Change of Heart 05 - Forging the Future

by Mary Calmes

  Yusuke regarded him coolly, remaining silent.

  “I seek your blessing to challenge Avery Cadim for the station of sheseru.”

  After a moment she nodded. “You have it,” she answered softly, and I recognized in that moment that he’d known what her answer would be when he walked into the house. Once he was gone, I confronted her.

  “You wanted Artem to challenge Avery.”

  “Of course,” she admitted. “Avery’s weak, and that we cannot have.”

  It was a cloudy day soon after when we walked to the pit, Logan and I, followed by the rest of the tribe, except for our son and Logan’s mother. I’d insisted that Ilia was too young to witness mortal combat, and Logan had agreed, so Ilia stayed in the house with Eva. I was filled with sadness because by the end of the challenge, either Artem or Avery would be dead. Logan had given both men the choice of a fight to a draw, but neither agreed. Avery, who had been chosen, had something to prove. Artem, who had been Yuri’s second and stepped aside once at Logan’s request—for Avery—had something to gain. It was never going to be anything but a bloodbath.

  Artem finally delivered the death stroke with his fangs in Avery’s throat, the thick spray of carotid blood covering his golden fur and spotting the ground beneath the two panthers. It quickly puddled, and I swallowed bile, trying not to retch. I’d killed many panthers over the years, and my nekhene form never balked, but the reah in me, the caretaker of the tribe, was pained.

  The horrified shriek, giving voice to what I was feeling, didn’t register for a second. Then it hit me and I spun around to look.

  My son was there.

  It took another moment to connect what my eyes were telling me for certain, to what my brain said it knew.

  My child, my innocent child, had just witnessed death.

  “Logan!” I screamed, and he stood and turned to the sound of my cry.

  He took in everything I did in the same instant. “Father!” Logan roared, because we both saw Peter there with Ilia and knew he’d brought him to the pit without our permission.

  I rushed toward my child and heard his next high-pitched wail, recognizing when it became first a howl and then thunder.

  Ilia came apart.

  One moment he was there, whole; the next he dove forward and his tiny body exploded into a new frenzied form.

  The bird beak of the hawk cat, the nekhene cat, was there, as were the talons of the front feet. He had enormous wings, and the rest was all powerful gigantic panther.

  Peter was visibly terrified and turned to run. But Ilia was too fast: he pounced with preternatural speed and had his grandfather under his talons, would have killed him had Logan not shifted and dove for him.

  Knocking Ilia aside just enough—Ilia was three times Logan’s size—Peter was able to tear free, leaving shreds of shirt and skin behind, as Ilia rounded on his father.

  I shifted midrun into my panther form, leaped forward, then instantly reared back on landing as I came to rest in front of Logan, shielding him and absorbing the swipe of Ilia’s razor-sharp talons across my shoulder instead of my throat.

  Ilia roared in frustration, and I twisted fast, trying to get above him, to catch his nape, but he slithered out of my grip and took to the air. I had to shift back and forth quickly to heal the damage before I bled to death, and in those lost moments, I watched Ilia in horror, unable to do anything as Logan tore after his son.

  It was chaos.

  Ilia flew from one side of the pit to the other, going after anyone who moved, and with everyone screaming, trying to get away, all of the adrenaline and pheromones must have driven him over the edge. Even as enormous and strong as he was, inside he was still a frightened, overstimulated five-year-old boy who had just discovered he had no one to answer to.

  He completely lost control and the bloodlust overcame him.

  The second I knew I’d mended my flesh enough to hold—he’d carved through skin and muscle down to the bone—I went after Ilia, chasing him in panther form, hoping to tire him out, not wanting to fly, afraid that he’d sail even farther above ground to get away from me, and then there would be no hiding the dragon on the mountain. He wasn’t any higher than the treetops at the moment, but if he rose, saw wide-open space for him to explore, I was terrified of the consequences.

  Logan shifted to his werepanther form and released his pheromones to try to corral his son. He’d done it in the past, and the moment Ilia inhaled his father’s scent, normally he would submit to his semel. It was instinctive, to succumb to your leader, but right then there was so much confusion, too many smells, and a glut of shrill, cacophonous grating noise. Ilia couldn’t even recognize his father, couldn’t differentiate Logan from anyone else.

  Logan tried valiantly to bring Ilia down, but he couldn’t hold him or stop him. Several members of the tribe would have lost their lives had Logan not stepped between them and his son and taken the inflicted punishment.

  After running around Logan, I thought I cleared him, but he caught me and drove me down under him in panther form. “What are you doing?” I screeched, having shifted back to human. “Get off me! I need to—”

  “No,” he roared, shifting as well, clutching my shoulders with shaking, bloodied hands. “I forbid you from interfering!”

  He was hurt, cut and bruised, and that terrified me because he was so strong, and that meant Ilia was even more so.

  “Logan,” I cried, trying to twist loose, not wanting to shift back and physically move him, never wanting my power to come between us, but desperately needing to calm my son before the situation escalated beyond all constraint. “Your men are going to go for their guns!”

  “They wouldn’t dare,” he rasped, and I saw the pain on his face, in his eyes. “But I may have to… to….” He stopped speaking and then glowered at me. “I will not lose both you and Ilia, do you understand me? You will remain here!”

  I understood. He’d been afraid of the same thing: that the tribe, working together, would have to kill his child.

  “Logan,” I gasped, shivering with power kept in check with the last sliver of my control. “You must let me go to him… stop him… you must.”

  The beseeching tone, my face, my touch on his bare skin all worked to give Logan hope, and he moved off me, which translated to permission.

  Then, in my fervor to save my child, I made a mistake. I changed into a form the reah in me could never take, not a panther or a werepanther, but more.

  I shifted into something big, and I saw the fear wash over my mate. I was glad, because that meant I could do what I had to and kill the creature that had tried to take him from me. I couldn’t fly, that would spook it. I wanted it low, close, but I could leap, and I was twice the size of the gryphon—I could tell that from my gigantic paw.

  Darting away from my mate, I ran to the bottom of the pit, and when the intruder saw me and dove, shrieking with bloodlust, I jumped and batted it down, plucked it right out of the sky, drove it to the ground and held it pinned beneath me by the throat, eating its power, absorbing the ka, its life force, all the while slowly tightening my jaws, suffocating the thing.

  It would die. I wanted it to. The creature had tried to hurt my mate, and the nekhene I was would disembowel it after I took all the air from its lungs.

  I reveled in watching it thrash and tug, all the while I applied more pressure. On its side, it couldn’t twist to get its feet under it, needing leverage to rise and push away from me. But I didn’t allow the barrel roll that would have allowed it to maneuver. It tried uselessly to free itself, to lift up, claws scraping over stone it could find no purchase on, as it slowly tired and began gulping its own blood.

  The next sound reverberated through my body as I recognized a yowl of pain, loud and heartrending, a frightened cub calling for its father.

  I froze, and the gryphon slipped from my jaws.

  Always there were two sides of me: the reah that cared for hearth and home and tribe, and the nekhene that craved on
ly Logan. A nekhene was a wild creature; it was the part of me that was utterly primal and without a trace of kindness or gentleness, simply feral. When I shifted into anything but a panther, that was the nekhene, not the reah. That part of me existed in a heightened state of continuous mistrust. I wanted Logan in every form I took, but as a nekhene cat, I was a scary creature in a jealous rage. So even though I’d shifted to save my son, once I was there in my new form, my only thought was that Ilia had presumed to hurt my mate in front of me—and that I would not allow.

  I’d gone after him to kill him.

  He had been a thing, an it, a creature to be annihilated.

  But something happened when he calmed, the moment he was down, the second his head cleared and he knew who he was, when I had him under my complete control… when he called for me… I was a reah again. Even in my shifted state, even huge, I was me again.

  The crowd was screaming for his blood… and my rage turned from him to them.

  I would gut any who came near my child, but first I would seek to spread calm, because that was what a reah was made for. That was the true blessing of the station: to subdue a tribe without bloodshed, to blanket everyone in peace.

  I sent out a pulse, a wave of warmth and love and comfort, and they all went still, plunged into safety and quiet. I was soothed until I realized Ilia was lifeless and unmoving beneath me.

  There was so much blood, too much, and it struck me that I’d hurt Ilia, killed him, my baby, my son… I’d bitten through his jugular, and he’d bled out while I was holding him down. Bumping him with my nose, trying to jostle him into moving, I strained to hear a heartbeat, to see his side rise and fall, but there was nothing, no sign of life. He was simply limp.

  I keened in pain. I couldn’t stop the sound a dying animal makes, and when I lifted my head to search for Logan, to find my mate so he could come to Ilia and make him breathe, do something, anything, I saw his face.

  I thought I had seen every expression that belonged to Logan Church—but cold, dead hatred focused on me I had missed up to that moment. The clenched jaw, the tear-filled eyes, and the rage there was overwhelming.

  “What have you done,” he whispered harshly, a tremor tearing through him.

  I shifted back to human. “No, Logan, he—”

  “Go,” he ordered coldly.

  “Logan—”

  “Go!”

  I’d taken what he loved, and he wanted me gone from his sight. I couldn’t bear to look at him, his eyes and face devoid of love.

  Everything in me that was reah screamed out to stay, but I pushed through it, changed form, and ran. The energy rose up, rebelled. A reah was not supposed to be separated from mate or child; it was a corruption of all that I was, all that I believed in. I pushed it away like a ball of electricity.

  The pain drove me to my knees and the tears were blinding, so when the nekhene power returned instead, when the nekhene came charging back, furious with longing for my mate, hysterical with grief from being, even for that short time, parted from him, the blowback hit me in a solid wave of devouring rage. The power consumed my memory because otherwise, to go so against my nature, I would have gone mad. That day, I had used my power to bring Ilia to me. I had siphoned his strength and fed it to the nekhene and then shifted back to myself with my reah nature—the gentleness, the kindness—at the forefront. Logan’s rage, his pain, his loss, had gutted me, and I’d run. And when I had, all I was, was a wild, untamed thing. The reah part of me was gone, dormant, and I was filled only with the other.

  It took the little girl to bring me back because she had needed me, and I knew—the reah in me knew—that I was a parent, a guardian, a caregiver. And so I had returned to my own mind and become what I was first once more, the mate of my semel.

  Even without my memory, I had begun to yearn for him, and once that was sated, once I was a reah again and reunited with my semel, then I had been ready for my child to be restored. Once I had him as well, then the nekhene power returned and with it, my memory.

  Logan had broken me with his distrust and then remade me with his love. It was sad that I couldn’t do it alone, but I was half of a whole. Neither he nor I existed without the other.

  I understood what Russ had said, that Logan was weaker because of me. But what Russ was missing was that together, we were stronger than any other mated pair.

  I was the nekhene cat, he was the semel-netjer, and no one should have leveraged their power against us. It was unwise. Everyone thought they knew what I was, but truly, I was a feral creature, just as much as I was a reah with a mate I craved with a voracious hunger and a child to love and protect and teach.

  I might never find cohesion, no spiritual blending, just as Logan and I were one and not. I might never be whole, never align all that I was under the yoke of the reah, but that was maat. Balance was a far greater goal. I’d been in possession of it before that day and now, was again.

  I was restored.

  “Papa?”

  My son.

  My mate.

  All there was.

  And now….

  Now.

  Russ thought he could take my mate, take my son. Peter thought the same thing. Koren… the tribe… everyone?

  His sigh was so sweet, so content, so sure of his place in my world. “I should go put clothes on, huh?”

  “Yes, you should. You don’t want anyone seeing your bare butt.”

  He laughed. “I didn’t want to move without you and Daddy, but Babushka said I had to.”

  “It was a good thing to listen to your grandmother.”

  “I came with Babushka and Auntie Del and Uncle Markel and Jinny and Suki.”

  Crane had named his daughter, Jin, after me, and Suki was for Yusuke’s mother.

  I had to lean on my son for a moment, and he kissed my temple and pushed my hair out of my face.

  “I like your hair long. You have to let it grow, okay?”

  “I will, angel.”

  “I missed you calling me your angel.” His face fell. “Everyone was so mad, and I think Daddy was too.”

  “Oh no,” I promised, hugging him again, feeling warm wind on my face as Ilia wrapped his thin arms around my neck. “Your father loves you more than anything. He could never be mad at you. He might be upset with something you do, but never at you. Do you understand?”

  Ilia nodded absently, leaning back so he could see my face. “Papa, are you making the wind?”

  “I am,” I answered firmly, everything clicking into place like the tumblers on a lock. “My power’s rising.”

  “Your eyes turn all black when your power makes the wind.”

  I nodded. “Shall I shift for you?”

  His eyes were gleaming with excitement as he nodded frantically.

  “Can you shift with me?”

  He pursed his lips together tight. “Uncle Koren and Dedushka say it’s bad to shift.”

  “I’m your father,” I reminded him. “Who do you listen to?”

  “You, Papa!” he crowed, pulling off my cardigan and shifting that fast, fluidly, like a cascade of water, reforming into the gryphon he had been that day.

  But it was different now, because he had shifted out of joy of being with me—not out of fear. He wanted to be by my side, and there was only happiness in the act.

  In the funnel of wind, I stripped naked and thought gryphon. When the wind calmed, stilled, my son was bouncing around, flying and hopping, rolling on his back and gazing up at me with enormous eyes.

  He was as big as a rhinoceros, and I was, from the height I was looking down at everyone, easily the size of an elephant. The looks on all their faces, stunned awe, brought a roar of happiness from me that must have physically tickled Ilia, because he broke into booming laughter.

  It was fun to watch a gryphon laugh, even better to watch his father, my mate, stumble forward, fall to his knees, and cover his face with his hands.

  We were there, immediately beside him, both of us, father and s
on, held in thrall to the semel on the ground, crying softly.

  They were joyful tears, though, and I bent my head, bumping him gently.

  “You remember me,” he whispered hoarsely, clutching at my head, a hand on my beak. “Oh baby, please shift back, I want to talk to you and tell you my plan.”

  “Wait,” Crane ordered, running and yelling at the same time, back fast with blankets, one for me and one for my son.

  Ilia rolled through his shift, and again, it was beautiful because his had a very liquid feel to it, and though not slow by any stretch of the imagination, it could still be tracked by the eye, watched, and reveled in.

  Crane bent and wrapped up my boy, lifting him up off his feet to his shrieks of delight.

  Instantly—because while Ilia had nekhene cat in him, I was pure-blooded nekhene—I stood before Logan, my hands in his hair as my best friend wrapped me in a beautiful silk quilt.

  Logan rose fast, tucked the blanket around me, and yanked me forward, hand around my neck as he tipped my head back and bent to kiss me.

  I nipped his bottom lip, and he pulled back, startled.

  “I don’t kiss you in front of others anymore,” I reminded him. “My passion is for your eyes only.”

  He squinted, nodding fast. “I missed you and your fierceness, my reah.”

  “As I did you,” I replied frankly. “Now give me the words.”

  Leaning close, he touched his forehead to mine. “Forgive me for sending you—”

  “What? No, Logan, I don’t need to hear—”

  “Yes, you do,” he said hoarsely. “I screamed at you, and oh baby, I’m so sorry.”

  Instantly tears blurred my vision.

  “I thought… from where I was….”

  “You thought I killed your son,” I whispered.

  “Our son,” he corrected, gathering me to his chest, hugging me tight. “I thought when I felt the reah that everything would be all right, but then when I saw him shift back and go limp, I lost it.”

  I nodded against him.

  “I came at you, and you dropped Ilia, and when you shifted back, your face was so hurt, and your eyes… and you came for him, for me, and I— I….”