by Mary Calmes
He gripped my chest with one hand, the other bruising my hip as he took me and used me and burned the knowledge of who I was and what I was to him first into my body and then into my brain.
“You’re nothing but mine,” he snarled, and the sound so dark and fierce it brought the first jolt of release. “If all else is taken, that remains. Always.”
I could feel the hard ball of cold and terror start to break apart in my chest. Even if I failed, even if I was no longer semel-aten, he would always be mine. He could never be lost.
“Did you hear me?”
My balls tightened, my muscles locked, and my breath caught in my chest.
“Did you hear me?” he roared.
“Yes,” I rasped as my vision went white.
“Yes, who?”
“Yes, my mate,” I barely got out.
He drove hard and deep, and the teeth in my shoulder made me gasp. As the orgasm wrung me out, I screamed his name.
He purred mine softly in my ear.
I clamped down around the thick pole impaling me, and his low rumbling purr brought an answering whimper before he convulsed within me and flooded my ass with liquid heat.
“There’s my sweet man,” he soothed, and I felt hot tears on my cheeks.
He bucked forward as my muscles milked his length, and I was so tight inside that as we stood there, molded together, semen dripped wet and thick between us. It felt decadent and intimate, and I shuddered with aftershocks and contractions.
He wrapped his brawny arms around me, plastered his massive chest to my back, and kissed up the side of my neck so slowly, so gently, that I went boneless in his arms.
“There, yes, lean on me so I can unlock your wrist.”
I gave him my weight, and he reached up and released me. No longer tethered to the wall, I would have slumped to the floor had he not held me up.
“Domin!”
The muffled yell brought my attention from my memories to the present and to Jin, who I had not noticed standing out on the balcony.
“Stop moaning and go to sleep. You will have your mate soon, and I suggest you unburden your heart and tell him everything that you think he doesn’t know already.”
I scowled.
“Silence heals nothing, fixes nothing, and unlocks nothing. Just because you don’t say something doesn’t make it any less true.”
“Do you speak from experience?”
“My semel knows I love him and I know he loves me. Yuri might know the same, you even declared it once in Mongolia, and I know because I was there. But after this, you have to make him understand his place.”
“You realize you’re the last person in the world who should be giving me this lecture.”
He exhaled slowly. “I do see the irony.”
“Logan is going to kill us both, you know—you for going, and me for asking you.”
“I suspect so, yes.”
“He’ll never let you leave his side again.”
“And there is comfort in knowing that, as there will be for Yuri. It is a great thing to be needed by another.”
Yes, it was.
Chapter 8
IT WAS what a prince did.
“We both know that I won’t be the maahes of this tribe once Jin leaves,” Crane argued. “I’m leaving with him.”
“I know that.” I said, before I made sure to darken my face to a scowl. “But until that time, Crane Adams, you are the maahes of this tribe, and you must remain here and lead.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You can,” I asserted, “and you will.”
He was wrong to expect support from his best friend. Jin only cackled instead of helping him out.
“Are you insane?” He was incredulous.
“Just quit bitching,” Jin said with a yawn.
I tried the logical route to put him at ease. “Mikhail will be here to answer—”
Mikhail spoke up. “I’m going with you.”
I watched Samani’s eyes go big and round behind him.
“No.” I shook my head. “You will stay here and take care of the tribe and advise Crane while I’m gone.”
He took a breath as he gestured at Jin. “And you will take the reah of the tribe of Mafdet with you without his sheseru or a dozen or so—”
“You’re kidding, right?” Jin half yelled. “Nothing and no one’s gonna hurt me, Mikhail. Crane’s in charge of the first tribe. Could you just stay here and give him some goddamn backup?”
Mikhail’s dark cobalt gaze was a glower.
Even in the midst of chaos that morning, I found the both of them so endearing. Mikhail was trying to do his duty to everyone, and Jin was just being Jin, clearing his own path.
“Logan’s going to kill you all,” Crane said impassively.
“Probably,” I agreed.
Jin waggled his eyebrows.
JIN had killed the priest on a Monday; it had taken me the night and all the next day to recover from my injuries. Kabore was still worried, but our physician, Thema Pakhom, said she would let me travel only if I did nothing to exert myself.
“You must be careful, Domin. You haven’t healed fully yet, and none of us want to lose you to something as banal as internal bleeding.”
I had watched her eyes soften like they did whenever I was around. Apparently more people in my home liked me than I was aware of. So even though I was still weak, we left late Wednesday night to drive ten hours, planning to arrive in Ipis the following morning.
“You’re still sore?” Jin was checking as we sat in the back of the monstrous black Hummer.
“The rest of us do not all heal as fast as you, nekhene cat,” I grumbled.
“Or as fast as the semel-netjer, apparently.”
I growled at him, and he laughed, which was such a nice sound I let my irritation go and used his shoulder for a pillow.
“Sit by me,” Koren offered, but Jin’s fingers threading though my hair felt too good to move away from. And Yuri would not mind me showing up smelling like Jin.
We took twelve men with us, since Taj, with his sixty, was already there. We had heard from him, but the news was odd. He had been allowed into the city of Ipis, but not into the home of the semel. Without me there, they did not have to, by law, grant him entrance, and so they did not.
He had seen Yuri behind a gate and reported him in good health, though he had seen bruises on his face and his left arm was bandaged from wrist to bicep. But the smirk had been his. When Taj had yelled that I was on my way, he had brightened. I wanted Taj to put Yuri on the phone, but he was not allowed to. It was a mistake, the one this semel was making, keeping me from my mate, and he would know that soon enough.
“IS THAT grass?”
“Yes,” Kabore responded, yawning as we arrived at ten the following morning. “Ipis sits over an underground lake; the whole area is lush with plant life.”
It was stunning. Sobek was dry, almost everywhere I’d been in Egypt was, but this was gorgeous and brought the classic image of an oasis to mind. When we reached the town itself, we parked close to an outdoor café and got out, my khatyu filing out silently behind me. Instantly there was a contingent of men there to greet us, and I wasn’t surprised. They had to have seen us coming for hours; there was only one two-lane road there and back from Sobek. I had spoken to Taj, and he had asked if I wanted him to leave his position outside the semel’s home to come greet us. I ordered him to stay; I would be there soon enough.
“Sah’eed nahharkoo.”
A man stood in front of twenty men, even though every second more and more people gathered behind them in the square.
I couldn’t speak the language, and I wasn’t in the mood to try and stumble through it. “I am the semel-aten, Domin Thorne. I need to speak to Hakkan Tarek, the semel of the tribe of Feran.”
Everyone went to their knees.
“Who is Hakkan Tarek?” I demanded of the crowd.
No one said a word.
Jin cleared his t
hroat behind me.
“What?” I asked, glaring over my shoulder at him.
He mouthed words.
“What?”
“Give them permission to speak,” Kabore muttered out of the side of his mouth.
“Oh.” I cleared my throat. “Please, everyone rise, and someone please tell me where I might find the semel.”
They all rose quickly, and I tried not to scowl.
“My lord.” The man who had first spoken to me stepped closer. “I am Hanif Tarek, son of the semel, Hakkan Tarek. Welcome to Ipis.”
“Thank you. I need to speak to your semel at once.”
“Of course, he is at the fort, my lord. I will take you to him.”
“The fort?”
“Our home, my lord.”
“All right.”
“I’m sure he will be very pleased that you have come to mediate, my lord, and find a resolution for the newest of our many issues.”
I frowned. “Did my sekhem not inform you of the reason for first his visit and then mine?”
“He did, my lord, but my father will not hear that concern, but only that of the catacombs at Abtu.”
I was confused. He had to be at least twenty-one, what the hell was going on? Why wasn’t he the semel? Why had his father not stepped aside and begun mentoring his son?
“Why are you not the semel, Hanif Tarek?”
He cleared his throat. “My father’s as-yet-unborn son will be semel.”
I was missing something. “You are your father’s son, are you not?”
His eyes went to the ground.
“Hanif?”
Nothing.
“Look at me.”
He lifted his chin and met my eyes with his.
“Explain.”
“My father has taken a new yareah, and it is with her that he will bring forth the next semel.”
“Jin.”
He moved up beside me.
“I think I’m missing something,” I said and then tipped my head at Hanif. “Repeat what you just said.”
It was hard for him to meet Jin’s pale gaze. “My father has taken a new yareah, and so the son that he sires with her will be named the new semel of Feran.”
“No.” Jin shook his head. “Even though your mother has passed away, her—”
“She has not passed, my lord.”
Jin was startled and so was I. “Not passed? Your mother lives?”
“Yes.” He was really trying to keep his face a mask of civility.
“Then how in the world has your father claimed a new yareah?”
“He simply said that my mother was no longer yareah and pronounced his new consort as his new yareah.”
Jin shook his head. “He may take as many women to his bed as he pleases,” Jin said tightly. “But only the semel-aten can have a consort, or wosret, and only if she is a reah. Any semel who is not the semel-aten cannot have consorts. He may have whores, diversions, mistresses, whatever he would call them, but they cannot replace your mother as yareah, and he certainly can’t have any but his firstborn male child with his yareah be semel. Is he mad?”
Hanif swallowed hard. “Of course not.”
“Where is your father?” Jin was scowling.
“He is at our home, as I explained to the semel-aten. Also, the djehu of the peq, Ayaz Suyuti, and the djehu of the shen, Chanzira Adjo, are there with him.”
“So your father is counseling them?”
“No,” he said softly, “your sekhem, Yuri Kosa, who you so graciously sent ahead of you, is counseling them, my lord, and trying to help them reach a resolution.”
Yuri.
“He is safe and well?”
“He is, my lord,” he said oddly, haltingly, and I didn’t like it. “He is quite fit.”
I wasn’t imagining things—his smell changed when he said Yuri’s name.
When he widened his eyes suddenly in obvious fear, I had no idea why. “What?”
“You’re growling my lord,” Kabore said from my left. “Excuse me, but could you tell us, when the sekhem arrived, how many men did he have with him?”
“One.”
I felt the rumble start low in my chest.
“There was only one man?” I heard Jin almost gasp. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.” He glanced uncertainly at Jin, unsure of how to address him, as he had not been introduced. I could not introduce my party to anyone but the semel first; those were the rules of hospitality. “There were just two of them—Yuri, your sekhem, and the other,” he finished fast, and then blushed.
Yuri. My mate had allowed this man to use his first name.
I had the sudden urge to snap the neck of the beautiful young man in front of me. But jealousy was simply another test of faith, wasn’t it?
“As I said, he has been doing his very best to help the two djehus come to an amicable resolution, but he as of yet has been unsuccessful.”
“I see.”
“But he has been successful in keeping Garai Milar safe since his arrival.”
“Safe?” I prodded.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Safe from what?”
“Deoles, my father’s sheseru.”
“You lost me. Why would the son of another semel be in danger from your father’s sheseru?”
“Is that not the way of it, my lord? A sheseru punishes and makes the panthers of the tribe submit to him?”
“No.” I glanced sideways at him. “Is that why my sheseru, Taj Chalthoum, was not allowed within your father’s home?”
“Yes, my lord. Had you sent your sylvan, he would have been permitted.”
I was so confused. “Please take me to your father and explain to me on the way what the hell is going on.”
He shook his head. “My lord, I am not worthy to speak to—”
“Yes, you are,” I insisted. “So my sekhem, he allowed you to call him by his first name?”
“Oh, he was not given a choice, my lord. My father decides what rights everyone has once they are here in Ipis. He is the law here.”
“Is he?”
“Yes.”
“Meaning?” I prodded.
“Meaning that all the laws that you live by in the outside world, my lord, do not apply here in Ipis. Only what my father thinks and wants matter.”
“And why is that?”
“He is a divine vessel.”
“For who?”
“He is Ra reborn.”
“Is he?” I lifted an eyebrow, pivoting to face Jin.
“It’s a perversion of the law,” Jin announced, staring at the younger man.
“Unless you want to be reported to my father by his khatyu, I would suggest that you keep your voice down,” Hanif warned us.
“Why?”
“I have found that questioning my father or drawing his attention through beauty brings about the same result.”
“And what is that?” I inquired.
“His interest, my lord.”
My stomach was starting to twist into knots. “And Garai Milar, did your father take an interest in him?”
“Yes, my lord.”
It was painful to hear, and I had to draw a breath and calm down a second so I could go on without yelling. When my eyes met Hanif’s again, when I could, I saw how frightened he was. “Garai Milar was raped?”
“He was taken, yes, my lord,”
“Call it what you will. If he didn’t ask for it, it’s rape.”
He suddenly started shivering. “Please don’t kill my father, my lord. Swear you won’t, or I’ll raise the alarm and you will never get inside.”
I narrowed my eyes, staring the smaller man down. “I swear that I will not kill your father, Hanif Tarek.”
“Bless you, my lord.”
“But now tell me how my sekhem made Garai Milar safe.”
“He is his champion, my lord. He is, in fact, also the champion of my sister Masika and of my cousin Dalila.”
I inhaled deeply, willi
ng myself to calm. “Yuri Kosa is the champion of three people?”
“Actually five, my lord,” he admitted. “The two djehus are also under his protection.”
“This is an outrage,” Jin quietly seethed from beside me. “I want to be in that fort now.”
“And you will,” I comforted my best friend’s mate under my breath even as I smiled over at Hanif, attempting to put him at ease. “So tell me, are all visitors to your father’s home his to do with as he sees fit?”
“Yes, of course, my lord. As I explained, my father is Ra’s vessel on Earth.”
“I see, and where is your sylvan?”
“He was cast into the fire for speaking out against my father.”
Kabore said something in Latin before crossing himself.
“So your father, he kills those who oppose him, as well.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“So my mate was given what choice?”
“To fight in the pit or submit.”
“Submit to your father?”
“No, my lord, my father does not take men like your mate to his bed. They must be beautiful, delicate.” He tipped his head at Jin. “Like your companion.”
I noticed how he bit his bottom lip. “Hanif?”
“You should take him back to where your vehicles are my lord. He’ll be safe there.”
“No.” I shook my head. “He’ll be fine. So the men that your father does not take to his bed, what is done?”
“He has Deoles Aran, his sheseru, take them on an altar that is brought into the main hall.”
I bristled. “So my mate, he could either fight in the pit or submit to this Deoles in front of a crowd?”
“Yes.” He beamed at me, like we were having the most normal conversation ever. “It is sport for my father to watch Deoles take big strong men like your mate.”
“And when my mate refused?”
“I thought it a frightening choice, my lord, but your mate is extraordinary and though Deoles is bigger, he is not stronger.”
I gritted my teeth because it was imperative I stay calm.
“And then when he won and my father’s eye fell on my sister… your mate selflessly said that he would champion her and so went again into the pit.”
“How many times in one day does he fight?”
