Page 63 of Curses & Kitsune

I pull my knee to my chest and rest my elbow over it, flexing my mended hand. “I want to know how you cured yourself of the kitsune curse.”

He tilts his head, giving me a searching look. “How do you know about that?”

“After you left, Namikawa wanted us to pay off your debt to the pack. Mom threw me at him and ran off. He made me his bitch in your absence.”

Again, not even a flicker of remorse, though he does look surprised. “Your mom bailed on you? After all the times she bitched at me to give her a kid?” He scoffs.

“Because she didn’t want to raise me without you,” I growl at him.

He just shrugs. “And Namikawa gave you the kitsune curse?”

“He tried. Your father stopped him and died for it.”

That makes him look at me, surprise in his gaze.

“In the end, my mate ended up cursed. It was the only way to save his life.”

My father makes a disgusted face.

I point a finger at him and growl, “Yeah, I’m bisexual, and you lost any right to have an opinion on that when you bailed on me. So keep your mouth shut. My mate can’t control the kitsune, and we need the cure now. So if you could tell me how you cured yourself, I’ll be on my way.”

Noboru leans his head back, gazing up at the ceiling. After a moment of thoughtful silence, he says, “I found and claimed my mate.”

That makes no sense. If my mom was his mate, then why did he leave us?

As if sensing my confusion, he adds, “Not your mother. My fated mate. Yuki.”

There’s an ache in my chest like I’ve been punched. “So my mother wasn’t…”

Noboru shakes his head. “I knew Namikawa would want to pass the kitsune onto me, so I went to a mage. He believed only a fated mate’s bond would be enough to cure me. I had given up on finding my fated mate in time, so I paid the mage to create a fated bond between your mother and me. Never told her, of course.”

I want to punch him again. “So, you tricked her. My mother and I were just… what? Pawns to use and throw away when you got bored?” Anger makes my voice shake. My poor mother was strung along by a manipulative asshole.

“I had to,” Noboru insists. “Or else I would’ve been bound to Namikawa and the pack for life. So I did whatever your mother wanted, even put a brat in her.”

I scowl. “Thanks.”

“As you know, things slowly unraveled between us. I felt trapped in a life I never wanted.”

“Wonder what that feels like,” I grumble, so full of bitterness it feels like I’ll choke.

“I began to lose hope as our bond became more and more strained. We lived in Osaka for a few years. You were still a baby. I was the leader for the branch of the Namikawa-kai in Osaka, but Namikawa demanded I move to Tokyo so I could take on the role of his second-in-command. I met Yuki, who was the hostess at one of our clubs, and I knew right away who she was to me.”

“So you cheated on my mother.”

Noboru nods. “Yuki and I started seeing each other in secret. After I claimed her as mine, we made plans to leave the city together. Namikawa found out and tried to force the curse onto me, but the curse wouldn’t take. The fated bond between Yuki and me was too strong to be tainted. We barely escaped Tokyo with our lives.”

Outside the window, the dead yakuza have become a feast for the birds. “Shit worked out well for you, huh?”

He grimaces. “I dragged Yuki into my world and got her killed. It’s a shame. People are… too complicated. All they do is hurt and get hurt by others. Used and thrown aside. So take a lesson from your old man, huh? The only one I ever taught you; you’re better off alone.”

Something about his words is familiar to me, like I’ve heard them before. My breath hitches when I realize why. All my life, I’ve believed some variation of everything he just said—people only hurt, I’m better off alone, and love isn’t real.

And in that moment, I realize how alike my father and I really are. I criticized him for using my mother and me, but that’s the exact same thing I’ve done for years. I’ve used others for sex, company, or as punching bags for the rage simmering within me. Rage at my parents. Rage at the world and my circumstances. Since I was eight, I built up walls and hid behind them, away from the world.

Jinta was right; I’m exactly like my father. He hurt the people who loved him, pushed them away, and got them killed. I thought I was being selfless with Jinta by putting up a wall between us, giving him the opportunity to have a safe life without me. But I know now that it was nothing but a cowardly tactic to protect myself from being hurt when he ultimately realized I can’t give him what he needs.

Why would Jinta ever decide that? He’s made it so clear from the beginning that what he feels for me isn’t going away, and because I was too damn cowardly to trust him, I could have ruined the best thing to ever happen to me.

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