Souls Divided [Souls Series 1]

Chapter 1 - Arrival

The top was down, and this mountain road had been the perfect blend of straights and bends, which suited Anya fine. She loved how Pop's old convertible made her feel free and a good drive always cleared her head.

In her next life, she hoped she could be a bird or dragon shifter; she would love to be able to fly.

She could almost see Pop sitting next to her in the passenger seat smiling and telling her to take that next curve just a little bit tighter, and she knew she'd have the whole convoy eating her dust by the time they finally rolled up to the compound, still driving in that careful, obedient formation her grandmother loved so much.

Dame Aiko was going to be furious.

Worth it.

The wind had turned her braid into a losing argument an hour ago, and there was pine and cold stone and something faintly like woodsmoke riding the air, the kind of smell that meant a war pack camp was close — always fires going somewhere, always someone sharpening something. She grinned into it. This was the good part. The part before anyone got to tell her what she was.

Deep down she knew her little rebellion and love for these long solo drives had to do with the fact that she missed that feeling of freedom from running in beast form. Even though she had never experienced it, and likely never would, her soul still missed it. But she would never admit that, not ever. Showing doubt in one’s abilities was showing weakness and weakness invited the critics.

So, she would have a proper story ready by the time Aiko's call came through, all outraged and clipped. Likely an hour from now, when someone finally noticed the convoy was one specialist short.

Something along the lines of wanting to meet her team without her grandmother’s introduction, getting the chance to show her worth before they were told by the High War Commander of the Queen’s army – her grandmother Dame Aiko Inaresh. True enough. And she knew her grandmother would still object and express her disapproval, but she also knew that her grandmother would not challenge her reasoning, because Anya being seen as beast-less and being negatively treated due to that had always been painful to Aiko. Not because she loved her any less because of it, not because she treated her any differently, but because she hated how others saw her. And she understood why Anya fiercely avoided anything and any action that could be construed – even if it was just a tiny bit – as nepotism.

She'd never been much of a den fox or pack animal, if you could even call her that — no fox or wolf or other type of shifter beast to speak of, even as a little kit (that’s what they call young kitsune, in case you were wondering). Honestly, with her mother, you never really knew what you were going to get, at your first shift, she had many varied interests, as per her own words.

Yet, she could not be called beast-less and grandmother Aiko had always been very vocal about that to others because, due to some miracle – and nobody knew how or why – Anya had all the strengths of a shifter, in surplus even. She was strong, fast, eyesight that could see for miles and in the dark, etc. just all of that wrapped up in a human body. Not that Aiko had anything against the beast-less, she believed they too were a gift from the goddesses and highly undervalued. But in Anya’s case, Aiko believed the truth would still be revealed, and her beast may still show.

She caught her own reflection for half a second in the rearview mirror and pulled a face at it, just to remind herself not to take it too seriously.

Because here was the thing nobody quite believed when she told them: she knew, in the plain, unbothered way you know your own eye color, that she was pretty, hot even. Not "in the right light" kind of pretty. Not "if she tried" pretty. The full package — good bones, good mouth, the kind of face that made men lose the thread of a sentence and made her older sister Aster — who considered herself something of a connoisseur in these matters — call her, often with a smirk and a wink; "a feisty little surprise package wrapped in a bow, for whoever's dumb enough to unwrap it." She'd never once needed convincing of it, and she felt zero shame owning that. She knew kitsune genes had a tendency of making you attractive, because kitsune loved to play, seduce and sometimes were deceptive in nature. Beauty was an important tool in that. It was simply genetics in her eyes, nothing more.

She was tall for a woman, not quite tall for a soldier, all long lines and sharp angles — dark hair, dark eyes that people insisted on calling "intense" right up until she rolled them, and a mouth made out of plum-colored lips that did most of its damage by smirking rather than smiling. Pale skin that never tanned, just went from "ghost" to "slightly less ghost" over a long summer, no matter how much time she spent outdoors baking targets into dust. She had her mother's cheekbones and, mercifully, none of her mother's taste in men.

It wasn't a soft kind of pretty. It was the kind that made people do a double-take and then immediately reassess whether they actually wanted her attention or not — which, frankly, she considered a feature rather than a flaw. Both her grandmother and mother tended to call her an Amazone, however both meant it completely different: For her grandmother, it was a loving and proud comment; she loved how Anya could take care of herself and trained her harder than her other sisters. While her mother believed her fierceness scared away potential mates, and her height made her a freak of nature.

Kitsune, in her mother's eyes, weren't built for fierce. They were built for adoration — and adoration, wielded right, got you whatever you wanted. Nobody in this family had ever turned that into more of an art form than Ashera had. Who, as you may have already guessed, did not always believe in walking the path of light and believed one should use every tool available to you for achieving your goals. Something which had caused somewhat of a rift between Ashera and both her mother Aiko and daughters in recent years.

Probably another reason why Anya refused, point-blank, to let her beauty be the first thing anyone saw.

She'd watched it happen to other women in her life more times than she cared to count — one soft feature, one nice cheekbone, and suddenly a room decided that was the whole of you. Suddenly you were decorative and not a real soldier. Every ounce of skill you actually had got quietly filed under "surprising, for a pretty girl." And somehow easily forgotten after every time they saw you. She'd rather eat glass.

So she dressed consciously. Sometimes even against her own instincts and taste — she liked looking good, that was never the issue — but she dressed around the problem as it were. Nothing that curved when it didn't need to. Jackets a size roomier than flattering, boots built for kicking a door in rather than turning a head, her hair yanked back hard enough to say I am not here to be looked at, I am here to put a bullet exactly where I want it. Half armor, half warning label.

And if, occasionally, in a fight or a negotiation or a very specific kind of interrogation, that same face bought her three extra seconds because some man had made the catastrophic mistake of underestimating her on sight — well… She wasn't above cashing that check either. Being underestimated was, after all, a weapons specialist's favorite kind of home-field advantage. She just preferred to have control over when the mask came off and not give the other the power.

She had drifted off into her own thoughts and failed to enjoy that last part of the drive. Yet that could not be remedied now, since in the distance the gates of war pack Delta now loomed, and Anya braced herself for what she knew was coming.