Change of Heart 05 - Forging the Future

by Mary Calmes

He’d shown sparks of acceptance; he’d even defended me to others upon occasion, but really, like a nagging, insistent suspicion running around in the back of his head, he’d hated me. I was never what he wanted for his son, and nothing could change that. Reah, nekhene, it didn’t matter. I would never be good enough for Logan Church, not in his father’s eyes.

  I had a terrible track record with fathers; I prayed I’d be a good one.

  “Now,” Peter began, his voice ragged with emotion. “You choose, Logan, which two live and which one dies, because one of them has to atone for Sasha.”

  “There’s no law that says a death for a death,” Logan flared. “And you took Andrian already, that’s payment enough.”

  “Not for Russ! Not for me!”

  “You will be paid menat!” Danny’s voice cut across the space to the others. “That… is the law.”

  “You are not sylvan here anymore!”

  “Sylvan or not,” Danny intoned, “I know the law.”

  “You can be killed as well,” Peter barked. “You were removed as sylvan, and therefore now your life is forfeit to Russ!”

  “I was never cast from my tribe,” Danny reminded him, “and as there has been no challenge, Logan Church is still the semel of the tribe of Mafdet, and as such, only he can speak to who belongs in the tribe and who does not.”

  “You—”

  “I am a member of the tribe of Mafdet until my semel, and only my semel, says I am not,” Danny finished. “I belong to him, and that, also, is the law.”

  There was no debate, and I saw the worry sweep through the khatyu. Danny had stood as sylvan to the tribe for six years. His word had been the embodiment of the law. It was hard to not listen to him, harder still to simply cut off his influence.

  “Release them,” Logan ordered.

  “I will release Markel, as he is my daughter’s mate and their bond is a blessing, not the abomination that yours is.”

  Logan was about to yell, but I said his name softly, under my breath, so no one but he could hear.

  Markel was silent as Koren released him, and he grasped Crane’s shoulder quickly, and then Ivan’s, before bolting past Logan to reach Delphine.

  “Take her in the house,” Logan instructed, and even over Delphine’s protests, Markel did as he was told.

  “So now we must decide,” Peter said, his voice shaking with rage. “Do we kill a man who tried to lead Koren astray through coercion, or do we kill the man who has dedicated his life to supporting the anathema that stands before us.”

  He meant me, of course, but he wanted to kill Crane because Crane loved me, plain and simple, just like he wanted to murder his own son. Homosexuality was worse than anything Peter Church could think of.

  Logan and I were accepted everywhere. There was nowhere in the werepanther world that we were not. And even those who were bigoted or unaccepting, intolerant, did not doubt the power of a semel finding his reah. It was too absolute, but some—my father, Logan’s, Crane’s—they had only ever seen me as a curse, something to be driven out and destroyed simply because I loved a man. I could not process such blind hatred. I’d never been able to. I understood how it happened, but still, it was beyond me.

  “Choose!” Peter howled at his son.

  Yusuke ran toward Crane, but Logan caught her, sweeping her off her feet and hugging her against him, gathered close, her back to his chest. He could shift to his werepanther form to immobilize her if she actually put up a fight.

  “It’s okay, baby,” Crane soothed, his eyes flicking to mine and holding.

  She struggled fruitlessly in Logan’s grasp, sagging to the ground, her sobs racking her small frame. “No… please, no… I need him… he’s mine.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Crane promised, not looking away from me as he spoke to his wife, then started a slow count. “One.”

  “Choose now or they both die!”

  I counted with my friend. “Two,” we said together.

  Logan’s voice broke. “Bring Ivan to me.”

  I heard Yusuke’s high-pitched scream; I saw Ivan stumble by me out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t look away from Crane. I could not. I had to count so I would know when he took his last breath.

  “Jin,” Crane whispered, his voice barely there on the wind.

  It was fast because it felt like a dream, something I had no control over.

  Vincent took a step sideways behind Crane and shoved the katana through the back and into the heart of my best friend in the world.

  Chapter 12

  YUSUKE SCREAMED again, a horrible wail of continual, obliterating pain, and Logan made the same sound. Everyone was shouting, people were moving, and it was chaos until the thunder tore from my chest.

  The sound was bigger than me, and instantly, my body was gone and I was with Crane, around him, covering him, beside him, and I could hear the final beat as he counted the last.

  It was loud—it must have been, because glass exploded from the windows and dirt erupted from the ground and millions of leaves filled the air, so many that it would be hard to see my hand in front of my face.

  But none of that mattered. There was only my power calling to Crane, to the primordial piece of him that I controlled, to his soul, his ka, to the part the nekhene held sway over in every panther and that normally my best friend could dance and play with and accept, thus sidestepping being dragged through his change. But hovering near death, he was simply at my mercy.

  He couldn’t breathe through my power when he couldn’t breathe at all.

  He couldn’t love the part of it that was me when his heart stopped.

  He simply had to take it in and let it consume him like every other cat in the world except my mate and my son, because at the moment, my spirit, the force that lived in me, didn’t recognize Crane Adams. He wasn’t strong enough for my energy to detect, instead merely a meat puppet I was about to make dance.

  Into Crane it went, and it sucked him through his shift at a speed lost to the naked eye. I waited for only seconds, listening for the telltale beat of his heart. But there was nothing, so there would be more.

  “Again!” I decreed, I alone seeing it completed, bellowing out the word for the reversal.

  Crane contorted quickly, like a dervish, spinning, flipping, reforming, clothes shredding, body lost in a fugue of motion until it was finished and I was looking at him in his human form.

  No breath, no cry, no signs of life.

  I felt the anger rise, and I snarled out my demand as he turned again into a panther.

  “Crane,” I boomed, and I tipped my head, watching him fracture and twist as I stepped forward, my head so heavy, and looked down at him. I was taller than normal, taller than Logan, but not an animal, still a man… of a kind.

  I watched the creature that belonged to me, saw his skin stretching, bones breaking and knitting, the cracking noise loud as he opened his mouth to howl, and it became a scream.

  An agonizing cry that meant he was very much alive.

  Now I could breathe myself, because my best friend could again.

  “Three,” I murmured, finishing the count.

  It was quiet, eerily so, and when I glanced around, everyone was on the ground.

  Logan was sitting with his legs folded under him, one hand on his knee, his other arm stretched out so he could hold Yusuke’s hand. She in turn, held Ivan’s, who held Danny’s, where they all lay collapsed in the grass. I understood immediately what I was looking at. My power had been overwhelming, and Logan’s strength had been needed to help hold everyone in human form. The chain of touching they’d made had kept them all safe.

  I cleared my throat as I started over to Crane. “I should probably—” I coughed, smiling at my mate. “—not do this anymore for a bit if it can be avoided.”

  Logan growled at me.

  Reaching Crane, I put one hand on his slowly rising and falling chest and the other on his cheek, stroking it gently.

  “Never”—he gasped—
“again.”

  I grinned widely. “How come? It wasn’t fun?”

  His glare was smoldering sapphire.

  I chuckled and sat him up. “You need food and water, right now.”

  “I need—” He took several breaths. “—to check on my wife and kids.”

  “They’re too young. My power doesn’t even see them. And your wife is with Logan.”

  He whined, “It doesn’t matter, I want them all.”

  I leaned in and kissed his forehead, staying there for several moments before easing back to rub my face in his hair.

  “That was… scary.” He heaved for air, his voice a crackly whisper. “But still, I could see you, so… I was okay.”

  “I was clearly a bit overwrought.”

  His grin was wicked. “You shifted too.”

  “Oh? Into what?”

  “It was hard to tell through the leaves, but like a bird.”

  “Bird?”

  “Well, like you with the head of bird.”

  “What kind?”

  “A hawk.”

  “Strange.”

  “I think your nekhene power is changing again,” he said, and I noticed how pale he was.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, nodding. “So how ’bout we get you inside and fed and—”

  “No!” I heard Eva yell from the porch.

  She was there, leaning on the railing, throwing up.

  “What in the world…,” I began, turning to look over my shoulder.

  “No!” she shouted from where she was, wiping at her mouth with her fingers. “Don’t look, Jin,” she ordered me and then turned toward the house, her finger out, pointing. “And you, darling, don’t you dare come out here, young man. I forbid it.”

  I knew she was speaking to Ilia, but I couldn’t see or hear him from where I was on the ground with Crane and had no idea what she didn’t want me to see.

  “He’s fine. So is your Daddy,” she said to my son. “Go on upstairs with the girls. They’ll all be in, in a minute.”

  He must have argued.

  “No, you know better than that.”

  And he did. He should not have been second-guessing his grandmother.

  “You can see I’m fine. My stomach just hurt, that’s all.”

  He was being protective. That was all right, then.

  “Go,” she commanded in her tone that was all business. “No, Del, stay inside. Markel, keep her there. I don’t want her to see this.”

  See what? I started to twist around to look behind me again.

  “Jin.”

  Crane retook my attention, and I realized he appeared worse now than he had moments ago. “Jesus, we gotta get you inside.”

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “But just look at me, okay?”

  It hit me then, and I took a breath, and the smell of blood reached me. “Oh God,” I moaned, twisting my head.

  “No,” Crane rasped, not reaching for me because he didn’t have the strength. “Here, on my face. Don’t look away.”

  I coughed. “Are Koren and Russ dead?”

  He turned his head, narrowed his eyes, checking. “No. Peter neither, but they’re all panthers.”

  “If they’re panthers, how can you tell it’s them?”

  He coughed. “Because all the men are in pieces, and none of those are Peter or Koren or Russ. Process of elimination.”

  “Rector?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes alive?”

  “No. Not alive.”

  I took a shaky breath. “All the rest dead?”

  He cleared his throat. “Yes.”

  “It’s bad?”

  His gaze warmed. “You love me, yeah, always have. Even what just happened, there was love in that, and because it was your power directed at me—as vicious as it was—I had your full attention. So you were precise, you were intent.”

  I nodded.

  “The rest of it was just runoff energy with no purpose, no restraint.”

  “And?”

  “And I would suspect that you’d need to be a semel to protect yourself from that, and if you were a normal cat, you’d need to be touching a semel so some of his power could sustain you before that wave of energy broke.”

  It made sense. That was why my family behind me had been holding hands.

  “If you didn’t have a semel as a barrier, you would have been wrenched through that change haphazardly, and the trauma on your body and your heart and your skin—no way to keep yourself from flying apart.”

  I understood what he was probably seeing.

  “It looks like what I’d imagine a massacre would.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “Keep in mind,” he began. “They shot up the house, Jin. They tried to kill you and Logan, and they would’ve killed Ilia too.”

  He was right. He normally was.

  “Sasha Orlov was in the house, in your room.”

  “Yes.”

  “You always do only what you must.”

  I felt like I was going to fly apart. I really needed him to touch me, needed the grounding.

  “They were going to kill Ivan and Markel. They tried hard to kill me.”

  “I know.”

  “That,” he said, indicating whatever it looked like with a lift of his chin, “is you saving me and being forced to do so.”

  I sniffled.

  “They keep testing you, and for what reason, I do not know. There may be no limit to your power, but certainly, why would we want to push you and find out?”

  “All I want to do is live with my family, and you all, and be left alone.”

  “I know.”

  “If I never had to do this again for the rest of my life—”

  “Again, I know,” he said, chuckling for a moment before exhaling deeply. “Now get me inside, ’cause I have to eat.”

  I would have to shift to do it and so stood to strip and realized my clothes were in tatters. I had shifted into something during Crane’s ordeal, but not an animal. I’d be naked if that were the case.

  “No!”

  My eyes found Logan as he rose, with difficulty, to his feet.

  “I’ll move Crane,” he informed me, starting forward slowly like his feet were heavy. Easy to see he was in pain. “Don’t shift again.”

  “But you’re hurt,” I called to him.

  “I’m drained, I’m not hurt,” he assured me. “Don’t shift, baby. I’ll have to if you do, and then you’ll be taking care of me too.”

  “Okay.”

  He glanced over his shoulder and then back to me. “Are my father and brothers dead?”

  “No,” Crane answered.

  The cry from the porch told me that Eva had been waiting to hear the news.

  “Peter must’ve had just enough strength to keep the two of them from following me through the shift,” Crane murmured from where he lay in the dirt.

  And Logan had more. Again, there was the difference between a semel and a regular cat. Russ and Koren had been helpless to save themselves; it was second nature to Logan.

  I watched Logan as he trudged close to face me. He was the only one on the lawn who was moving. I suspected he was the only one outside besides me who could.

  He was so strong, and sadly, I tested him all the time. His reserves of strength had to be great since I constantly forced him to display his power.

  “Listen,” he rumbled, putting a warm, gentle hand on my cold skin. “It’s like a muscle, right? The more you work it out, the stronger it becomes.”

  I rubbed my cheek in his palm, lifted my chin, and ran my jaw across the same skin, loving the feel of him.

  “You make me strong,” he whispered—taking hold of the back of my neck as I whimpered, wanting to be closer, in his lap—and eased me forward.

  I breathed out before he kissed me, gently, softly, and then whined when he eased me back, running his thumb across my lips.

  “My mate needs claiming, but first his beset needs food.”

  “Amen,” Cr
ane grumbled. “Stop eye-fucking your mate on my time.”

  He was trying to keep the mood light after the horror I’d unleashed.

  Logan bent to lift Crane into his arms, one arm behind his back, one under his knees, and it looked odd, because while my mate was quite tall and broad, my best friend was not a small man.

  I started to do a slow pan.

  “No,” Logan warned me as he rose to his full towering height. “Look at me.”

  Instant obedience as I tipped my head back to meet his golden gaze.

  “I forbid it, do you understand? I will not have that image in your mind for all time. I will not have you torture yourself for defending your family and saving your friend.”

  My body heated as I stared, and I realized how much I wanted to be where Crane was. Yes, we were in the middle of God knew what, and I had no idea how many men were there, but still, I was at the mercy of what I needed to stay me, as well as his pheromones.

  “Aside from my father, Koren, Russ, and Rector, there were five others.”

  “So you’re saying six men are dead because of me.”

  “We all make choices.”

  Yes. We did.

  “Now I need to eat, too, so I’m going in. Can you carry Yusuke and Danny and Ivan one at a time?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay, then, come on.”

  I was so torn. Half of me wanted to see, the other half did not.

  “Do as I say, for once.”

  “I will,” I agreed, “but don’t make a habit of thinking I’ll listen to you all the time.”

  “Don’t worry. I know better than that.”

  I DIDN’T understand why no one was moving until I followed after Logan. All of them—Yusuke, Danny, and Ivan—were on their backs, breathing, but that was all they were capable of. Markel helped Logan and me carry the others in, and Artem showed up with the remainder of the khatyu to retrieve Peter, Koren, and Russ and to pile the others for burning.

  It was hard to know how to feel. I had Yusuke openly sobbing as she sat in my lap, her arms wrapped around me. During the crying she managed to get out a thank-you and that I was a blessing right before she started hyperventilating.

  Logan took her, lifted her up off me, and then put her into a chair beside Delphine. His sister had her breathe into a paper bag Eva brought from the kitchen, and then, when she calmed, Delphine fed her. Markel fed Ivan, who couldn’t stop crying, and Eva fussed over Danny and Logan at the same time. I tried to help her—I really wanted to take care of Logan—but she was right, I was a little unsteady myself. While Eva bustled around, Ilia took care of me. He made sure I had more meat on my plate, poured water for me and everyone else, and went from person to person, hugging them.