Honored Vow

by Mary Calmes

  I smiled up at him. “Which is probably why it should be you.”

  He took a deep breath and grabbed me, holding me tight. “Whatever happens, as long as we’re still us, I’ll be okay.”

  I hugged him back, laying my head over his heart. “We’ll always be us.”

  “But you can’t get tired; you never get to say that this isn’t what you signed on for, because right this second, you’re promising to stand by me, as my mate, forever.”

  “I already did that,” I groaned, shoving away from him. “For crissakes, Logan, it’s you and me until one of us is done here and the other follows. I don’t plan on being here without you.”

  He nodded fast. “Me neither; I’m not strong enough.”

  I stared up into his eyes, and he held my gaze without wavering. Always, I saw the love there, always his granite resolve, the strength and his will. But there was also that piece no one else saw, his absolute, drowning need. Blessed with finding the other half of his soul, he could not be expected to live without me.

  I was the same.

  It was the only scary part about finding your true-mate: the inability to live without them. Others who weren’t semels or reahs could never be expected to understand.

  “Okay, so.” I took a breath. “What? When do we have to know about Crane?”

  He reached for me, and I took a step back just beyond the tips of his fingers.

  “Come here.”

  I shook my head, smiling, retreating behind the couch.

  “What are you doing? I’m not gonna chase you around the living room.”

  But he lunged at me, making his words a lie, and I moved away just as fast. His expression was priceless.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” I teased him, putting more space between us. “I’m just trying to talk to you; you’re the one that’s all touchy-feely after you said you weren’t gonna be.”

  He scowled at me, crossing the room so there was only a loveseat between us.

  “Tell me, who’s going to Mongolia to be with you?”

  “You.” He went to grab me, but I was faster, looking for it, walking backward and hitting the wall between two windows.

  “And?”

  He came around the piece of furniture, stalking me, ready to bolt any way I did.

  “Yuri.”

  “And?”

  “Mikhail and Domin.”

  “Who else?”

  My mate closed in on me, and I noticed that his eyes had heated, changed to a beautiful warm gold, just that trace of a hunt firing his blood. The man so wanted to run me down and make me submit. Just the idea of it, I knew, flushed heat through his blood.

  “Stay there.”

  “Why? You so want me to take off just so you can catch me.”

  I saw the muscles in his neck cord, saw his jaw clench.

  “You’re kinda twisted there, Church.”

  His brows furrowed.

  “What?” I asked him.

  “I want something, but it has to be okay with you, and I don’t want you to say yes unless it’s really okay.”

  “What is that?” I waited for him to explain.

  He stepped in front of me, and his hand went to my throat, closed, and his thumb slid under my chin, tipping it up as he bent toward me, his breath feather-light across my face. “I want you to take my name.”

  My eyes flicked to his.

  “You can’t wear a ring because of how fast you shift and––”

  “No panther can wear a ring, Logan; everyone shifts too fast to remember to take it off.”

  “I’m talking about you right now.”

  I was silent.

  “You already bear my mark, but it’s not enough. I want everyone to know, not just werepanthers, that you belong to me, with me. It’s important.”

  I could see that it was from the look on his face. “You want me to be Jin Church?”

  “Yes, very much.”

  Our eyes locked as he waited.

  “I need to think about that.”

  He nodded.

  “Is that okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” I smiled up at him.

  He made a sound in the back of his throat.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “When you see me again, I’ll be this wild creature that you’ll have to tame. Eight weeks in panther form will take its toll.”

  “I know,” I told him, pressing forward, my hands sliding up under the lightweight cashmere sweater to touch hot skin and rippling muscles. The man was so beautiful, utterly edible, and I was ready to make a feast of him.

  “It’s part of it, part of the trial of the heart—the mate taming the semel.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you can’t even do that, then you—”

  “We both know I can do that,” I told him, lifting my eyes slowly to meet his. “Logan.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you. The priest says that in the history there are accounts of semels ripping the throats out of their mates in their werepanther forms before being ordered to shift back to panther form, never being semels again, never knowing they slaughtered them, nev—”

  I chuckled. “Ripping their throats out, really?”

  “Jin, this is—”

  “Stop, you know I can tame you, Logan Church. In whatever form you are, you’re mine.”

  “But we’re not even allowed to shift back into men until after the trial of the heart is concluded. So when you’re done with your trial, I get to be me for a day before I meet the semel-aten in the pit. We go from panthers to our werepanther form. I won’t even be able to talk to you. They lock us up at night and—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “And if Yuri fails, or Mikhail, or you, then I never get to talk to you as a man ever again!”

  “Logan—”

  “Jin, if the semel kills his mate, he is immediately ordered back into panther form and never allowed to shift back again,” he said, his voice strained and cracking. “You spend your life as an animal that dreams of being a man.”

  “Kiss me.”

  “Jin.” His voice cracked on my name.

  “Please.”

  He exhaled sharply before he bent and kissed me.

  There was the press of his lips, his mouth melting over mine, slow, sensual, utterly claiming, and so hot. I trembled in his arms, lifted mine, wrapping them around his neck to hold him tight and close. I wanted my mate. The desire to strip away all his clothes, have him naked and heaving in bed, both of us slick with sweat and come, was almost overwhelming.

  He whimpered in the back of his throat.

  “I love you,” I told him, easing back for a moment before I reclaimed his mouth.

  The kiss was endless, and breathing became a secondary consideration.

  “Your scent, Jin… you’re gonna make me forget all my plans today.”

  It was what I wanted but not what was best for my mate. He would be leaving soon, and he needed to make sure that everything was set before he left. For his own peace of mind, I had to let him go.

  “It’s gonna be soon.”

  “What is?”

  “They’re coming for me and Domin at the end of the week.”

  I reached up for his face, and he closed his magnificent eyes as he gently shivered under my touch. “That’s okay, everything’s okay.”

  He nodded, put his hand over mine, and pressed my palm against his cheek as he opened his eyes. “You’re gonna be okay, right? You seem okay.”

  “I’ll be fine, I promise.”

  The sepat for us would begin in eight weeks, but for Logan it would start on Friday. Members of the Shu would arrive to take him to Mongolia. He would spend the next two months in grueling training that was meant to strip him of his humanity and leave only the animal. The maahes of each semel was there to interfere if a semel was close to death and report to the mate of their semel. He was also to be the one to report if the leader was killed during the preparat
ion for the sepat. The maahes had no other function, no voice.

  “The trial of the heart has more or less two parts. So when you first see me, in my werepanther form, after I’ve shifted back from panther, that’s supposed to test the bond between the semel and his household.”

  I just smiled at him.

  “I’ll be a savage the next time you lay eyes on me; I’ll be altered and angry.”

  “I know.”

  “The priest said that there is strength training and punishment, and that you shift into panther form when you arrive and are not allowed to become human again until the day your household joins you after the trial of the heart.”

  I nodded.

  “I’ll be more animal than man when you see me next.”

  “I know.”

  He took a breath, taking both my hands in his. “The point is to test the bond even if I am not the same man you know.”

  “Yuri and Mikhail and I won’t fail you.”

  “I know you won’t, especially you, but you have to forgive me now for whatever I do then. It won’t be me, and you have to remember that.”

  “You would never hurt me, Logan, it’s not in you.”

  “But I’ll be so hungry for you by then.” He took a breath. “You have to forgive me.”

  I had more faith in the man than he had in himself.

  “Please, Jin, don’t abandon me, no matter what.”

  “I won’t, I can’t.”

  “Eight weeks without me,” he sighed, “and you leaking power. The timing is shit.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “I want you to miss me because that will smother the nekhene instinct to run or to look for another.”

  “You’re the only mate I’ll ever have.”

  “I know that,” he said matter-of-factly, “but the wild creature that lives inside of you doesn’t.”

  “Then I’ll teach it.”

  “I will educate the nekhene cat,” he promised, bending to kiss me.

  It was not gentle; he ground his mouth down over mine and ravaged my lips, put his hands on me until I was writhing in his arms, pressing against him, whimpering with need. When he shoved me back, I yelled at him.

  “You see that,” he told me, his voice low and sultry. “I’m what you want, only me. Don’t forget it.”

  He turned and walked away, and I had a tremendous urge to follow, but my desire died a second later when Crane poked his head out of the kitchen and said he was ready to drive to Reno. The need to nurture and protect drowned all else, but still, I needed my mate too. It would have to be a shorter trip than what I had originally planned. I didn’t want to miss spending any time I could with Logan.

  Chapter Ten

  THE priest had told Logan a week, but when Crane and I returned home, I found out that the priest had purposely lied, part of the sepat to catch us off balance. Yuri explained, haltingly, that my mate was gone, along with my maahes. They had come for them both, and all I had to hold me was the kiss I had given my mate when I was leaving.

  “I’m so sorry you weren’t here,” Crane whispered.

  “It’s not your fault,” I told him even though my heart hurt.

  “We need to concentrate on getting ready for the sepat,” Mikhail told me and Yuri and everyone else, including Danny, in the living room. “Jin, you need to tell us everything you know.”

  I explained about the challenges and asked Danny to please chime in if I missed anything. He seemed pleased at being included.

  The first test, the one of blood, was for the sheseru. Yuri would be placed in a locked cage with between five and ten shifted panthers that he had never met or even seen before, and with only the strength of his station, he would have to make them submit to him. They would have to roll over and present their stomachs, their midlines, and only then would Yuri be allowed from the locked cell.

  “Am I in panther form?” he asked me.

  “No, you’re you.”

  His brows furrowed. “Jin, they’ll tear me to shreds.”

  “Not if you’re stronger than they are,” Danny told him. “You have to show your panther blood in human form. It’s hard.”

  “No shit,” he growled, annoyed by the obvious.

  “You’ll do it,” Mikhail told him. “I’ve seen you.”

  Yuri shook his head. “Don’t you remember when Jin was attacked in the kitchen by those cats last summer? If I was so strong—”

  “That was before Sobek,” Mikhail reminded him, “and before Jin was discovered to be a nekhene cat. He’s different, and so are you because you’ve had to adapt to him.”

  I watched them stare at each other.

  “You’ll do it.”

  Yuri nodded. Always Mikhail was the voice of reason, and because he made sense, Yuri heard him and absorbed his words.

  The second test, or trial, was that of law. Mikhail would recite any law that he was asked for and have to interpret it and defend it.

  “And the last test?” Crane asked me.

  “It’s heart,” I told him, turning. “Logan will be tied down or shackled, or, I dunno, but he won’t be able to move, and other khatyu led by someone will try and get through me, and you, and Domin, and one other.”

  “Me?” he asked.

  “You’re beset of a reah,” I reminded him. “You stand with me. We just have to decide who, along with you and me and Domin, will be in the pit.”

  “Domin.”

  We all turned to look at Koren. All the color had drained from his face.

  “I thought the only reason he was going was to watch over Logan until the sepat.”

  “No.” Danny shook his head. “Domin is in the pit with Logan and Jin. If the semel is killed, then, in essence, his household dies but not his house. The mate is put to death, and the maahes, because the new semel would want to choose both for himself.”

  “I—”

  “At least that’s the logic behind it,” I told him. “You would only be able to claim whoever else was at the sepat—Crane, Yuri, and Mikhail.”

  “But if Logan is killed,” Danny told Koren, “then Jin and Domin are killed immediately after.”

  Koren took a breath, and I saw his eyes bleed to the dark olive green that normally only his iris was. “You’re telling me that that man walked out of here, without a word to me, knowing that he might never, ever see me again?”

  “Yeah,” Yuri said flippantly. “But why the fuck would you care?”

  “I care!” he roared at Yuri, and we all saw, finally, some passion from him where Domin Thorne was concerned. “I care more than you—”

  “He was not allowed to tell you he was leaving.” Danny tried to soften it for Koren. “Just like Logan was not allowed to call Jin. They just have to leave.”

  “They both yelled at me from downstairs,” Yuri snapped at Koren. “Logan called me.” He took a breath. “And so did Domin.”

  “But you were in the house, I was out.”

  Clearly Yuri was too disgusted to say another word to Koren and stalked over to the fireplace. He was brooding and silent, and I wasn’t sure why.

  “Does Domin know?” I asked softly, stepping in closer to Logan’s younger brother, “or does he still think that you’re holding open auditions for the love of your life when it’s obvious to all of us that the man’s been right in front of your face this whole entire time?”

  “I—he—”

  “Oh,” Crane said, nodding. “You broke up with Domin. I wasn’t here for that. What the fuck for, man? How are you doing better, heir of the tribe of Mafdet, than the prince of the tribe of Mafdet?”

  “Oh.” Danny sounded so sad.

  “What?” Koren snarled at him.

  “No, just—if Domin Thorne were your mate, maahes or no, he would not have been allowed to attend the sepat. Mate to the heir trumps maahes.”

  And I remembered that. “Shit,” I groaned, my eyes on Koren.

  He was shaking just a little. “You’re saying if I’d just clai
med him, he would have had to stay.”

  “Yes,” Danny assured him. “The mate of the heir is bound to your side just as is the mate of the semel bound to his.”

  “Fuck!” Koren yelled, the fury rolling over all of us as he charged across the room, striding to the window, staring out at the falling snow.

  After a minute I joined him. It took many more for him to speak.

  “I’m an idiot.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “He’s perfect for me, he’s everything I’m not, dangerous and strong and loyal…. God, Jin, I really fucked this up this time.”

  I was silent, letting him work it out and talk to me.

  “And I don’t think I should try and fix it, but I want to so bad.”

  He was ready to pull Domin back into the tornado with him, and no one wanted that for our maahes, not any of us.

  “The shit of it is,” he said as he turned to look at me, “even now, I still don’t know what I want.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that I want him, but I don’t know if it’s love. And it’s not fair to be with him until something or someone I want more comes along.”

  No, it wasn’t.

  “God, this is such a mess.”

  I looked at his profile, which was so close to Logan’s and yet so different. The intense regal bearing that his brother had was not present in Koren. Logan was strength and power and heat, and just his presence in a room made the air spark and sizzle with vibrant electricity. Koren had none of that, and I was beginning to wonder what it was that Domin saw in him at all. Maybe the maahes of my tribe had been infatuated and now, finally, after easily four years of their back-and-forth bullshit, which had started way before I had even arrived, it was waning. And so maybe he had not punished Koren with a silent departure, but it had simply not crossed his mind to even gift the man with a goodbye. Last night in the hall, perhaps he had missed Koren’s invitation because he had not been looking for it.

  “Someone else will want him, Koren, and whoever that is, you have to step aside.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s a mistake, I’m telling you. You’re gonna grieve for the rest of your life when somebody else, some other panther, claims him.”

  “Or I won’t,” he told me, turning to me, looking pained. “And that’s the problem, right?”