Honored Vow

by Mary Calmes

  “Hello?”

  “May I speak with Archer Pike?”

  “This is he.”

  “This is Logan Church,” my mate growled, his voice low, hard. “You have the beset of my reah; I want him returned now.”

  Heavy sigh. “I apologize for the ruse, semel-netjer, and I apologize to the semel of the tribe of Opet for borrowing his daughter, but I needed to get your attention.”

  It felt like ice water had been injected into my veins.

  “You have it.”

  “I tried to speak to you in Sobek, but you wouldn’t listen, and then you announced to the priest that we were khet, dead to each other, and so I had no recourse but this. The tribe of Mnevis is trying to take over my territory. I need you and your sheseru and your khatyu to come and align with us and help us drive them out.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Your reah is the son of my sylvan, this was his first tribe, and we have a covenant bond.”

  “You’re insane,” Logan said flatly. “We have nothing, and your sylvan is dead to me, as are you and the rest of your tribe.”

  “If this is your final word, then I will have no choice but to put to death the beset of your reah, who I have in my possession.”

  I didn’t make a sound, and when Logan’s gaze caught mine, I saw his eyes glow with pride. That I trusted him, that I had remained silent, I could tell, touched him deeply.

  “If you do not return the beset of my reah, Crane Adams,” he began, turning back to look at the phone, “I will come and take him, along with your head. I have, as you know, a member of the Shu living in my home, and once he speaks to the priest on my behalf, I will have a mandate for your life, semel of the tribe of Anuket.”

  There was a long silence.

  “You thought I would just say yes because you know that Jin loves Crane. Your sylvan, Jin’s father, and your sheseru, Crane’s father, were probably in agreement with this plan, but I will not grant you aid for one man, especially as I have a true covenant bond with the man seeking to take your territory from you, Derek Jackson.”

  “He’s filth! He’s—”

  “He’s passionate,” Logan said, cutting him off, “and younger than you and stronger than you. He wants a tribe that is racially mixed, not racially pure. He wants diversity because he wants the strongest tribe, the best, and accepts all based on nothing but their desire to stand with him. It makes sense to me.”

  “You cannot—”

  “I have, I did. It cannot be undone; it’s sealed in blood, mine and his. So you will return Crane Adams and all will be well, or I will come with my sheseru and my khatyu and however many members of the Shu the priest decides to send with me and I will kill you, your sheseru, and your sylvan, destroy the tribe of Anuket, end its lineage, and leave it to Derek Jackson. Choose your course.”

  Archer was breathing hard over the line.

  “Now!”

  Every eye in the room was on Logan. He was absolutely still, absolutely certain of his decision. And I held my breath because I wanted Crane more than anything, but I knew, in my heart I knew, that if they didn’t choose to give him back to Logan, I wasn’t getting him back at all.

  “You must come for him and speak your words to my tribe, in front of my tribe, and tell them all that you refuse to aid us,” Archer told him.

  “I will aid them, semel,” Logan assured him. “They are all welcome to come and take refuge on my land and with my tribe if they do not want to become part of the tribe of Mnevis. I would welcome them all.”

  “You said my tribe was dead to—”

  “Your tribe, semel,” he clarified. “If any panthers come to me seeking sanctuary, seeking shelter, I will take them in, and so they are then members of my tribe. Do you understand?”

  Archer Pike had no idea the kind of man that Logan Church was, and that had been his biggest mistake. Logan would never, ever turn his back on fathers and mothers and children. He’d pay to relocate them all, speak to Derek Jackson on their behalf, and do whatever was necessary to create a smooth transition if and when he had to.

  “Your answer, semel,” Logan demanded.

  There was a deep exhale of breath. “Come, then, and claim the beset of your reah.”

  “I will leave tonight,” Logan told him. “I will call you after I meet with the semel of the tribe of Mnevis, and you will grant he and I, our sylvans, and our retinue safe passage.”

  “You will not bring your sheseru?”

  “I will not.”

  “Then who will—”

  “As I stated before, I have a member of the Shu here on my land, Taj Chalthoum; he will act as my sheseru and come in Yuri Kosa’s place.”

  “I do not understand you leaving your sheseru behind if your reah is—”

  “Never, ever concern yourself with my reah,” he said, his voice going from cold to warning in seconds.

  “But we request the presence of your reah.”

  “Your request is denied.”

  I would have said something, because I wanted, needed, to go, but if Logan forbade it, I could never protest… at least in public. He was going to get an earful when we were alone.

  “My sylvan wants to see his son, as does his mate, your reah’s mother.”

  My mother no more wanted to see me than my father did. It was crap.

  “My reah will not step foot into your territory, and that is my final word. Now I will speak to Crane Adams, or you will prepare yourself for a challenge in the pit.”

  I heard him suck in his breath. Everyone had seen Logan fight in the pit the previous summer. All the leaders of the werepanther tribes traveled to Sobek, between Giza and Cairo, in Egypt, once a year for the feast of the valley. At the last feast, Logan had killed the semel of the tribe of Dendera because he had kidnapped and tortured me. In the pit, everyone had seen his size and seen how very lethal he was. The idea of a one-on-one challenge could not have been appealing to Archer Pike in any way.

  “I cannot grant your request, Logan Church, for Crane Adams is not conscious at this moment. Before I was present at his inquisition, he was scourged by my sheseru.”

  I had to grab for the back of the couch as the room tilted sharply to the left. A wave of nausea hit me, and I started to shake.

  Crane.

  They had tortured my best friend, and I hadn’t been there to stop it.

  “He was scourged,” Logan said like he was confused.

  “Yes.”

  There was no air in the room; my chest was in a vise as my eyes filled with tears. I bit the inside of my left cheek so I would not make a sound.

  He had been tortured and then disfigured. To be scourged meant you were cut into with a blade, your blood was spilled, and in some way, your body was mutilated. It was different from being marked as apophi, disgrace to your tribe. When a semel marked one of his cats, scarring them or taking an eye, it was done fast, never meant as a killing stroke but as a testament, carved in flesh, of a failing. It was done at a tribe gathering or during a challenge in the pit with everyone there as witness.

  Scourging a cat was what a group of panthers of one tribe did to another that trespassed on their land without permission. Scourging was normally done at the end of a hunt and was led by the sheseru. The first night I had met Delphine, the sister of my mate, she had been alone on another panther’s land. She could have been scourged had Crane and I not interfered and if Markel, Domin’s sheseru at the time, had wanted to do anything more than scare her. A cat who was scourged could, or could not, be expected to live based on the level of punishment that the enforcer of the tribe chose to inflict. Pain was a precursor to being maimed and, in some tribes, defiled as well. There was no way to know what my best friend had been forced to endure without asking. The fact that his own father had disfigured him, allowed others to hold him down and torture him, hurt him, make him bleed, was beyond my understanding. There was no way I could not go now. None.

  I turned and walked to the window, lo
oking out at the Las Vegas strip.

  “Semel,” Logan said, his voice low and edged in ice, “I have changed my mind.”

  “About bringing your reah?”

  “About bringing my sheseru,” he told him. “I will bring Yuri Kosa with me, and when I arrive, your sheseru will meet mine in the pit, and it will be a fight to the death.”

  “You cannot demand—”

  “I do demand!” Logan roared at him. “And I will contact the priest tonight and have Shu warriors there to witness it!”

  “I—”

  “He’s dead! By my sheseru’s hand or by that of the priest, he is dead!”

  “Yes,” he said breathlessly.

  “What made you think that you could touch the beset of my reah? Mine! I am not a friend, semel; we have no covenant bond between us!”

  “I—”

  “I am semel-netjer!”

  Even over the phone, not even standing face to face, Logan’s fury terrified Archer Pike. His whimper came over the line.

  “You will give me the names of any man who helped the sheseru maim the beset of my reah.”

  Maim.

  The word conjured too many horrors to think about.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “If Crane is not in a bed, bandaged and cared for by a physician when I reach you….” He took a breath. “I will end your house, Archer Pike. Do… you… hear… me?”

  “I do.”

  “We will be there tomorrow with Derek Jackson and his men. Do not make the mistake of having me look for Crane or you. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?” he hissed, his fury and hatred boiling over.

  “Yes, semel-netjer.”

  I heard Logan hang up, and then I heard something shatter. I didn’t turn around. My guess was that he had wrenched the phone out of the wall and hurled it across the room. I saw his reflection behind me in the glass seconds later, saw him heaving for breath, saw the pain in his eyes, and felt the heat rolling off of him.

  “Jin….”

  I shook my head. If I spoke I would break down, and I was not ready to do that.

  “Go,” I heard Domin say behind us to the men still kneeling on the floor.

  “Semel-netjer,” Calvin Reynolds began. “I am so—”

  “Leave us,” Yuri said, cutting him off. “We thank you for our accommodations here, and we will leave shortly.”

  There were no more words. I heard them go, and when the door was closed, a silence fell that sucked all the air out of the room.

  “I’ll call Taj from the car,” Domin said, his voice dark and low. “Let’s get home and get you all packed.”

  I turned, walked around Logan, and headed for the door. Yuri was right behind me.

  “I’ll kill them all, Jin.”

  And even though as a reah my first instinct was usually forgiveness, in this instance his words wrapped around my heart and gave me comfort.

  “I promise.”

  It was all I could ask.

  Chapter Two

  I WAS sitting on the chaise in my bedroom. Logan had knocked out a wall and put in heavy sliding-glass doors that slid open sideways onto the covered patio. There was a fireplace outside as well as in, and the floor that had once been tile was now black-veined marble. It was beautiful. He had completed it over the summer so it would be ready for winter.

  “You’re going to freeze,” Logan said, walking around me, wrapping me in a heavy down comforter, rubbing my arms to warm me faster. He bent and inhaled my scent, pressing his nose to the side of my neck, and I turned and kissed him.

  I made slow love to his mouth, licking, sucking, biting, my tongue sliding over his, rubbing hard. I loved the taste and feel of my mate, but this, of course, had a purpose.

  He leaned back, gasping for breath, sounding drugged when he spoke. “I forbid it.”

  I shoved him away from me.

  “And that’s my final word.”

  I couldn’t breathe. Didn’t he understand? How could he not understand?

  “I will never allow you back in that city. I will never let you step foot back in the territory where they hurt you. Once upon a time, I thought it would be fine. I thought your father would come around, I thought your old tribe would see the error of their ways. But your father and Crane’s father, they spoke to the priest of Chae Rophon and told him that you were an aberration. They said that my mate should have been killed. Does it make sense to you why, knowing all the facts that I know now, I will never let you go back there?”

  I looked out at the snow.

  “You need to trust me to bring Crane home. You need to let me punish them.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes.

  “Crane’s father will fall to Yuri and yours to me, and that’s the only way it can be. There can be no mercy, the wound is too deep. I thought once that there would be nothing between our two tribes, but now I know I was wrong. There will be blood, Jin, there has to be. I see no other recourse.”

  I shivered hard as tears rolled down my cheeks.

  “I will call you when I get there and tell you what was done,” he said, moving forward again, trailing his fingers through my long hair, which ran through his hand like water. “You will wait for me and not leave. Do you hear me?”

  I nodded.

  “I know you’re furious, I can feel it rolling off of you, but I can’t do what I need to do, be what I need to be, if you’re with me and I have to protect you.”

  Anger wrapped around me and squeezed my heart in a vise.

  He was silent, his fingertips tracing over the line of my jaw, brushing away hot tears.

  I shivered hard as I tried to get my body under control.

  “Listen,” he said, steadying his voice, “I know you’re scary and strong, but faced with Crane being hurt, you won’t be yourself, and I can’t be the catalyst for your transformation if I’m in my shifted form as well. We don’t know yet the true power of a nekhene cat, Jin, we don’t know what you can do, but this… with Crane… this is not the time to find out.”

  I couldn’t see anything through my tears.

  “Please have faith in me.”

  But I had faith; I just needed to see my best friend. I needed to be the first face he saw.

  “You think he won’t understand if it’s me and not you, but, Jin, love, he will. And he needs his semel to claim him, not his reah. Crane must be shown his value, and his value must be understood by others. The mate does not claim cats from the territories of others, only the semel does. That is maat. This is not a negotiation, this is war. Do you realize what could happen because of this? What I will be forced to do? Jin? Do you?”

  I needed to go to Crane; that was all I knew.

  “You will not be allowed from the grounds for any reason.”

  But I had to work. He knew I had to work.

  “I called Ray, told him we had a family emergency and that you would be out for a week. Don’t test me. Stay here.”

  I would get off the grounds somehow.

  “If you show up in Chicago, it will show everyone that you violated my order, that I’m weak. Is that what you want?”

  I wiped at my eyes.

  “We are one, you and I; you can’t go against my mandate. I need to know that you’re here and safe so I can concentrate on only one thing. Do you understand?”

  Again, not a question of understanding, instead a question of desire—mine for Crane.

  “I’ll be right back,” he told me, hand under my chin as he tipped my head so he could see my eyes. “You do realize that every drop of pain that I’m looking at now I will visit on Archer Pike. He brought my mate to tears; this cannot end well.”

  I took a breath as he bent and kissed me.

  When he was gone, I went back to staring at the gray sky of winter. January in Incline Village, Nevada, a quick trip up Mount Rose overlooking Lake Tahoe, lay under a blanket of white. It was icy cold, the grounds were covered under s
everal feet of snow, and flakes fell from the sky morning, noon, and night. I had so been looking forward to spring.

  Logan returned a while later, took my hand, lifted me up off the chaise, and led me downstairs. He deposited me in the living room beside the huge fireplace there. I stared into it but didn’t move. I felt like the eye of a tornado as the house spun around me, everyone in motion, moving.

  Delphine, Logan’s sister, packed for her brother; Domin was on the phone, making arrangements; and Taj Chalthoum, the member of the Shu who had come home with us from Egypt six months ago, spoke to his phocal, Jamal Hassan. He asked permission to speak to the priest of Chae Rophon, the man who made the laws for every werepanther in the world. He was asked to send an emissary on Logan’s behalf to inform Archer Pike that the semel-netjer of the tribe of Mafdet had the priest’s blessing and support. Once Taj was off the phone, he reported to Logan that the priest had members of the Shu dispatched to Chicago. It would take them an entire day to make the long trip from Cairo, but they would be there to be witnesses for Logan.

  Six months ago, at the feast of the valley, it was discovered that I was not only a reah, which was an extremely rare kind of werepanther, but also a nekhene cat. Being the mate of a nekhene cat changed Logan from being a semel-re, a semel that had found his reah, to semel-netjer, a semel mated with a nekhene. As Logan was the only one in the world with that honor, as far as we knew, when one of the Shu called on his behalf, it was more than likely that the priest would send whatever aid was needed.

  “Jin.” I heard Taj say my name from a distance. “The priest is sending Shahid and four other of my brothers to Chicago as we speak.”

  I nodded.

  “Jamal says that he will come himself if you wish.”

  The leader of the Shu, the phocal, would come to help me retrieve Crane and watch over him. It was very kind.

  “Do you wish it?”

  I shook my head.

  “All right, then.” He reached a hand toward me but thought better of it. “I’ll call him and give him your thanks.”

  Final nod, and he walked away a moment later.