by Mary Calmes
Logan plucked him from the air and tucked him against his chest, snuggling the boy tight and patting his thin back. “We will raise him and Ilia together,” he promised Irina, and that was it: she collapsed in a dead faint.
I caught her easily, and when the door opened and Crane and Markel came in, I passed her to my best friend. “Take her to the house, get her a room. When she wakes up, we’ll need to take her home to collect her things.”
“Yes, my reah,” Crane answered, his gaze slipping to Russ before flicking to Danny. “And him?”
Danny was there, shivering, eyes on me, unsure and frightened. He looked even thinner and paler than normal.
“Well?” I asked.
It dawned on him that I was asking him to make a choice, giving him one, and his smile through his tears was beautiful. “Please, Jin, let me return to my family.”
“And are we truly your family?”
“Yes,” he answered quickly, his eyes brimming with tears.
I gestured him to me.
Bolting, he filled my arms, squeezing tight, beginning the litany of words: how much he’d missed me, how happy he was to see me, how pleased he was that I was restored, and how right I had been about Koren Church.
“Told you,” I growled, hugging him back before shoving him out to arm’s length. “I need you to collect your things from wherever they are, go to the house, shower and shave, and be ready for Andrian’s funeral. Eva made a feast. You and Irina and Dmitri all need to eat.”
“Yes, my reah.”
I pointed at Logan. “Get on your knees and beg forgiveness and swear fealty.”
Instantly, he went to the floor in front of Logan.
“No,” Logan grumbled, hauling Danny to his feet by the back of his shirt. “You smell bad and you look worse.”
“Yes, my semel,” Danny agreed.
“Never, ever, does your voice not fall in support of mine.”
“Yes, my semel.”
“You will never be my sylvan again, but I will have you in my tribe.”
Danny’s breath hitched. “Thank you, my semel.”
“Wherever I go, you go.”
“And you brought me into the tribe,” he said.
“So I can remove you. Yes. You belong to me.”
He trembled, and I knew that Danny wanted to belong to Logan all the way—mind, body, and soul—but that would never be. Logan Church was my domain alone.
Danny turned to me, and I gave him a dismissive wave. I’d never seen him run so fast.
Logan knelt beside the still shell-shocked Russ and Lydia. “So, Russ, here’s what’s going to happen,” he told him in the rumbling tone he had that ran right through you. Logan’s voice was truly part of his appeal, the deep vibrato, the whiskey, smoky sound that made you think of sex when combined with the man’s clear gold eyes. Lydia was having trouble looking away from him. “Tonight I’m going to sit vigil for my friend Andrian, whom you killed, and tomorrow, when Domin Thorne arrives and takes over the tribe—”
“Takes over what?”
“The tribe,” he explained. “The tribe you’re trying to take from me. He can do that, and he will.”
Russ went from stunned to frightened in the blink of an eye.
“And when he does, I suspect that no matter what you think, he’ll find a way to make us equal in the pit. I don’t know how, but I’d put money on him—if we fight at all.”
“Logan—”
“I’m sure when he gets here, he’ll explain what’s going to happen with Miguel Garza and you, and then, I suspect, he’ll have some other announcements. By Sunday, I’ll be gone along with our sister, our mother, and everyone else you can’t stand to look at.”
“No, Logan, lis—”
Logan lifted his hand for silence. “In the meantime, you, everyone under this roof, and the rest of the tribe, need to stay away from anyone who has pledged themselves to me.”
“Logan, please—”
“Because if I see anyone, if any of your men touch any of my people, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”
All Russ could do was nod.
“You killed a good man today, a kind man, and a loyal man, and for what? Because he wouldn’t change allegiance?”
Russ kept silent.
“A real semel cannot be made to do anything he doesn’t believe in. A semel is a rock, Russ. You have to learn to be one.”
For the first time since we arrived, I saw pain in Russ’s face.
There were many tribes, all over the world, run by younger brothers because of death or challenges or abandonment. Most of them didn’t have to learn to be good men, but they did have to learn to be strong men, both physically and mentally. A semel had a head start: they were firstborn, and birth order, in a line of a semel, gave one inherent abilities. The semel was the alpha, strongest, fastest, with increased healing ability and an overabundance of testosterone and pheromones that could be used to call any panther to him. It was a heady mix of power and adrenaline and sex drive that could be catastrophic for a tribe if it had a selfish wastrel of a semel, or a blessing if he happened to be anything at all like my mate. A semel bound the tribe to him as he was followed and worshipped, but he also cared for it in quiet imperceptible ways where he used his strength to guide and mediate and to serve as a model of how to lead.
Logan had disappointed the tribe because he could not lead, could not see to his duties with me gone, and that was his failing. But what the tribe was missing, what Russ and everyone else were clueless about, was that this one weakness was the only one Logan had. They had no idea what the shortcomings of another semel would be.
“Look around,” Logan bade Russ.
We all took a moment to survey the living room.
All the khatyu, as well as Peter, Koren, and Marina—who had ordered Logan whipped—were panthers and still writhing in pain. To be wrenched through your shift, to not be in control of bones cracking, muscles breaking and lengthening, was torture, and they were all still in the throes of the annihilating anguish.
“Don’t test Jin,” Logan warned. “It’s not healthy.”
“Yes,” Russ agreed, eyes on me. “I didn’t know your memory returned, Jin. I’m happy for you.”
All I felt for him was ice. “What happened to Samantha?”
“Who?”
I glared at him.
“Oh, oh, my—my girlfriend who you met that time you—”
“She called me because you were in danger. What happened to her?”
“I had to give her up,” he replied sharply.
I glanced at his yareah. “To be a panther.”
He coughed. “Yes.”
I had liked Samantha, his human girlfriend, but it took strength to bring a human into a werepanther tribe, and the love had to hold. Apparently Russ didn’t love hard enough. “Okay,” I said simply. “She’s better off anyway.”
“You—”
I raised my hand. “I’d prefer to never speak to you again, so please, address my mate,” I said abruptly, turning for the door.
“Heed my words,” Logan said behind me. “Stay away.”
I stepped out onto the enormous porch that I used to sit on in the summer and realized for the second time that it was cold. It wasn’t my home anymore; it was Russ’s now, and that made it easier to leave.
“I’ll miss the bay window you put in for me, and the marble patio in my bedroom. I loved being there with you, and all my memories are good.”
“We’ll make new ones,” Logan promised as he walked up behind me and draped an arm around my shoulders.
As we walked down the steps and began toward the path that led out to the guesthouse, we noticed the two panthers lying in the leaves, panting heavily. The clothes they’d crawled out of gave evidence of who they were.
Logan stopped over Sasha. “You were never strong enough to be my sylvan,” he said, scowling at the contorting animal. “It was only ever going to be Mikhail.”
“He can’
t understand you,” I huffed. “You know that.”
“Yes, but I understand, and that’s all that’s important.”
And he was right. It was.
Chapter 11
IT WAS well after midnight when we gathered outside in the field behind the guesthouse. My hand in Logan’s was necessary for both of us as we stared at the funeral pyre and he spoke Andrian’s lineage. He gave the names of Irina and Dmitri as Andrian’s survivors, and then Irina stood and spoke about her husband.
As werepanthers, the funeral pyre was a staple, and so was the speed with which arrangements were made after a death. The rites themselves were important, though, and had to be carried out to the letter, as was tradition.
Being burned after death ensured that your ancestors would meet you—they would see the smoke and be made aware of your passage into their realm.
A single white feather tucked into the closed fist of your right hand was to show Anubis that your heart was pure, a leftover from the Egyptian tradition.
The palm frond in your left hand signified eternal life, as it was a gift for your ancestors and shaded the faces of you and your loved ones on your journey home.
They were simple tokens from a simple time, but I saw what it meant to Irina that Logan had them there for Andrian. She kissed her mate good-bye, and then we all stepped back as Crane used a torch and set the pyre ablaze.
Danny sang a beautiful hymn, softly, sweetly, which somehow made everything more spiritual in appreciation of Andrian’s life.
I stood on Logan’s left, Irina on his right—as was tradition, the semel’s mate and the deceased’s mate, and we watched the flames engulf the body. Dmitri, as per the law, was too young to attend. It was Logan’s place to tell him the following day and present him with his father’s ceremonial dagger, that which every leader of the khatyu was given.
When the fire blazed high into the night sky, Logan excused Irina and told her to begin her mourning period. She wanted to cut her hair—it was an older tradition that some still practiced—and so Logan, who wanted to do whatever he could to help her grieve, used Andrian’s blade and sliced it all in one flick of his wrist. It went from hanging down her back to falling to her shoulders, but the act itself, the formality, sent her into hysterics.
I couldn’t imagine the pain; losing Logan was beyond my ability to comprehend. When Markel carried her into the house, Delphine promised to sit with her until she fell asleep.
Logan, Crane, Ivan, Danny, and I, and Markel when he returned, all sat outside and told stories about Andrian. I shared our first meeting and how he had said that Logan was getting old at the time, to still not have a mate at thirty-two.
Logan twisted on the step he sat on to look at me. “He thought I was thirty-two?”
I waggled my eyebrows at him.
He lifted his chin to speak to Andrian now above us in the night sky. “I was thirty-four, you idiot.”
I laughed and the others joined me.
“God, you’re old,” Ivan snickered.
Logan flipped him off and then squinted at Domin’s former sylvan. “Where’s your mate?”
Ivan shrugged. “He wants to stay here and remain in the tribe of Mafdet. That’s not an option for me.”
Leaning forward, Logan reached for Ivan, who immediately grasped his semel’s outstretched hand. “I’m sorry for your loss, Vanya, but I selfishly want you with me on my next adventure. I cannot lose anyone else I care about. It weighs too heavily.”
Ivan was visibly pleased and touched to be called by the familiar childhood name. “My parents are coming too. Wherever I’m going, they’re going as well.”
“Only child,” I teased.
“At least I have parents,” he said, shooting both Logan and I a smirk.
Crane snorted.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
I was at a loss.
“You’re an orphan,” Crane began, enlightening me even as he chuckled. “My father’s dead, my mother disowned me years ago, and Logan has only a mother now.”
“And that’s funny to you?”
“No-no-no.” Danny snickered, and it was nice to see him smile. “Andrian was an orphan, so is his mate. Delphine’s in the same situation as Logan, Markel’s an orphan, I was disowned by my family, and Crane’s mate has no family that counts her among the living.”
“Yes, yes.” Crane lost it, laughing hard. “And fuckin’ Domin….” He turned to Logan. “Shit, does Domin have a mother? I mean, I know his father died.”
“No, he’s an orphan too,” Logan made known, snorting out a laugh.
“That’s not something to laugh about,” I assured him.
But apparently it was, because he leaned over and lost it, his laughter loud and deep and very sexy.
God, I loved him.
“None of you are orphans,” Eva proclaimed as she strode out onto the deck. “You all belong to Logan, and everyone knows the semel provides. The semel is life. Now bid Andrian a safe journey home, and all of you need to go to bed because you’re getting punchy out here.”
“Yes, Babushka,” Ivan said warmly, getting up to kiss her cheek.
She bent and kissed my forehead. “I know you’re grieving, but Delphine said as they went off and on the property tonight that no one gave them any trouble, even out at the main gate. To me that means everyone in the house was still in panther form even when they came back from Irina’s.”
I grinned up at her.
“You don’t know your own strength, angel.”
It was possible that my power was surging just a bit.
WHEN YOU had a relationship with a house, you knew its sounds just as you did a lover’s. The creaks of a settling foundation, the cycle of a refrigerator, the hum of a heater or the air conditioner, all noises that could be accounted for. But when you were someplace new, and if, like me, you were a light sleeper, then floorboards squeaking in the hushed predawn hours were cause for alarm.
Despite my exhaustion—it had been after three when we all finally got to bed—my eyes still drifted open when I heard something odd, and I saw two things at once.
First, Ilia snuggled up against his father’s chest on the left, between Logan and me, and second, the enormous panther closing in on the bed.
Logan had his back to the door—he was vulnerable, and the animal was there, too close for me to shift and kill if his intent was to trade his life for my mate’s. He was already in his panther form, so I couldn’t grind him through the change, and my sleek, lithe panther form was no match for the ferocious strength I was looking at. It hit me that I couldn’t save them.
And yet… it wasn’t always supposed to be on me.
I’d been alone, and it was taking me some time to get back to where I was before I’d left, to instinctively put my safety in Logan’s hands. It was about trust and faith and not always thinking but simply reacting because I knew, in my heart and in my head, that he was there. He was my rock; I had to count on him.
All of that crossed my mind in an instant because my first impulse was to protect my mate and my son. But I wasn’t alone anymore.
“Logan!” I screamed.
The panther dove for my mate, but Logan rolled sideways in a blur of fluid motion and caught the snarling, murderous beast by the neck in his vise-like, clawed grip without even rising from the bed.
“Daddy?” Ilia asked sleepily.
“Avert his eyes, Jin,” Logan said, his voice a guttural command.
I folded Ilia close, his sweet little face pressed to the crook of my neck, and watched as Logan crushed the cat’s jugular, snapping his neck like a twig.
I did not have that kind of power in my werepanther or panther form, did not have the hair-trigger reflexes, but a semel was another matter, and people kept forgetting that. There seemed to be quite a bit of confusion over the difference.
“Yusuke!” Logan roared for his maahen, his voice booming through the house as he release
d the dead panther from his fist.
I couldn’t see to the other side of the floor, and so asked Logan simply, “Who?”
“Sasha,” he answered icily.
Exhaling, I reached for him, but he sprang from the bed, clad only in sleep shorts, and told me to keep hold of Ilia.
Yusuke was there in the doorway in moments, and how she did that—just came awake and ran at the sound of his voice—was beyond me. She crossed the floor quickly and stopped before him.
They were beautiful together: Her thick jet-black hair hanging heavy and straight just past her shoulders, her skin in the moonlight even more pale than usual, her face a study in fury. He stood there, every muscle in his body corded, ready to kill whatever else came for his family, and I saw both the beauty and rage in the man.
“How?” was his only word.
“I’ll check, but there’s only one way I can imagine,” she replied, “and that’s through the door from the deck, up the back stairs.”
Logan nodded.
“Crane and I are in the room at the front of the house, and you know, between the two of us, we would have heard him. There was no way he could get by.”
“Who’s sleeping in the back room?”
“Ivan,” she whispered.
“Okay,” he said soberly.
“Let me check the house. I’ll be right back.”
“No, I’ll go with you,” he snapped, head turning to me. “Stay here.”
“Yes.”
He bent, threw the lifeless naked body of Sasha Orlov over his shoulder, and followed Yusuke quickly from the room.
I gave my attention to the child stretching in my arms. “Hey,” I soothed Ilia as I leaned him back down on his pillow. “Everything’s fine, angel. Go back to sleep.”
He yawned and puffed out a breath and then fell back to sleep. That was the thing with my boy; he slept like a rock because of the shifting. Normal kids went through the change for the first time around puberty. Ilia, being half my line and half Logan’s, shifted all the time. He was the first and only werepanther cub I had ever seen.
After kissing the top of his head, I got out of bed, in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, and walked to the window. The moon was full, so the grounds were well-lit, and nothing moved outside.