A/N: This story is about kitsunes, kitsunes are foxes with magical powers and posess more the one tail. Famous Kitsunes are Tails from Sonic X or the Sonic Sega games and theres Shippo from the japanese anime Inuyasha who is a fox demon but has the fox magic that a kitsune has. There is a lot of folklore surrounding kitsunes that they can shapshift into humans, usually a beautiful women or a old man but I threw that out the window and I'm using my own stuff for that. The japanese god Inari is in this story as a ten tailed kitsune (I'm sort of mashing Inari and The Lady into each other). I am trying to use all other true charater of a kitsune in this story but just putting my own little twist to it. If you have a problem with this, well don't read the story then.

Prologue

A nine tailed female kitsune lay on a straw bed, her golden eyes half closed as four newly born red fox kits laid sleeping at her side.

Her human mate crouched at the fire, stoking it with thick round logs that he had gathered. He hummed a soft tune and kept glancing back at his mate with a small joyous smile on his face.

Her white fur glistened in the strong light of the fire that lighted up their one room cottage that was settled in the thick woods, away from humanity.

Her ears pricked suddenly, she could hear them. Hear their heavy foot falls as they raced pell-mell toward the cottage, her home. She rose slowly, staring at the door; they were coming faster now that they had caught her scent.

The door broke open as lithe black bodies of huge dogs crashed in to, easily making the wood splinter and give out.

The vixen hissed as she arched her back up against the wall and mentally threw four of the hounds against the wall. Her mate threw balls of electric blue fire toward the hounds which most easily dodged but the weak caught fire and fell to piles of smoldering ash on the ground.

"Sorcha!" her mate yelled as a hound grabbed his arm, its jaws locking to hold him in place as he pressed down, to leak his blood into it's mouth. "Run!"

Sorcha hesitated as looked down at her four kits. She couldn't take all of them with her; she glanced up at her mate who was now half drained of blood and no longer there. Her heart shattered as she grabbed two of her kits, the two strongest of the whole litter.

She spun on her back legs and threw herself out the window, which really was a hole in the cottage wall and landed uneasily on the forest floor on the other side.

The branches of the thick bracken grabbed at her fur as she ran through the forest. Already she could hear the hounds running steadily behind her, slowly getting faster, slowly gaining on her and the two kits that she gently but firmly held in her mouth.

Sorcha knew she had to hide them and sacrifice herself to save her kits. She was more then willing to do this just to be with her now dead mate. She found a dead log and placed the kits gently inside. Once the hounds fed on her blood, they wouldn't bother about searching for two weak kits.

She turned to face the hounds, bracing herself. She wasn't going to them take her without a fight.

The pack was soon face to face with her. There were five of them, all black in colour with stiff wiry fur. Their eyes glowed with bloodlust and malice as they caught sight of her, their thoughts popped into her mind, "Kill the vixen, drain her blood."

The charged, one grabbed her by the scruff of her neck causing her to let out a ear splitting scream as the other four ripped off all her legs. The fifth threw her down into the ground, locking its jaw around her neck, draining her special golden blood from her body into its own.

After they were satisfied, they loped away from the female kitsunes mutilated body, to go find somewhere to sleep for the daylight hours.

Hours passed until a gray/red coloured vixen stepped out from the thick undergrowth of the forest. She looked around nervously, twitching her set of seven tails as she contemplated of if she should leave the safety of the undergrowth, but the scent of newborn kits pushed her on to investigate the murder scene.

She flinched at the mutilated body of the white female kitsune and tried to avoid the gold blood stained leaves that littered the forest floor. She inched nearer and nearer to the fallen dead log that had a crack through it making a ledge big and wide enough for a vixen to hide her kits. Sure enough the younger vixen found them, curled into tight balls of orange fur, side by side, still as stone but very much alive.

"Davina, what are you doing?" her mate demanded as he stepped out of the thick bracken. His white fur and nine tails glowed in the pale silvery moonlight as he stopped beside his mate and looked curiously at the two bundles of fur.

Davina gave him a sideways glance. "Look at them Grady, their helpless without a mother."

Grady sighed and looked at the ground. He knew if he disagreed with his mate she would scratch his eyes out without thinking better of it. "Why do you want a dead vixens kits Davina?"
"Don't you see Grady?" Davina demanded. "This is a sign from Inari; she had our kits die so we could raise these kits."

Grady opened his mouth but closed it. Disagreeing at this point would end up with him being dead.

She pulled one of the kits out gently from the crevice. She smelled it and snorted, "A male, I guess his name is Crevan right?"

Grady nodded.

Davina picked out the other one and sighed. "Darn, another male. Well I doesn't matter his name will still be Prem."

Davina picked Prem back up into her mouth and started walking back into the undergrowth letting her mate pick up Crevan and follow her. Leaving the kits mothers destroyed body behind.