It was barely furnished, unkempt, and unfinished, and Yuki couldn’t remember ever stepped into the room without seeing at least a rat or two scattering. The worst part was that it wouldn’t even have cost the vampire a thing to give her a real room… he had plenty. She was already his fucktoy who did all his fucking work for him, he didn’t need to push her further down into the mud… he just wanted to.

The electrical lights didn’t go this deep into the basement yet… they were getting to it. Yeah, sure they were. Yuki grabbed a candle off the wall where she had left it. Once, she would have ignited it with a flick of her fingers. Now, she had to use a match to give herself enough light to see her way to the shithole that was her home.

The door nearly fell in as she opened it… the hinge had broken again, it seemed. She caught it and slipped in, not bothering to close the door after her… what was the point? It would just make her look even worse to the slave. Instead, she lit the candles around the room. Her bed was very small and narrow, only barely big enough for her to crawl onto and barely a step softer than the cinder blocks that made up the walls and floor. Every time she used this bed, Yuki was unavoidably reminded of her weakness… of her submission to the ancient vampire that owned her. She huddled up on the bed, leaving her legs tightly closed and her knees pressed against her face as she hugged them. Yuki sat in silence as she was surrounded by her own emptiness, her tails twisting around to wrap her as well… the only soft things left in her life.

The basement was surrounded by thick brick walls and mortar. It looked like a dungeon down here… In many ways, it pretty much was. She gave out a small sigh, her mind thinking of the time long ago. She wondered what it said about her that when she thought of the past, it wasn’t of her century indulging herself, of living free. It was of her time as a bound servant of Inari… fighting her wars, protecting the same foul people she now trained sex slaves to give pleasure to. She must have a diseased mind to escape her reality with thoughts of just another type of bondage, but at least it was a different time, a totally different world than the moldy, damp sewer she had to bear. It smelled awful down here, her sensitive nose refusing to let her filter out the scent of waste from the brothel as it made its way down the rusty and leaking drain pipes just feet away. The sounds of water dripping from those pipes echoed throughout the room and rang in Yuki’s head like a bell. Once again, she wondered if it might be better to run. Four hundred years…

Before she had time to dwell much longer, her ears twitched as she heard footsteps on the concrete hallways. Yuki unfolded herself from the bed… the first sight her new slave was going to get of her mistress wasn’t going to be one of weakness. A moment later, an absolutely gorgeous selkie dressed in lingerie was shoved into her room by the three men escorting her from behind. The red-haired girl had a mane nearly the same color as the flames of the candles, and she stumbled her first steps into Yuki’s bedroom before she tripped over the uneven floor and fell on her face.

“Go on, slut!” one of the men mocked. “She’s going to make sure you get to know everything you need to know.” The group laughed as they turned and walked away. “Have fun with the newborn, fox… Christ, it smells like shit down here.”

The selkie hurriedly struggled to her feet, casting her gaze back through the door.

“If you run,” Yuki said softly, making the girl’s hairs stand up on her arms, “I’ll have to chase you and drag you back here. Then I will be annoyed.” The nogitsune was still sitting on her bed… she hadn’t bothered moving. She was well aware of what she had to do, but she was more than half hoping the selkie would be too stupid to listen… she could do with an excuse to unleash her frustrations on someone else for a change. “And your single most important goal in life from now on is going to be not annoying me.”

Unfortunately, the selkie didn’t run. “Please,” she begged in broken English. “Been mistake. Not to be here me.”

Yuki winced. “Your English sucks,” she answered in gaelic. “It offends my ears. I hope this is better, for your sake.” Playing hostess and majordomo to the wealthy and the exclusive meant that Yuki had needed to learn dozens of languages by now, but the selkie still seemed visibly surprised to hear someone speaking her language. “Don’t get used to it,” Yuki spat. “You’ll need to learn to speak properly, but that can wait. What’s your name?”

“Please, I need my skin back!” the selkie begged.

Yuki knew what she was doing, she’d done this before. Most of the current selkies who were still slaves to Mordred were properly broken into this life by her. It had been her idea, in truth… and she’d grown good at training them in becoming good submissive sex slaves for his club. This was one of the first demands they all made… as predictable as the sunrise. “Let’s get this out of the way,” Yuki sighed. “You want your skin back?” The selkie nodded frantically, taking a probably-unconscious step forward. The nogitsune picked up one of the candles, pushing it into the selkie’s hands. “Raise it up to your face…” she told her.

The selkie looked confused, but she obeyed… with any hope of getting her skin back, any of these pathetic bitches would obey anything. It wasn’t close enough for Yuki’s taste, though. “Closer,” she ordered. The girl moved it a bit closer, and the nogitsune sighed again, in disgust this time. “Oh for fucks sake,” she said, grabbing onto her hands and bringing it just inches away… and she flinched as her skin began to heat and burn.

“Please miss…” was all that she got out before Yuki slapped her across the face. The candle dropped from her startled hands, just as she knew it would, and one of her tails effortlessly batted it out.

“Please mistress,” Yuki snarled. She stepped right up against the the girl, until she was staring into her eyes from just an inch away. “Did you feel that flame’s kiss? Imagine what it would feel like on your seal skin, faeling… you are going to learn to be the best little whore on this continent, or I will personally hold a bonfire in your honor.”

The selkie’s eyes flew wide. “You- you couldn’t! Please, I need that! You can’t burn my skin!”

Yuki barely restrained a dark laugh that would make her look quite insane. The selkie wouldn’t get it, after all. How could she have known that Yuki had burned her own? That the skin this selkie had been stupid enough to lose meant less to her than air? Instead, she slapped the selkie again. “Can’t?” she said.

She was a quick learner, at least. “Please don’t, mistress!” she choked out.

“Better,” the fox said, making the redhead shrink with her back against a wall as she stepped forward. “But you need to learn to obey. You have two punishments coming your way already…” Yuki gestured down at the ground. “You dropped the candle… and you still haven’t told me your name.”

“It’s… it’s Maya…” Maya babbled out.

Yuki nodded. “Maya. That’s a lovely name for a whore.”

“I’m not a-”

Predictable. Yuki slapped her again. “Finish that sentence,” the fox spat. “I dare you.” The selkie showed some sense twice in one day… she stayed silent. “If I say, when I say, that you’re a whore, you’re a whore. Right now, though, you’re not even that. You’re just a whore in training.”

“Training?” the puritan selkie asked. She seemed confused… no doubt no one had bothered to tell her what she was going to be doing. It was Yuki’s job to set her straight.

That was fine. She didn’t mind being the villain… it was a role she was used to. “Yes, training. By the time I’m finished with you, you’re going to be one of the best lays on the planet,” Yuki proclaimed as she took another step towards the innocent-looking selkie. She got a few inches from her and scanned her appearance, looking up and down her trembling body. “Mm. Nice…” the fox said as she gazed on the girl. Maya was a pretty attractive selkie, with dark red curly hair and a pretty little round face with puffy cheeks. She also had a nice pair of bright blue eyes that glittered. Her bust wasn’t really big at all, but what she had was perky and firm, and Yuki immediately guessed they were sensitive… precious.

“I… I really think there is some mistake…” the selkie stammered. “They keep calling me a newborn. There is some mistake, there has to be.”

Yuki cracked a very cruel smile and her eyebrows rose slightly. She grinned as Maya’s innocent face began to melt with insecurity and anxiety. “Congratulations,” she told the redhead. “You were just born.” When she looked confused, Yuki continued. “This is your new life. When you’ve been here for a year, you’re one. When you’ve been here a decade, you’re ten. Your life revolves around getting fucked now… nothing that happened beforehand matters anymore.” Yuki suddenly slapped her across the face again, making her dark red hair swing violently against the air. The nogitsune grabbed a bunch of her hair while she swayed and forced her to the bed. Maya cried out as she was throw down on the lumpy, painful thing that passed for a mattress, and slapped a few more times across her little round face until her eyes were red and watery.

Maya didn’t really say anything much, just pathetic whimpers and cries as Yuki took some of her frustrations out on the selkie bitch. “Welcome to the Mists of Avalon,” Yuki exclaimed as she sat on top of the poor selkie’s abdomen. “Welcome to my hell!” She delivered her last blow across Maya’s jaw with a closed fist, rocking her head to the side and leaving her a bit disoriented. “Lesson one,” Yuki growled. “Do what you’re told!” She then got up and allowed a bewildered Maya to sit up. “Get undressed. Now!” Yuki commanded.

The selkie didn’t know what to do… perhaps she was dazed, or perhaps she wasn’t as clever as Yuki had assumed. Either way, she sat there on the bed, frozen and crying. “I said… fucking strip. NOW!” The raised voice startled Maya, jolting her into motion as she reached for the fancy, practically useless clothing. Slowly but surely the selkie began to reveal her nakedness to an impatient Yuki.

“Hurry the fuck up!” Yuki demanded before she grabbed Maya’s bra and ripped it off from her body, leaving her with only a pair of silk panties. Maya was now a bit shaken and distraught. She had certainly never before been treated like that, not until she was kidnapped a few days before and brought to this strange place so far from the seas she had called home. She began to tremble.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she asked pathetically.

Yuki closed her lips tightly and narrowed her eyes at that line of inquiry. Of course the bitch would ask that. The answer didn’t matter to the fucking selkie, but the question was the last thing Yuki wanted to think about… she was enjoying herself right now. She didn’t want to think about her own slavery. She didn’t want to remember why she was there. “Lesson number two!” Yuki answered as she pointed her finger at Maya’s face. “Don’t ask any stupid questions. In fact, don’t ask any questions… and until you know your ass from a hole in the ground, every question that enters your slut brain is going to be meaningless and stupid. Got it?”

Maya just stared into Yuki’s eyes, trembling. “You’re just gonna make things worse!” Yuki spat at her. “Don’t ask any more questions. What, you think if you know more you might outsmart us? You think you might be more clever, that you can game the system?” She laughed. “Well, I am here to tell you that you’re a fucking idiot. You were stupid enough to let yourself be caught… stupid enough to let yourself be brought here. The time that questions could have help you passed a long time ago. It’s too late. You’re here now. Got it?” Yuki’s foxtails unfurled, swirling around her like nine more waiting limbs as she stood up and hovered over Maya’s small body. Her perky ears pointed forward as she stared down at the helpless and innocent plaything. “Got that?”

Maya squeaked. “Yes! Yes mistress!”

The dark fox grinned. It was hollow fun… but it was the only pleasure she had. Yuki grabbed Maya by the throat and pushed her back against the wall, pinning her with all her strength and sliding upward until she hung by the nogitsune’s grip on her. She stared her in the eyes, drinking in the look as the selkie felt her life draining, her lungs emptying one beat of her heart a time. One of Yuki’s foxtails wrapped around Maya’s midsection and tightly gripped her body as the selkie fought to catch some air. Another foxtail hooked beneath her panties and ripped them off her while Yuki watched Maya’s eyes begin to roll back in her head, watching for the edge of consciousness she had found so many times.

Then she pulled back her hand all at once. Maya collapsed, her legs unable to catch her. The fall shocked her back from the edge of darkness, leaving her gasping for air. “Please mistress,” she choked out, “be… gentle…”

“Gentle?” Yuki replied with a small chuckle. “Silly little newborn, this is gentle…” the nogitsune dragged her back onto the bed before pushing a kiss on her, deep enough to make the selkie gag as her tongue danced around. Slowly, she dragged her mouth down and started to work on Maya’s sweet-smelling neck. “When you’ve been fucked a hundred times in a day…” she groaned, her tongue licking every inch until she finally made it to the small mounds on Maya’s chest. “Will you beg them to be gentle? You had best not… after they finish laughing at you, they’ll send you back to me, and I won’t be nearly so nice…” After all, when one of the selkies failed, it wasn’t them that Mordred hurt…

Maya tried to resist the kitsune’s advances but it was pointless. Yuki was stronger and her attempts to slither away were all futile. She tried her best to get her off her body, but the more she resisted the rougher Yuki became. “Stupid bitch, stay still,” she said, grabbing onto each of the selkie’s hips with a tail and shoving her back down while her wet tongue went to work on Maya’s perky tits. She licked each of her nipples and nibbled on them before biting down hard, making Maya squirm with pain.

“No, please! That hurts!” Maya whimpered.

“I know,” Yuki muttered. “That’s why I did it.” She continued licking Maya’s chest, finishing up with those sweet mounds before heading down to her belly, each tongue lick causing Maya to shiver in shocks contrasting pain and pleasure. “It’s nothing compared to what others will do to you here, so shut up.”

Moments later, Yuki found the selkie’s pussy. No one had shaved it yet, but selkies never seemed to grow much fur down there and what they had was soft as silk. Yuki gazed on it for just a second, taking a moment to appreciate the puffy lips that led to her protruding small pink clit. Then she unleashed her tongue on Maya with a fury, licking the lips and the insides of her pussy as she dove in. Every time her nose bumped against the selkie’s cute little clit it tempted her, until she couldn’t resist any longer,

She felt her own pussy dripping down her leg… her cunt was soaked. That was always the worst part of playing with these selkies… the reminder of her own position, what she couldn’t have. Maya’s body curved up and fell again on to the bed as she observed waves of pleasure coming from the immense stimulation that her clit was enduring. Maya was nearing an orgasm as her red face tightened and her breathing became deep and fast. “Oh Brighid!” Maya screamed as Yuki continued to play her clit and pussy lips like a violin.

Then Yuki bit her.

Maya screamed, thrashing on the bed, but the four tails held her firmly down. “No no no,” Yuki teased. “You don’t get to cum yet… not until I say so! Got it?” Maya’s blank stare was enough of an answer… With that, Yuki started again, quickly bringing the selkie back to the edge. This time she was anticipating a bite, so instead Yuki brought two tails down on her tits, one after the other before simply backing her mouth off and waiting. “I’ll let you finish when I say so… if I say so.”

Yuki dove back in, putting her mouth back to work finding and exploring every nook and cranny of Maya’s delicious pussy. The fox played with it for a while, occasionally biting to keep her pleasure under control, until she got up and walked over to her drawer. She couldn’t remember the last time she had fucked someone with her tails… it felt too good. Too natural. Dangerous. Instead, she pulled out a black leather strap and buckled it around her waist. When she turned around, she laughed as Maya’s eyes widened, taking in the large rubber cock that Yuki was now wearing on her crotch. “You’re mine tonight, doll,” Yuki said as she headed back up on the bed, quickly pinning Maya down again.

Slowly, the nogitsune aimed the fake prick towards Maya’s narrow pussy opening. She doubted the woman was a virgin – the chance that a few of the trainers hadn’t raped her already before tossing her down here approached zero – but she doubted that she had had anything like this. She placed it right outside her red and luscious lips before forcing it all the way in.

Maya gasped as the object entered her with force, but at least she was wet and ready… more than any of the men had probably done for her. The dark fox began to savage Maya’s pussy, fucking her in something that was almost missionary style while growing increasingly faster and harder as she went, until the selkie was screaming and begging for mercy. Yuki refused to relent. Instead, she just slapped one hand over her mouth, holding her head down by the gagging palm while she kept venting her pent up anger and frustrations, fucking her with powerful strokes. Maya was crying for her to stop, tears streaking down her cheek, but all her pleading just made Yuki more turned on, more enthusiastic about pumping Maya’s cute little pussy even harder.

Maya suffered the attentions of that massive cock… but even as she did, the shock of it was building her back up, approaching the edge of an orgasm split between agony and ecstasy… exactly where Yuki preferred her lovers. As the thick fuck stick continued to widen her tight cave, her face grew red and strained, struggling to hold on. “Alright then…” Yuki mocked. “Cum for me. Go ahead, let it all out…”

Mordred’s voice echoed in the room. “Not so fast.”

Yuki froze. Mordred was standing firmly by the door, watching idly while Yuki raped Maya. “She can’t come.”

The nogistune buried her frustration. Of course he would say that. Why wouldn’t her dear master have to step in and get in the middle of her doing her damn job? Wasn’t it enough for him that she did what he wanted? Wasn’t it enough that she was miserable every second of every day? Couldn’t she at least do something that brought her joy?

Of course not. Yuki released Maya, standing up and letting the phallus slip from her swollen cunt. “No orgasms for this one, then?”

“Maybe,” he said nonchalantly. “Or maybe not. But you won’t ever get to give her one.”

Yuki took a look down at Mordred, unsure why he was taking a personal interest in her. Sure, he was messing with Yuki while doing it, but this still seemed personal… He didn’t do that, as a rule. ‘Welcome to my hell,’ Yuki thought again.

“Maya, you can leave. Ghaele will take you to your rooms. Wait there.” He gestured to the blonde selkie waiting right outside. Maya all but leaped off the bed, not bothering to pick up her panties or bra before she she darted out.

Mordred turned his attention towards Yuki. “Take it off,” he commanded. “She looks cooperative,” the vampire muttered as Yuki took off the strap-on and left it on the bed. Yuki didn’t respond. She kept quiet and forced her sight to remain on the floor as she refused to look at him. There was a tense silence. From experience, Yuki knew that anything she could say would only make what was coming worse… submissive silence was the least painful thing she could do. It was just her rotten luck it was the one thing she’d never been good at.

“I hate you, Master,” she whispered.

The vampire laughed as he stripped, dropping his pants to reveal his hardened cock, more than ready for her… long and swollen with veins too dark to be normal human blood. He lunged against her, one hand grabbing her face as he shoved her down to the bed. She tried to resist a little, but… this was Mordred. Resistance against the vampire was worse than pointless. He was heavily built and strong as an ox, and that was before his vampiric blood got to work making him more and more of what he could be.. His wide and muscular chest covered Yuki completely as he pinned the naked fox down to the bed. “I know you do,” he told her as he twisted her head to the side, exposing her neck. “That’s what makes it even better.”

Yuki cried out as he bit down on her neck, sinking his fangs deep into her jugular vein and slurping messily… feasting on her, taking in every drop of her life. Compared to the agony of that, Yuki would have thought she would barely feel as his cock split her pussy wide open… but she did. She felt every sting of sharp pain as her hymen broke again, the anguish of her tight hole tearing around his length and the itching as it started to heal, only to be ripped apart again. Mordred started pumping her with brute force, each thrust sending immense shocks of pure agony up her spine that made her tails twitch and turn helplessly beneath him.

Yuki wasn’t sure how much he drank… only that it probably would have been enough to kill a human woman. Too bad her healing replenished blood far too quickly to die that easily. If not for Inari’s blessing of health that had stayed with her even after the goddess had abandoned her, Mordred would either have had to drink less or accidentally kill her… either would have been preferable to this. By the time he pulled away, she felt hollow inside, staring dazed into his deep, hypnotic dark eyes locked just inches from her. He held her tight with his strong arms, pinning her helplessly down as his long hardened meat penetrated her without mercy. His thrusts became more erratic and fierce as he grew more excited, speeding up and ripping the walls of her cunt apart. She knew he had to hold back with most of his fucktoys to avoid breaking even a selkie… not so with her. Her foxtails thrashed beneath her, twitching in a desperate, unconscious attempt as escape.

She couldn’t look away from those eyes, no matter how much she wanted to. They held her like a vice… and she could see the hollow emptiness inside them, the lack of a soul that had doomed her when she had tried to feed on him before… could see him filling the void with hatred for her, with lust, with violence, as he continued to fill her pussy. He was thrilling in his absolute power over her… knowing that he commanded her utterly, could kill her with a gesture from anywhere in the world if he wanted to. He could take one of the most dangerous predators the world had ever known and fuck her without consequence… and he loved it.

“You’re barely struggling anymore,” Mordred growled as his too-cold body unleashed a fury of thrusts, his fat cock relentlessly savaging Yuki’s insides like no tomorrow. “I remember when you used to try to claw your way out of this one thought at a time. Weak, furry little latrine… Did I fill your brain with cum?” He gave her a few good thrusts before he decided to stop, and without letting her out of his sight he slowly released his cock from her tight savaged pussy… and it was only when he did that she realized she was close to cumming. Again. Despite herself, she whimpered.

“No. Not you. Never,” he mocked as he tugged on his meat with his hand, laughing as he stood over her. She still couldn’t tear her gaze from his eyes… couldn’t do it right until the first rope of cold jizz splashed right into her face, breaking her line of sight with a painful string, making her squirm as he glazed her face and neck and tits with thick seed.

He’d been doing that for four hundred years. He couldn’t even give her that tiny hope, that speck of freedom. She hasn’t felt an orgasm in a very long time, and she had long since given up hope that Mordred might someday allow her that special feeling once more… she knew by now that he never would.

It would always be like that. Every day, until the day she no longer could muster up the strength to pick herself up out of bed. Then Mordred would probably torture her until she did, every day, until even that stopped working. Only then might he kill her and let her torture end.

Yuki wished she were brave enough to run away and die… but she was too much of a coward for that.

It was what she hated the most about herself.

“You really just don’t get it, do you?” said an exhausted Yuki. The black-furred fox drove the van a bit recklessly as she tried to talk to her slave at the same time. “Merielle, instead of answering your stupid questions, you mind if I ask you a simple one?”

Merielle looked at Yuki but didn’t respond, her lips tightening. “I’ll take that as a yes,” Yuki said with a hint of a growl. “Why do you care so much about things that have nothing at all to do with you?”

The selkie responded with a quick twitch of her tight lips. “I just wanted to know who those two were,” Merielle asked politely, referring to the other nogitsune that had confronted them at the shrine. Yuki’s reaction had scared her… not the confident banter, or the calm way she’d stood her ground, but the initial reaction when she told Merielle to get behind her. It spoke that they were nowhere near as safe as Yuki claimed, and that made her afraid.

“They were nobody,” Yuki replied. “Like I already told you.”

“But they…” Merielle tried to reply, but she was immediately interrupted.

“They. Were. Nobody.” repeated the nogitsune, and there was more than just a hint of a growl in her voice now. “They don’t fucking matter, okay? So just shut the fuck up already.”

“Were they nogitsune too?” the redhead pressed. “Like you?”

Yuki rolled her eyes. “No, black fur is stylish this year. Your mistress is just at the cutting edge of fashion. It doesn’t matter what the fuck they are. Forget those assholes.”

“Who is Syllana?”

“For fucks sake,” Yuki hissed. “She’s no one, Red! None of them are anybody… just a bunch of bitches from before your ass was even born. They’re nobody you need to care about and that’s that.”

“Okay,” Merielle said, the statement more an acknowledgement that she should be quiet than an agreement with what Yuki was saying. “But I’m scared,” she admitted slowly, and paused for a moment.

“Scared of what?” Yuki snapped.

“I just…” Merielle tried to answer. “I just don’t want anything to happen to us… To you…”

Her mistress rolled her eyes aggressively. “It’s fine, they were nobody,” Yuki said again. “Nothing is gonna happen. I told them to get lost, they got lost. Why do you care anyway?”

“Because,” Merielle replied, with no anger or heat in her tone, only resignation. “I love you. Even if you don’t love me back.”

Yuki froze and stared at her for a second before pulling the van abruptly over. The nogitsune woman turned off the engine and gave Merielle a long, hard glare, a frustrated look on her face. “You want me to love you back?” she asked. “Okay… fine… let me love you back.” Yuki grabbed Merielle by the collar of her shirt, yanked her from her seat with overwhelming strength, and threw her in the back of the van. A second later, the dark furred fox had her pinned against the wall. She slapped Merielle hard across the face, then did it again, and again.

The chastisement went on for a long time, the nogitsune refusing to let up even as her slave’s face turned red and her tears began to flow freely. “There you go!” Yuki proclaimed when she spotted the waterworks. “It’s called tough love, Red, and it’s the most honest kind in the world.” She took the liberty of forcefully removing the selkie’s shirt, slapping her some more in the process. “Goddess, Merielle,” Yuki said with a small laugh when she was done. “You’re so fucking naive. You’ll believe any and all bullshit that comes your way! Just because some bitches show up acting important doesn’t mean they are.”

Merielle was all disheveled when Yuki finally eased up and released her, only to toss her facedown onto the van’s floor hard enough to make the vehicle rattle and rock, her face smacking against the dirty carpeting before she even had the chance to catch her breath. A moment later her aroused mistress was rolling her over onto her back, her eyes wild with violent lust as she stripped off more of the pinned selkie’s clothing.

Ripping Merielle’s panties off marked the end of the foreplay. Yuki’s foxtails flicked back and forth with her excitement as they began to trace their way over Merielle’s sensitive skin. One of the tail tips started to twirl inside the girl’s small belly button, even. Merielle, however, wasn’t reacting… her cheeks were still wet with tears, but her expression remained blank, locked in an emotionless stare as she was touched all over. This wasn’t how she was supposed to react. The selkie slut always responded to her touches. But right now she didn’t budge.

Annoyed and a bit frustrated by Merielle’s aloofness, Yuki frowned and turned it up a notch. One after the other, tail after tail stuffed itself inside of the soaked selkie, penetrating the slave vigorously as Yuki’s face broke into a dark smile. The tails shoved themselves deeper and deeper inside, forcing Merielle’s narrow tunnel to expand further and further. The strength of the nogitsune’s foxtails made it possible to widen her cunt beyond belief, wreaking havoc on the slave’s insides as they began to fuck her silly… all of the tails working in unison to unleash Yuki’s erotic fury and the day’s pent up rage on the selkie’s poor sex.

The tails were at it for a short while, making Merielle’s usual pink hole turn to deepest red as the tails were relentless with their serious fucking. Yuki’s chest kept pumping more air, making her seem larger than usual. She grunted and barked as her wild instincts consumed her madly. “You like that, don’t you bitch?” she growled. “Take it…” Yuki had never had a cock, had never felt the desire to have one, but tails were more than sensitive enough for her to enjoy the process of fucking her victim with them… the process of dominating her partner was the real thrill for her, the reaction of making her sub feel something was what her biggest turn on was. Even if her tails could feel nothing at all, Yuki would still be getting a good deal of pleasure seeing how her poor selkie sex slave reacted to her…

Only now she wasn’t.

Yuki’s eyes narrowed before she let out a short but scary laugh. “So what? You’re gonna pretend you’re not loving this? You and I both know I’m way better than that dumb motherfucker at the gas station!” she proclaimed. As she fucked her slave, Yuki’s mind was filled with images from the parking garage earlier, and that poor guy whose only crime was to have his gasoline stolen, and then to fall head over heels for the pretty selkie. But she hadn’t hurt him. He was fine.

Yuki had felt ecstatic when she’d used Merielle’s body as a battering ram and busted up his car. He was being a dumb ass, after all… falling for such an obvious trick. He fucking deserved it… who would take advantage of a girl as clearly in trouble as the poor, lost foreigner? Probably would have raped her if given the chance. It pleased her to know that she had rained on the guy’s parade and not let him have his way with her sex slave… enough so that the pleasure of having both of them under her thumb was filling her mind with arousing thoughts. She remembered the look on his face when he was helplessly tied to the post and put in his place. Yuki was so aroused she even thought of going back… wondering if he had managed to get free of the pillar yet. The thought of continuing to hurt him had… limited appeal. She felt a tiny stirring of guilt the more she thought about it and she didn’t like that. Instead, though, she could force him to again witness was she was doing to Merielle. She wouldn’t feel bad about that, and it would take her pleasure up a few notches.

But no… that was impractical. Unleashing her lusts on Merielle in the back of their stolen van was more than enough. Besides, the last thing she wanted was to bring too much attention to herself… she had just fled Tokyo after all, and she didn’t want to leave any kind of easy trail for Mordred. She doubted that idiot was going to say anything, but there was no sense in tempting fate.

The nogitsune continued her rampage inside her slut’s pussy until Yuki’s body was trembling with passionate lust, her tails remaining inside Merielle… but the selkie was still showing no interest and her face remained blank, like her mind was completely elsewhere. Yuki didn’t want to cave to Merielle’s stubborn refusal to engage, so she tried to remain focused on her pleasure… But the longer Yuki continued fucking her, the more Merielle’s indifference annoyed her, until it was enough to bring her down from her high altogether.

Yuki tried to give Merielle a few good slaps across the face, but the stupid selkie didn’t even react to that. The frustrated nogitsune tried to kiss her, hoping that might get a reaction… forcing entry into her mouth and prying her way in. Merielle’s face remained still however, unreacting as she allowed Yuki to taste the inner walls of her mouth with her tongue.

Yuki’s eyes opened to see that Merielle still wasn’t reacting. She’d thought maybe her slave was waiting for a kiss… but this time, even the most passionate kiss she had given her thus far wasn’t enough. Yuki finally gave up and released Merielle’s mouth, her tails yanking their way free from the redhead at the same time. “What the fuck is the matter with you?” a frustrated Yuki asked as her face soured and wrinkled in displeasure. She leaned back to stare down at her slave.

The selkie’s only response was to shift her eyes to follow her mistress.

“Hello?” Yuki said loudly, and knocked on Merielle’s forehead with a fist. “Is there anybody in there?” Merielle again refused to react. She just remained silent and kept her eyes on Yuki. “Are you sick or something? I thought that you fucking selkies were made of stone or whatever. I didn’t hit you that hard. Now, come on! Stop it!”

Again, Merielle showed no affection, no reaction.

“What the fuck is the matter with you, you dumb whore?” Yuki exclaimed as she gave the selkie a good pair of slaps across her blank, staring face. “Fucking stop it already!” Yuki gave her a final hard slap that made Merielle’s cheek almost kiss the carpeted floor. The redhead’s face slowly turned to face Yuki. Her eyes were a bit wider this time, and starting to turn red. One of them finally let out a small wet tear that traveled down her peachy light skin.

It was the only reaction she gave.

Yuki was furious, her ice blue eyes narrowed to slits. The nogitsune grabbed hold of Merielle’s beautiful red hair and started banging her head against the hard floor of the van mercilessly, banging it over and over again. By the time she was finished, Yuki was almost out of breath… and as she panted over the selkie, she realized that she was still showing no reaction, not even to the beating she had received. The dark fox twisted her lip into a snarl. “So, you want me to really hurt you?” she snapped. “Look what you’re making me do! You fucking selfish cunt!” Yuki screamed in frustration. “You think you can play these games with me? You think you can control me like this? Think again you bitch… The fuck is the matter with you!” An enraged Yuki headed for the driver’s seat, starting the engine and flooring the gas pedal. The engine screamed along with Yuki as the van sped up across the highway, almost causing the vehicle to be airborne after it traveled across the bumping shoulder of the road.

Yuki was absolutely livid, her driving all but completely out of control as she swerved and sped down the road. She revved the engine up to full speed, and as she barreled down a long stretch of road she took the opportunity to look back at the selkie… still on the floor and not reacting at all to the madness of the driver. “What is the matter with you?” Yuki screamed with furious passion. “What do you want from me?!” A honk yanked her attention back to the road, just in time to see a car in the middle of the intersection just ahead. She immediately tried to use the brakes, but it was too late.

Wheels screeched and the smell of burning rubber filled the air, then a moment later the stolen van clipped the rear quarter of the car, making it spin wildly through the road with most of its trunk missing before it settled off to the side of the road. There was more than enough energy left to make the van spin and flip, tumbling side over side as it rolled and rolled and finally stopped with the roof planted against the pavement.

Yuki groaned, feeling the ache of multiple broken bones and the familiar itching sensation as the skin knit together over cuts, bones moving back back into place, cracks closing. Furiously, she slashed at the airbag, shoving it away from her face until it finally punctured. She crawled away from the seat, flopping down heavily onto the metal roof as she smelled the smoke of something in the car beginning to burn.

Merielle was still laying down, this time on the ceiling of the van… groaning with tears running down her cheeks as she cradled her arm. Yuki’s face was filled with rage. “You see what you made me do you fucking idiot!” Yuki screamed at the unresponsive Merielle. “Your fucking childishness is going to ruin everything! Why are you even still here?!” She growled. “After everything, I did for you, this is how you repay me? You know what? Go fuck yourself you selfish cunt!”

Yuki kicked at the bent door until it came loose, then crawled out of the smoking and wrecked vehicle. There was a crowd beginning to gather around the accident scene… the other car had ended up bouncing into a traffic light before it had veered off into the sidewalk and into a storefront. There was… considerably more damage than she had thought there would be. For all her experience, she had never been in a car accident before. Yuki draped her illusion over herself before she reached back in, grabbing the duffel bag from where it rested against the ceiling and quickly running off before anyone noticed the girl with fox tails crawling from the wreck. She headed straight for the side of the road, climbing over a railing and heading into the sloped ravine down to a small forest below, running like Mordred was chasing her as she leapt over bushes and fallen branches and away from Merielle.

After all, Yuki would be safer without that crazy bitch around.

Merielle slowly forced herself up. Everything hurt, but nothing was actually injured… her fae near-invulnerability keeping her intact even if her body felt like it had been squeezed in a giant’s fist. A small crowd began to gather around the totally wrecked vehicle as Merielle remained laying in the van, still and silent and all but hopeless. She felt like just giving up and staying here until she starved or burned or… whatever.

Someone opened the mangled back doors of the van, shedding some light into the darkened interior. The orange light from the early morning covered Merielle’s blank face through the smoke as she looked up, her eyesight struggling to adjust to the sudden brightness… until she could make out a woman’s face with a large, warm smile on it. She lent her hand to Merielle. “Are you alright?” she asked… in English.

Merielle’s eyes were wide as she looked up at the utterly gorgeous woman… taken aback by the sudden beauty, but more by just how caring and concerned her expression was. She felt a sense of relief and serenity as she looked up at her and took her hand, the other blonde Japanese woman helping her out of the van, keeping their eyes locked. Her eyes were so blue… they made her think of her mistress, but rather than make her feel sad, the similarity brought her a strange type of peace. The woman helped her out of the car, her pain fading as she held the woman’s hand.

“Don’t I… don’t I know you?” Merielle said softly as she was strangely ignored by the crowd around them, the blonde woman taking her away from the van. “Haven’t I seen you before?”

“Maybe,” the kind woman said. Her voice was sweet and warm. “You’ve seen me a few times now. I haven’t tried too hard to blend in.”

Merielle’s eyes widened. “You’re… you’re the girl from Kayoichou Park!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing in Kyoto?”

The woman smiled. “I followed you.” When Merielle’s hand tensed, she quickly continued. “Oh, don’t worry… I’m not going to hurt you. I’m no danger to you. I’m just here to try and help you, whenever I can.”

Merielle hesitated. “Who are you?” she asked hesitantly.

“My name is Akari,” the blonde woman said… and Merielle finally realized why they were being ignored by the crowd in the street. She must have been dazed from accident not to realize the sensation of being cloaked in a foxfire illusion immediately. “Come with me,” Akari said. “It’s not safe here. We need to get you further away.” Grabbing onto Akari’s warm hand to steady herself, the kitsune took her away from the van.

In the full light as they walked, Merielle began to see through the illusion. She knew from a few things that the recalcitrant Yuki let slip… most kitsune didn’t have fur like hers. She had called it “burned black” before… that once, her fur had been another color. Still, she hadn’t been expecting the nine white tails that came into view as she squinted her way past the illusion. They were so… beautiful.

Merielle continued to follow Akari as they both walked quickly away from the scene of the accident. “Excuse me,” Merielle said politely. “Uhm, how do you know about me? And why follow me?”

The white kitsune stopped in her tracks to turn around and face her with a glowing smile on her face. “I learned about you from Yuki, of course,” Akari proclaimed softly.

“Oh,” Merielle replied as she looked down. “She hasn’t… told me… about you.”

“I’m not surprised,” Akari said wryly. “When she needed to break the collar off your neck, she reached out to me for help. I’ve been… keeping an eye on you two since then.” She jumped up on one of the railings on the side of the road, effortlessly leaping far more smoothly than she should have been able to. “I know you two have gone through a whole lot,” Akari continued. “So I wanted to help. Your trials might have been heavy, but… in the end, they can only make you stronger. Nobody can learn what their strengths are if they never face challenges.”

Merielle tried to understand what Akari was saying. She finally took her eyes from the ground and looked up to Akari, whose warmth was radiating. But Merielle was still at a crossroads. She loved Yuki, but she hated what she was doing to her. She just… didn’t understand why she couldn’t be what the fox wanted… why she couldn’t make her happy. “I don’t know why,” Merielle tried to explain. “Why aren’t I good enough? I don’t know why Yuki doesn’t want me to love her.” Tears slipping out of her wide eyes, growing redder with each passing moment. “It just hurts so much, being with her…”

“It’s not you, Merielle. It’s… just how she is,” Akari sighed. “She hurts people. It’s always what she’s been like. It’s worse now, but…”

Merielle shook her head. She didn’t believe that, but she tried not to focus on it too much. “It’s not that,” the selkie whispered. How to explain it? “I’m good at dealing with pain. You know… When she hits me. When she…” the selkie blushed, realizing that if Akari had really been watching them, if she’d been in the park, she’d probably seen everything. “When she ties me up. When she punishes me… makes me make love to her… I can take it. I want to be good for her, but… everything else just hurts so much. It’s the pain in my heart that I cannot stand.”

Akari nodded. “I understand,” she said, giving her a soft smile. “That’s why you stayed in the van?”

Merielle swallowed. “I… I don’t know,” she tried to answer. “I knew she would leave me there. Hoped she would. What was the point in going after her? She doesn’t want a worthless slave like me. She can do better.” She wiped away a tear. “Someone who can make her happy.”

“That’s… really not what going on here,” Akari warned. “You’re not failing her.”

“I am, though,” Merielle insisted. “She… now she’s gone, and she can… she can be happy. She can be better… even if it’s without me. It’s not as though she’ll even miss a failure like me.”

“Let’s find out,” Akari responded, turning around to see the wrecked vehicle behind them. She returned her gaze to Merielle, and flicked both ears in that direction, signaling her to watch. Her fingers made a small, elegant pattern, sort of like Merielle had seen Yuki do when she was creating an especially complicated illusion. Sure enough, seconds later people started yelling, quickly running away from the van.

Then she recoiled as the smoldering van exploded.

Far away now, Yuki flinched, turning back as she heard a loud explosion tear through the trees like an echoing roar. She could see the large fireball rising into the sky, flinging debris everywhere from the white van she’d stolen and crashed. Some of it came crashing down through the trees… some of it even nearby her. Yuki watched as a bit of metal that used to be an axle flew across the sky before impaling into the ground a few feet from her.

Yuki let her footsteps slow, and then stop as she slowly approached the fallen piece of debris, picking it up. She held it in her hands, turning it over in her grip. It had… it had exploded? Impossible. She hadn’t thought she had done nearly that much damage, but clearly the van was totally destroyed.

Merielle was there.

The thoughts of Merielle came roaring into her head unbidden as she felt the cold metal in her hand. Slowly, her eyes widened in horror as she realized what she was holding…

A sharp blade of iron.

Fears of the selkie girl being pelted and impaled by shards of iron overwhelmed her, and before she had made a conscious decision, Yuki had already tossed the piece aside and was running back towards the accident, as quickly as she could… barreling through the woods even more quickly than she had while fleeing, barely missing the trees and shrubbery. It didn’t take long before she finally reached the road, and the nogitsune raced out into it, still invisible. She moved between people, casually sliding between them and looking over shoulders without being noticed.

She didn’t see Merielle anywhere.

Yuki abandoned her search and made directly for the burning ruins of the vehicle. The flames were cooking what was left of it, but it was damned hot… hot enough that it was difficult to get close. She did it anyway, circling the van and trying to get a look inside of the burning debris, hoping against hope to find nothing inside. “Merielle!” Yuki screamed. “Merielle! Where the fuck are you?” Yuki’s screams made some people nervous… people looking around as they tried to figure out where the screams were coming from and being unable to find the invisible girl. “Merielle! Please! Where are you!” she pleaded.

“Merielle! Please! Where are you!”

“Shh,” Akari said, a bit of a chuckle in her voice. “You hear that? She’s looking for you. Doesn’t sound like she agrees that you wouldn’t be missed.”

Merielle tried to look back and see where Yuki was, but there were too many people on the road… she couldn’t see her.

“Poor thing,” Akari said softly. “She has many, many faults… but not caring isn’t one of them.” The kitsune shook her head. “You don’t have to stay with her… the fact that she cares isn’t enough to justify the way she treats you. I won’t make your decisions for you but at this point… I can’t recommend staying with her. I just want you to make your choice understanding who Yuki really is. If you want to leave, you can walk away right now… I’ll make sure you get your skin back. I’ll make sure the vampire doesn’t find you.”

Merielle kept peering towards the pyre that was their van. “Thank you,” she whispered. “But I’ll stay.” Hearing Yuki calling out for her made her heart pound harder and harder.

Akari paused a moment. “As you will,” the white-furred fox said. “Best not to mention me, though… not unless you want to cause another fight.” With a final warm smile, Akari disappeared from sight, leaving just a nine tailed shadow on the ground. A second later, that, too, disappeared, and Merielle started running down the road, back towards the voice.

“Goddammit!” Yuki shouted as she searched through the crowd for any sign of her slave. “Where the fuck are you! Merielle! Where are you!” Yuki kept looking for her until she finally started to look around the road and glimpsed a red-haired girl running back towards the group. She couldn’t make out any other features, but as she had said… how many red-headed westerners did she think were on this Kyoto highway? A huge sense of relief came over her, and she started heading towards the selkie. After clearing the crowd, Yuki dropped the cloak, just hiding her tails and ears like usual, and Merielle ran harder as she finally saw the nogitsune heading for her.

Then she slowed and stopped, just a few feet from Yuki. Yuki didn’t stop… not until she was right up against her slave, until she was close enough that she could feel her heat. She looked into the selkie’s eyes for what felt like forever. “Are you okay?” Yuki asked.

“I… I think so…” Merielle responded cautiously.

She sighed. “Well, at least you can talk now. Inari’s tits!” Yuki responded with some frustration in her voice. Merielle looked down for a bit. Yuki tightened her lips a little before she finally spoke. “You know if only you stopped acting like a spoiled child back there,” she said, “none of this would’ve happened. I was trying to giving you a good time and you had to ruin it by acting like a child.”

“I’m sorry…” Merielle said softly. “But I wasn’t feeling it, Mistress.”

“Feeling it?” Yuki asked with a small sense of outrage. She raised one eyebrow “I was giving it to you pretty hard and good. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I wasn’t feeling the love,” Merielle proclaimed. “I want to feel your love.”

“Red, what the hell do you think that was?” Yuki responded before a short pause. “How can you tell, anyway?”

“I don’t know, Mistress,” Merielle answered, “I dunno. All I know is that it is missing right now.”

Yuki replied with a weak laugh. She wasn’t sure how to feel. She felt like she should be insulted and angry… probably it was her relief that her slave was alive and talking that was making her soft. She’d punish her for this foolish behavior later. Probably. “If you don’t know what it is,” the nogitsune answered, “then how the fuck do you know that it’s missing?”

“It’s missing and you know it,” Merielle said firmly. “It’s missing from you.”

“I got all the loving you need right here,” Yuki said as she rolled her eyes back. “What’s left? I’ve given you what you want. You just don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think,” Merielle responded, trying to keep her voice firm, “that you have having trouble because you don’t love yourself. How can you love someone else when you don’t love yourself, Mistress? When you burned your fur, I think you burned yourself even worse.”

Yuki was taken aback. Her eyes narrowed, and she started seriously reconsidering if she wanted to be angry or not. She paused and took a deep breath of air before continuing. “You don’t know the first fucking thing about what I did to my fur,” Yuki said with only a bit of growl in her voice. She was trying very, very hard not to explode. “So shut the fuck up about it.”

“I only know that you burned it,” replied Merielle.

“You don’t know anything!” Yuki snarled, her voice full of emotion. “You know nothing about my fur! I burned it because I had to! I… I had to Merielle! I was betrayed! And… And…”

“And you burned the only thing left that connected you to everything you loved,” interrupted Merielle. “I know a thing or two about that.”

“You… I… You…” Yuki was desperate for words. “You… You… I… Arrrghh!” Yuki clenched her fists tightly together before she broke down at at once, holding her head in her hands for several seconds before she looked up. “You just don’t understand,” Yuki finally replied. She had felt empty and soulless for years… but never quite so strongly as at this exact second. The nogitsune remained on the ground as she refused to cry… refused to show weakness like that. “Right about now, you want to drop this subject, Red. Now.”

Merielle knelt down with her. “Help me understand,” she said. Yuki was just managing to shove her tears back when she felt Merielle’s face against her. “It’s all gonna be fine, I hope,” wished Merielle, “Maybe… Just maybe, you can get your fur back.” Merielle leaned in and gave her mistress a nice passionate kiss on the cheek that slowly traveled to her mouth. “The way you got me back mine.”

Yuki took her in as their tongues met and danced for a while. The nogitsune finally broke the kiss, too exhausted to be angry. “You really don’t have the first idea,” she whispered. “Dumb little selkie doesn’t know anything about anything…” Still, she got to her feet, walking to the side of the road and bending down near a small bush. There was a little white flower on it, and she plucked it from the shrub before walking back to the selkie and holding it out for her. Merielle took a little while to react but she was able to get up and face Yuki, whose deep blue eyes widened as they both looked at each other. Merielle reached for the flower before stopping midway.

“Don’t worry,” Yuki promised, holding it out to her steadily. “This one doesn’t have any thorns.”

Merielle took the flower and smiled.