Chapter Text
“Why the fuck did you get such a young one?” a man sneered somewhere in the dark. “She’s no good to us. Just another mouth to feed.”
“Wait, wait,” a female voice insisted. Eunju blinked as the sack was yanked roughly from her head and her eyes were assaulted by overly bright lights. She was in some kind of exam room, but an old one, somehow both overly sterile and shamefully shabby at the same time. Two people she did not recognize were peering at her far too closely. “Look at her coloration. Just a couple of pups like her will be worth what we have to spend while we wait for her to grow up.”
Eunju flattened her ears down into her silver-white hair. The man was grinning broadly, but it did not comfort her. She had never seen a smile that was scary before. “I see your point,” he replied to the woman. “Okay, then. We’ll consider her an investment.”
“Where’s Tete?” Eunju dared to ask, her voice trembling. She did not know how she had gotten here. The last thing she remembered was being at the park, waiting for her friend. “I promised him I wouldn’t go anywhere.”
“Oh, sorry, little one,” the woman crooned. “Your last owners sold you to us. This is your new home, now.”
~~~
It was difficult to track the passage of time here. Eunju was not allowed to have her own calendar or any writing utensils in her room. The most reliable way to know how long she had been in the facility was to memorize as many details as she could every time she had a medical exam.
There had been a lot of those lately. She had been fifteen when the breeders bought her, much younger than they usually brought new dams in. Her platinum coloring, rare in a fox hybrid, was valuable enough for them to wait a few years for her first heat. But they had expected that to happen around age nineteen or twenty. Eunju was twenty-two now, according to her medical records, and she still had not experienced a heat.
That had caused a lot of conflict among the facility staff. The man who the residents only knew as “Doctor” yelled at the house mother after every medical exam, and he didn’t care who heard. “Mum” was the one who had chosen Eunju, so their losing gamble fell on her. If the white fox still had not had a heat at this age, she was probably infertile, which apparently happened sometimes with these man made color morphs. To a breeder that meant she was worse than useless.
Eunju tried to make herself worth their efforts in other ways. She worked in the nursery and the kitchen, and sometimes she even assisted with births when a dam was anxious and needed support. That happened often, actually. Some of the mothers were younger than her now, crying for their mate as they delivered their first litter.
Not that Eunju had ever met these mates. The facility was strictly gender divided except for breeding purposes. The doctor was the only man she had seen in all of her time here, and he was human. She only knew there were hybrid males here because the births kept happening, and she did know how babies were made. Tete’s family had allowed her to be educated and learn to read. She had always believed they held progressive views on hybrids, up until they sold her to this place.
But that had been a long time ago. Seven years since she had read anything other than medical reports while she was being examined. She was pretty sure the doctor didn’t know she could read, because if he did, then last week’s exam probably would not have said “dispose” with a heavy, frustrated line drawn under it.
She had hardly been able to drag herself out of bed after that. People left the facility all the time, but when they did, they never came back. Eunju did not like her life here, but the only thing more frightening than staying here forever was being forced to leave and not knowing what would happen to her.
Mum finally threw open the door one morning and stormed inside. “Get out of bed,” she snapped, yanking the single blanket roughly out of the meager nest. “I’m cutting off your food if you don’t do some chores.” Eunju groaned and shivered at the feeling of the cold air, and Mum paused, then laid a hand on the hybrid’s forehead. She cackled and draped the blanket back across Eunju before sweeping back out to the hallway. “Oi, bastard! I told you not to get rid of her! She’s in heat!”
~~~
They had not been able to do anything during that heat, because there were no male foxes in the facility. Apparently the money was in felines for the past few years, and wolves were too hard to handle, so the only canids they had kept besides Eunju were a few dogs. The doctor promised that by her next heat they would have a mate for her and she would not have to suffer alone.
Mum was being kinder than she had been since Eunju was young. She brought fresh treats like apples and let her have extra helpings of rice. “You need to fatten up a little to carry pups,” she explained. “Don’t worry, Juju, you’re going to be treated like a queen from now on.”
The fox swallowed down her bile at the nickname and made herself finish the meal. She wasn’t going to get a choice about the pups, so she might as well take care of herself and make it as easy as possible.
A fox hybrid could be expected to have a heat every three months or so, yet weeks had passed without a change. Eunju remained alone in her room. Doctor and Mum tried to explain that they just needed to find her the right mate, someone worthy. Someone just as valuable as she was.
Their efforts paid off a couple of months into the search, if she had counted correctly anyway. Late one night Eunju was woken by the sound of her door opening, and Doctor wheeled in one of the exam tables, with a long arm hanging over the side. “He’s still knocked out from his intake exam,” Doctor explained when Eunju expressed concern over how the young man did not stir when he was moved from the rolling table to her nest. “Watch out for him when he wakes up. He’ll be confused and he might talk nonsense too.”
After the doctor left, Eunju tried to make the newcomer more comfortable. He had been flopped carelessly into the nest, so she tried to arrange his head and his long limbs into a more natural pose. She was not strong enough to roll him over or else she happily would have to spare his tail, which was pinned under him. Maybe when he started to rouse from sleep he would take care of it himself.
It was obvious why they had chosen him. His hair and the perfectly pointed ears that stuck out of it were pitch black, a color almost as rare as her own pale hue. He had a beautiful face, his full lips sporting a playful curve even in sleep. He was the perfect example of a fox hybrid, and their babies were going to be beautiful. But she didn’t even know his name yet.
Not that it mattered much. They were stuck together whether they liked it or not. As Eunju curled up next to the stranger, she had to admit that it was nice not to be alone at night.
~~~
Yeonjun struggled to wake up, consciousness slipping away like sand between his fingers every time he tried to grasp it. It didn’t help that he was so very comfortable. He was nestled deep within something soft, and wrapped around a lovely warmth. Would it be so bad to keep sleeping a while longer?
But the need to wake kept nagging at him. Something was wrong here, and as soon as he woke up he would remember what it was.
He ended up jerking awake, flailing a bit as he realized that he was not in his own bed back at the shelter. He had no idea where he was, in fact, and adrenaline and fear finished waking him up. Someone had attacked him while he was running an errand for Chan, and now he was here. Had he been kidnapped?
It happened to hybrids sometimes. Yeonjun knew that due to his coloration he was considered rare, and therefore valuable, but the neighborhood around the shelter was supposed to be safe. Crime rates were low and people were mostly accepting of hybrids, as long as they–
His hand flew to his neck. His collar was gone. There went any slim hope that he was in a hospital. If they removed his collar, he had definitely been stolen. That collar was his proof that he was registered and legal, not a random stray. He felt naked without it.
Despite his racing thoughts, his attention was drawn by a soft sound. He had been covered by a blanket when he woke, but he had thrown it, and now he was surprised to see a person emerging from beneath it. Not just any person, though; twitching, silvery-white ears told him that she was a fox hybrid, just like him.
Yeonjun was almost ashamed to realize that he was staring. Under normal circumstances he would not have blamed himself, because she had to be the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Her hair was long and as pale as her sweet fluffy ears, her lips full, cheeks cute and round. She must have been the warm thing he was wrapped around, and his heart tried to skip a beat at the thought. But he did not have time to be smitten with a stranger. “Where the fuck am I?”
The white fox blinked, and he tried not to notice that her eyes were a stunning icy blue. “My room,” she said unhelpfully. “Did you expect to wake up in the exam room?”
“What exam room?” His head was still swimming a bit, so he didn’t dare to stand up yet. It must have shown on his face, because the woman leaned in closer with a concerned frown. “The last thing I remember was being on the street near my home. Someone took me.”
“Took you?” Even her voice was pretty, damn it. Yeonjun tried not to breathe too deeply because there was no way she didn’t smell nice, too. “Doctor said you might be confused when you woke up. It’s okay, you’re safe. We’re more valuable to them healthy, so Mum and the doctor won’t ever hurt you.”
He had to take a deep breath to calm himself. He was right about the lovely smell, unfortunately. “Yes, I think I’m confused. Could you explain everything to me? In detail, from the start. Maybe beginning with who you are?”
“Oh, sure.” She sat back a little, and Yeonjun was grateful for the space. The last thing he needed was a pretty girl dulling his senses while he was trying to calculate his escape plan. “I’m Eunju. This is a breeding facility, and you’ve been brought here to be my mate. The doctor is, obviously, in charge of our medical care. And Mum is our house mother, she takes care of us day to day. There are other staff too, but I don’t see them much. Since I’m considered valuable, Doctor and Mum usually insist on taking care of me themselves. That will probably apply to you, too.”
He had hardly heard anything after her introduction. Of all the places in the fucking world, he had to be in a breeding facility. This was his worst nightmare come to life. Quite literally. “I need to get out of here.”
“You can’t.” Eunju was her name, using syllables meaning silver and pearl. It was a name worthy of her luminous color and treasured status both. But the look in her eyes right now was made of steel. “There are multiple locked doors between you and the outside. I don’t even know where the exit is, they don’t let us go that far. Staff patrol the halls regularly, and there are cameras everywhere. There’s one there, in fact.” She pointed to the corner of the room where a blue light blinked inside a little black dome on the ceiling. “No one has escaped here since I arrived.”
“And how long have you been here?”
“Seven years, I think. It’s hard to be sure.” She was twirling a strand of white hair around one delicate finger. “So could you… Can I know your name, too? If we’re supposed to be mates–”
“No. No no no. I am not your mate, don’t even say that word again.” She flinched, and he hated seeing her blue eyes now looking huge and sad. “But, ah… my name, right. I’m Yeonjun.” He looked around again and realized for the first time that he was among a pile of pillows on a scant mattress, and if this was her room, it must have been her nest. There were vague and distant memories of gentle hands moving him when he could not move himself, ensuring that he was comfortable until he could shake off whatever cocktail he had been drugged with. “And I’m sorry for sleeping in your space.”
“Don’t be sorry. You were supposed to.” She stood and stretched, and he tried not to follow the lines of her body with his eyes. Whatever figure she might have had was covered by gray sweatpants that were too big and a huge sweater layered over a t-shirt, but a tiny crescent of smooth skin peeked out above the sagging waistband while her arms were over his head.
Damnit, he needed his wits about him. Blood rushing to his dick was only going to hinder his thinking. Plus, desire for her was playing right into what his captors wanted.
Eunju walked over to the small, barred window set high in the wall and studied the light outside for a few moments. “They should be bringing your breakfast soon. I don’t know if they will want me to stay with you or if they will send me to the cafeteria.”
“Can I go to the cafeteria?” he asked. He wanted to get the lay of the place as soon as possible. But Eunju shook her head, dashing his hopes.
“Sires don’t go to the cafeteria, only females and pups. You’ll be confined to your room except for hygiene as necessary and twice-weekly exercise days, weather permitting.” She came back to the nest and reached her hands towards him. “You need to see if you can stand up and walk. If you can’t, we’ll need to ask for Doctor. Breakfast time could be your last chance to do that until they bring supper this evening.”
He did not ask why there was no lunch. Memories of how breeding facilities were run raced back to him in unwanted waves. The males were kept in their rooms so that staff never had to deal with more than one of them at a time, because they were stronger than the females. Pups of any gender got to stay with their mothers until they were old enough to be sold, but that was mostly because it was less work than having human carers rearing them. He just hoped that at least this facility was kind enough to separate them when their mother went into heat again instead of keeping the whole family in one tiny, stinking room.
This room did not stink. There seemed to be actual facilities through a doorway, though it had no door hung in it, so no privacy. Yeonjun let Eunju pull him to his feet and he carefully shuffled across the room to inspect it better. Sure enough, there was a toilet and sink, and even a small mirror. That surprised him, since it would be easy to make a weapon from a shard of broken glass. There was a cup by the sink, and a toothbrush too– they let her stay clean. Thank god. Hopefully they would do the same for him. “This facility is nicer than the last one I was in, at least.”
“Oh, did they buy you from another breeder?” Eunju asked curiously. She had followed him closely even when he let go of her hands, perhaps worried, or perhaps already trying to attach herself to him. He hoped it was not the latter. She was not his mate, and never would be.
But he scoffed at the idea of being bought. “I told you someone took me. I was born in one of these shit holes, but before I woke up here this morning I lived in a nice place. A shelter, with people who never would have sold me, weren’t allowed to sell me. Someone attacked me and they must have drugged me too. And those bastards took my collar.”
Her hand came up to her own neck instinctively, clutching at something that was not there. Maybe she’d had a collar once. A beautiful specimen like her would have been highly prized as a house pet. “What about you?” he asked. “Where did they get you from?”
“They bought me,” she said softly. “My owner had just started university, so he wasn’t home very often anymore. His parents must have decided I was too much of a hassle.”
Yeonjun didn’t believe it. There was no way that a scummy little facility like this could afford a hybrid like her. Not if she had been part of a family at any point. Even if she was correct about them wanting to sell her, she should have gone to a proper collector, or a reputable breeder. But that was not worth dredging up now, especially when the door swung open. “Good morning!” said a woman, all too bright among this wretched atmosphere. “I saw on the video feed that you were both up and about, so I brought your breakfasts early. I thought you would want to eat with him, Juju, and get to know each other better.”
“Thank you Mum,” Eunju said almost robotically. “He definitely needs to settle in better. Doctor warned me that he would be confused after his intake, but he seems to think he doesn’t belong here.”
“Oh?” That had the woman’s posture tensing up, her gaze on Yeonjun suddenly sharp. He noticed that she was tall and broad for a woman, arms muscular beneath her scrubs. She was not to be underestimated. “I told Doctor that the anesthesia he’s using is too strong. It must have affected some memories. Your new mate here is ours now, whether he remembers or not.”
“If that’s the case, what’s my name?” he asked sharply.
“Mum” avoided the answer by handing two trays to Eunju. The moment he took a step in their direction the human woman dashed outside the door (she was fast!) and then peered back through the window. She seemed reassured when he simply took a tray. “I’ll give you two plenty of privacy. Make sure you make him very welcome, Juju!”
Eunju settled to the floor with her breakfast, crossing her legs gracefully. “They didn’t know my name when they got me either,” she told him. “They’re more concerned about pedigree than personal information.”
“Well my pedigree doesn’t exist,” he countered, trying to get comfortable across from her. He was a little bit skeptical of her, but there was no other company, and the only thing that sounded worse than socializing with her was trying to pretend he was alone when a stranger was locked in with him. “I told you I lived at a shelter. I’m a rescued stray. They couldn’t have just bought me sight unseen and even stupid-strong drugs wouldn’t be enough to make me forget all of it. The adoption process takes weeks, lots of background checks and interviews, and it’s a progressive shelter so I get a say in where I go. I never would have agreed to come here.”
Eunju twirled her spoon between her fingers, watching the chrome surface reflect the single overhead light. “Well, if you’re right, that’s unfortunate,” she concluded. “But I’m not sure it makes a difference. You’re here now, and you cannot leave. I’m sorry, Yeonjun.”
~~~
She decided to think of him as her new roommate. It was technically true, and if he ever accepted his purpose here, she could simply drop the first half of the word.
Eunju had accepted her own purpose all over again as soon as she woke up from that first torturous heat. Even so, she had not imagined that they would bring her someone so beautiful to help her fill it. His inky black ears and hair shone in the light of day, but his fluffier dark tail did not reflect anything, drinking up all color like a black hole would. If he were to smile at her and ask her to be his mate she would have accepted in a heartbeat, and perhaps tried to be thankful for this place for a change.
But he did not want to be here. Insisted that he was stolen, even. That he’d had a collar, just like Eunju did when she had a family. She felt rejected even though it did not seem personal. Of course if he had a home he wanted to get back to it instead of staying to be her mate. That was surely true whether he was right about being stolen or not. How many nights had she cried for her family when she first arrived? “Will you tell me more about where you came from?” she asked. That might be the only topic that would get him to talk comfortably.
Yeonjun nodded and swallowed a large mouthful of rice. “It’s a shelter for rescued hybrids. I’ve lived there for a few years now, after being on the streets for a while. They do adoptions, but like I said, it’s a long process. And I don’t think the shelter owner would have adopted me out, anyway. I was helping him with marketing, like a mascot. You might have heard of…” He trailed off, looking sheepish all of a sudden. “Actually, if you’ve lived here the whole time, I bet you haven’t. Do you even know what TikTok is?” She shook her head and he sighed. “Of course not. You poor thing.”
His pity felt odd to Eunju. She did not think she had ever been pitied before. In her former life she was usually the object of envy because she was beautiful, and admittedly spoiled. Few hybrids had better lives. Here in the facility she was also envied by dams who were always bearing the burden of another litter, always saying goodbye to another pup. She had not endured that yet, but saw enough of the process to know why they envied her relative freedom. Pity was something she felt towards others. “You could just explain it to me, instead of being patronizing.”
He cocked his head at her, eyes narrowing. “Patronizing, huh? That’s a fancy word for a breeder facility dam.”
Eunju felt her ears flatten as she got defensive. “I told you I used to have a family. I was fifteen when they sold me, I had learned a lot of things already. They let me read, even.”
His ears remained upright, focused on her. Curious, inquisitive. But he said nothing, just chewed on his food, and let his eyes skim over her. Did she dare to hope he might be admiring her? She decided against it. Yeonjun clearly had plenty on his mind that had nothing to do with her. In fact, as long as he was convinced that he was not meant to be here, some of those things probably included avoiding her, or at least avoiding any temptations she might try to lay at his feet.
She decided not to try seducing him. It felt like a waste of a potential new friend, and in a couple of weeks when she went into heat again it would not be necessary anyway.
~~~
“No, he wouldn’t have run away,” Chan insisted yet again. “He was happy at the shelter. He was out on his own because I could trust him, something must have happened.”
“Listen, young man,” the grizzled officer replied. “I know that line is what you hybrid rights activists say all the time, but nine times outta ten if a hybrid goes missing when their owner let them go off alone, they ran away. They got human faces but they’re animals, you can’t trust them like they’re people.”
“Tell me about that one time out of ten,” Chan pushed back, clenching his fists on the desk. “What would make you believe that he didn’t run away, that this was something serious?”
“The rare ones do get stolen sometimes,” the officer shrugged. “They got more rights these days but they’re still property and some people will pay a pretty penny for a fancy hybrid pet.”
Chan tried not to sigh in relief. Instead he leaned forward, looking the officer in the eye. “What if I told you that he was a rare black fox hybrid, and he was famous, too?”
That seemed to make the rusty gears turn inside the officer’s thick skull. “Guess that might change things. I’ll put in the report as missing, possibly stolen. What did you say his name was again?”
“Yeonjun.”
~~~
“You fucking dumbass!” The doctor shoved his phone almost directly into the house mother’s face, so she had to push it away to read the screen. “What the fuck have you brought down on us this time?”
There was an article open, the bold font headline drawing her eyes. “Social Media Superstar Reported Missing,” she read. “What does that have to do with me?”
The doctor yanked his phone back, scrolled a moment, and then shoved it back with even more force. “Look familiar?” he hissed, watching her eyes go wide. “He’s famous on that video thing the kids like. Apparently he’s a dancer or some stupid shit like that.”
“Hybrids can’t be dancers,” she sneered automatically. “And they aren’t allowed to have social media accounts.”
“It’s his owner that runs the account, or something. Point is, he’s known. Not only will there be a thorough police search, even the staff members might recognize him.” The doctor slammed his phone on the desk and pulled his salt and pepper hair with both hands. “I told you we should have just cut our losses on the stupid white fox.”
“Calm down, you paranoid bastard. None of the other staff have seen the new boy yet, and they won’t bat an eye at me taking on all of his care personally. They’re accustomed to it.” She steepled her fingers as she thought hard about the situation. “Right now, the only thing worse than having him would be letting him go. He’ll snitch if we release him.”
“We could just dump him in the garbage.”
“Now who’s the dumbass? Nobody cares if a stray turns up dead, but if he’s famous, they’ll try to figure out who did it. The prison sentence for murder, even hybrid murder, is a lot tougher than it is for just running an illegal breeding center, you know.” She opened her desk drawer and peered at the black leather collar inside, especially the silvery tag, engraved with a name and registration number. “I’ll take care of this. Just check the cameras in their room more often, make sure she’s keeping him happy.”