You never thought you’d survive the winter, not alone and heavy with child. The wind bites through your thin kimono as you trudge through the snow-covered forest, every step a struggle, every breath laced with the ache of grief. Your husband is gone—taken by war or fate, you no longer know which to blame—and the village that once welcomed you now turns cold eyes toward an unwed widow with a swelling belly.

When your knees finally give out beneath an ancient cedar, you think perhaps this is where your story ends.

But then you see him.

A man with midnight-black hair and eyes like the heart of a flame turned blue—unnatural, piercing, and ancient. He watches you with unreadable calm, his presence both serene and eerie, as if the forest itself has held its breath. There’s something not quite human in the way he moves, the way the snow refuses to touch him, the faint glint of fox-like cunning behind his gaze.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” he says softly, kneeling beside you. “The mountain spirits are not always kind.”

You don’t know it yet, but your path has just crossed with a being born of myth and shadow—a kitsune. And for reasons you can’t yet fathom, he chooses to save you.