by Mary Calmes
“And?”
His gaze stayed fastened on me.
“How do you feel?”
“I feel better than I have in I don’t know how long,” he said, and his eyes were soft.
He looked like him. The fear wasn’t there anymore, the broken shadow in his face was gone, and the smile was all wicked and wild. I made a sound in the back of my throat.
“I missed you too.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.
Only Crane Adams came back from the horror that had been visited on him to the man now sprawled out in front of me. Only him. He was so strong inside and out, and—
“Oh shit,” Mikhail said slowly in disbelief.
“Oh shit, what?” Crane yawned, sitting up and then rolling to his feet.
“Crane.”
He looked at my sylvan, waiting.
“You didn’t shift.”
His squint was fast. “Why would I shift?”
“Jin’s power.”
“And?” He was confused.
“Crane,” Mikhail said, “Jin’s power is nothing to scoff at.”
“Yeah, but it’s still just Jin,” he gestured at me. “I wouldn’t have even had the, uhm”—he coughed and smiled at the same time—“reaction to his scent if my body wasn’t so damn weak.”
“Danny shifted earlier with just a hint of Jin’s power. Taj shifted, so did Markel and Delphine and Ivan. Only you and me and Yuri are still in human form. Even Koren shifted.”
We all looked over at Koren, who was purring loudly as Danny rubbed his muzzle up under the larger panther’s chin.
“Shit,” Yuri grumbled, walking to the front door and throwing it open as Koren charged out of it, Danny seconds behind him. They flew out into the night together.
“I’m sor—”
“Oh for crissakes, Jin,” he groused at me, “I don’t give a fuck who Danny fucks—I care more about Koren.”
Koren?
“Wait. That didn’t come out right. I—”
“What am I missing?” my best friend asked me.
“Crane didn’t shift.” Mikhail’s voice rose on purpose to try and get us all to focus.
And we all turned to look at my best friend at the same time.
“What?”
“Even in your weakened state,” Mikhail began, studying him for perhaps really the very first time, “you didn’t shift. How?”
Crane shrugged. “I dunno. I’ve had a lifetime of feeling Jin’s power run over me. Given, it’s a helluva lot heavier now than it used to be, I can actually feel it sort of push its way inside, but it’s still Jin, so I take a breath and let it do whatever it wants.”
“You’re talking about Jin’s power like it’s a living, breathing thing.”
“Which it’s not, and I get that, but it’s still Jin, right? I mean, you guys like him a real lot, but I love him and so does Logan, and I think that’s why the power doesn’t bother us. Even the nekhene form likes me, I’ve felt it.”
“You’ve felt my power change to nekhene?” I asked him.
“Sure. It’s like your reah power is gentle, soothing, makes me feel good. The nekhene power, it’s like prickly heat on the back of your neck. It comes at me, and I think about you and how I feel about you, and then it calms and feels like reah.”
I was staring at him.
“What?”
“I fight it. I fight the power welling up; I fight feeling out of control… I fight every part of it.”
“Yeah, don’t do that.” He yawned before he smiled at me.
“Don’t do that? This is your sage advice?”
“Yeah.” He burped and blew it out the side of his mouth. “Sorry, the burritos we had for lunch are kinda comin’ back on me.”
The man was unbelievable. Effortlessly he dealt with my new form, my changed energy, because he simply accepted everything about me. Without the fight, there was nothing for the nekhene to rebel against, and so my power, when it encountered Crane, simply gave up and played nice. What the hell?
“So if everyone just stopped fighting, they wouldn’t shift.” I turned to look at Mikhail.
“It’s not that simple,” he assured me. “Crane has how many years’ head start knowing you, knowing your power? The rest of us don’t have that luxury, and we’re cats, our first instinct is not to submit, not to just allow your power to render us helpless.”
“Is that how you feel when you fight my pheromones?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, but you do need to learn to control it. Maybe in the next two weeks before we fly out of here, you should let Crane tell you how to not fight.”
“Maybe,” I said, turning to look at my best friend.
“So….” He smirked at me, gesturing to all the other panthers in the room. “How much apologizing do you gotta do now?”
Shit.
Chapter Eleven
THE flight from Reno, Nevada to Buyant Ukhaa, the airport in Ulan Bator (or Ulaanbaatar, I wasn’t really sure which was the correct spelling; the tour book I had said one thing and my plane ticket another), took twenty-five hours and twenty minutes. We flew from Reno to Los Angeles and then flew United from there to Beijing and Air China to Mongolia.
The flights were comfortable, and I was glad that Peter had insisted on first class. He said that savings were for rainy days and that Logan would appreciate riding in luxury on the way home after the sepat. I appreciated his unshakeable faith that his son would be home. When I had been almost to the door, my mate’s father had surprised me by grabbing me tight and pulling me close for a hug. After long minutes, he had let me go, stepping back to look down into my face.
“Bring my son home to me, Jin,” he had said hoarsely.
I had promised him, as well as Eva and Delphine and Koren, that I would bring Logan back, along with Domin. They wanted their maahes back too.
Now, as I stood in an international airport of a very modern-looking city—I had stared at it from the air as we landed—the enormity of the task was starting to bear down on me. I was a world away from my life, what I knew, and my power base. The task seemed terrifying.
“Deep breath,” Crane soothed me, hand on my shoulder as we stood in the line, after getting off the plane, to go through Immigration. “Where’s your passport?”
I dug into my messenger bag and came up with it for him.
“And the entry and exit visa?”
“It’s in there.”
“Where’s the customs declaration form?”
“They don’t need that to let us in the country. We’re just supposed to keep that ’til we leave.”
“How long is the visa for?”
“Two weeks.”
“Okay.” He yawned, and because he was calm, I was.
I realized for the millionth time in my life that I could look at Crane Adams and gauge how I should be. I trembled quickly, trying to think of what I would have done without him.
“We’re up,” he said, bumping me with his shoulder as we walked forward.
Once we had our passports stamped and were in the actual airport proper, we had to claim our luggage and then stand in line again, the non-citizen line, to have our luggage clear customs. We had only brought clothes, so there were no duties or taxes to pay, but the whole experience was nerve-racking for me. Just the idea that I could be kept out of the country, kept away from Logan, scared the hell out of me. It was illogical, but I was terrified.
“See, we’re fine,” Crane announced, and just him stating the obvious made me feel better.
The airport was busy, the zoo they all were, and because it looked like almost every other one I had been in, my sense of unease dissipated.
There were supposed to be people there to meet us; the maahes of the tribe of Khertet, Chuluun Borjigin, was the man we were looking for.
“Jesus, it’s even cold in here,” Yuri groused from behind me, looking like he was ready to go dog sledding instead of just leavi
ng the airport.
We were all swaddled up in parkas, beanies, gloves, boots, long underwear, and scarves.
“It’s gonna be worse outside,” Andrian assured him.
“Jin.”
I turned to look at Yuri, and he tipped his head for me. Looking to where he had gestured, I saw the three men cutting through the crowd toward us. Even from where they were, the scent of cat clung to them. The power rolling off of them was daunting.
They stopped five feet from us, and the looks we were getting were less than kind. “Snide” was the word I would have chosen.
“Sain bainuu,” the first man said.
I had no idea I was supposed to have learned Mongolian. Holy crap.
No one said a word until there was a faint clearing of a throat. Turning, I looked at Danny. He smiled faintly.
Was he kidding?
“May I?” He gestured to where I was. “My semel asked me to learn as much as I could of the language.”
Logan had asked Danny to study up. The man thought of everything. “Sure.”
Moving up beside me, he then looked at the man who had spoken. “Sain ta sain bainuu?”
The man was surprised that he was being responded to. “Sain banaa,” he said in return. “Ta yamar ulsaas irsen be?”
“Bi Amerikiin Negdsen ulsaas irsen,” Danny replied. “Ta angular yairdaguu?”
“Yes,” the man replied. “You did well.”
“Thank you so much,” he said as he smiled at him. “Tand ikh bayarlaa.”
The man who had been addressing Danny grunted at him. “So which one is the mate?” He sounded like he was bored out of his mind.
I stepped forward. “I’m the mate.”
“Oh,” he grunted. “The reah.”
And normally I got a little better reception than that.
“Not a big deal to you guys, huh?” Crane smirked at them. “See reahs every day, do you?”
“We have our own.”
This was news.
“Oh yeah?” Crane chuckled. “Who’s that?”
“Amirah Fehr.”
“Amirah.” I squinted at him. “We were told that Amirah Fehr had been killed by her semel.”
“No,” he told me, and I heard it finally, a trace of an accent as he spoke. “She asked for sanctuary with my semel and was granted it.”
“Does the priest know?” Taj asked him.
“He knows now.”
There was a silence.
“Well, even if you have a reah in your tribe, this is our reah,” Crane told him, “and you need to show him the proper respect.”
“Or?”
“Or….” I parted my lips, let my power out, let it uncoil and hunt. “You can feel the difference between reah and nekhene.”
“I—”
“Jin,” Crane cautioned me.
But we had been working on things, he and I, and my control was better, could be directed.
“Uuchlaarai!” The stranger wobbled and went to his knees, the other two following fast.
His head snapped back, and he met my eyes.
“I am the mate of the semel-netjer,” I told him, my eyes narrowing. “Don’t mistake me for anything less.”
“No, my reah,” he said quickly.
And I was proud that unless I wanted it to be, my power was no longer sexual at all. Now it was pure, breathing out strength, discipline, and will. Crane being with me had changed everything.
“Stand.”
He rose, and I tipped my head back to meet his gaze as he stepped closer, offering his hand now in greeting. It was a pissing contest, and I had won. American, Mongolian, it didn’t matter, we were all cats, and it only mattered who was alpha. Normally it was Logan, but here it was me.
“I’m the maahes of the tribe of Khertet, Chuluun.”
“Borjigin, right?” I asked, taking his hand.
He smiled suddenly. “That is the clan name of Genghis Khan, Borjigin; it’s not a real last name, just something to use. We don’t have surnames like you do, as they were illegal here for a very long time when the communists came to power.”
“Quick history lesson there,” Crane muttered under his breath.
“Stop,” I told him and then smiled at the man I had just met. “So just Chuluun, then?”
“Yes.”
“Then just Jin.” I took a breath.
I felt his hand clutch mine, and that fast, Yuri was beside me.
“Ataide,” he snarled.
The word that had come out of my sheseru was one I had never heard before, and since I doubted that he had been studying Mongolian along with Danny, I had no idea what I was hearing. But Chuluun must have, because he released his grip. He didn’t move away, though, and that was not making Yuri happy. I could feel his anger rising.
“What was that?” I asked him.
But he wasn’t looking at me, all his attention instead riveted on Chuluun.
“Ne trogai,” my sheseru growled.
“Oospakoisya,” Chuluun snapped back at him, but I watched the maahes take a step away from me, respecting Yuri’s wishes.
I took a guess at the language. “Russian, right?”
“Yes,” Mikhail told me, moving close before addressing Chuluun. “I understand that it’s a whole day’s ride, like, nine hours to Tsetserleg in Arkhangai aimag from here.”
“That’s a close approximation.”
“And how far from Tsetserleg is Vanchigdash, where your tribe lives?”
“Not far. We will pass the nature preserve, and then we’ll be there. Our home is in the side of a mountain, and there is a small valley that sustains us during the winter.”
“So you don’t live in the traditional ger? You—”
“The home of Orso Bataar, semel of the tribe of Khertet, was carved out of stone. It has a hot spring that runs underneath it, but the home itself is without electricity or running water,” he said, and his voice, the way he was standing suddenly, all of it suggested irritation.
Yuri said something else in Russian, and I wondered why until I saw the amazing transformation of his words on Chuluun. The man was visibly stunned.
“That’s really smart,” Mikhail said under his breath.
“What?”
“Yuri gave him commands in Russian so he’d know they have a common language between them—his accent is Russian, after all.”
“I thought that was a Mongolian accent.”
“No.” Mikhail gave me a hint of a smile.
“You did?” Chuluun speaking to Yuri in English brought my attention back to him.
He nodded.
“Good.” His dark black eyes locked on Yuri. “I’m glad you realized that to visit us would not be a resort vacation. We are a tribe that lives the same way we have for hundreds of years. Others have been less than appreciative of our home and culture and language.”
“We, unlike some of the others, are honored to be your guests,” my sheseru assured him.
I watched the tension, animosity, and defensiveness run out of not only Chuluun but the other two men with him. And I understood then. Everyone else they had picked up at the airport had not been thrilled with the accommodations. We didn’t care; we were just happy to have a roof, or a cave, as it were, over our heads. The maahes was pleased with us already.
Yuri then asked for the names of the two men with Chuluun, and he apologized for his lack of manners, and the long introductions began. They didn’t speak the lineage because we were all aware of what tribes we belonged to, so that extra posturing wasn’t necessary. But between all of us, it still took a while, and by the time we were ready to go, I was antsy. Just getting started, just driving somewhere, would make me happy. I wanted my mate, and just being in the same area as him, just knowing he was close, would help ease my rolling stomach, fluttering pulse, and jittery, like-I-was-on-crack demeanor. I knew I was a mess, but as soon as I saw Logan, in whatever form he took, I would be better. Just being in the same country as him had taken away my naus
ea. Things were already looking up.
“Can we go?” I asked after an acceptable moment of silence had passed.
“Of course.”
There were five Jeeps parked outside of Arrivals, waiting there at the curb with a driver in each. They looked just like the one I had at home, and when I told that to Chuluun, that pleased him as well.
“When you visit me, you can ride in my baby,” I told him.
“Thank you,” he said hoarsely, and the smile was genuine.
Crane and Yuri came with me in the first Jeep, and Chuluun got in to drive, replacing the man who was there, sending him to another. Mikhail and Danny were in the next vehicle back, and Andrian and Taj were in the third. All the luggage was piled into the fourth one, and the last had the rest of the khatyu that Chuluun had brought with him. Once everyone was seated, we got on the road.
“Are you hungry at all?” Chuluun asked us.
“Starving,” Yuri said from the passenger seat.
“No one is allowed to see their semel until tomorrow night, so we should get you all fed, since we’re not in a hurry.”
“Sounds good,” my sheseru agreed.
I wanted to say something, to ask why I couldn’t see Logan, but before I got my mouth open, Crane’s hand was on my thigh. When I turned to look at him, he gave me a slight shake of his head before he widened his eyes. And I got it. It was time to listen, not speak.
“Can you give us the timeline?” Yuri asked.
“For the beginning of the trials, you mean?” Chuluun wanted to clarify.
“Yes.”
“Well, as your sylvan said, it will take us all day to reach our home. Tomorrow morning when you rise, all mates of the semels and their entourages will meet with our semel and the priest of Chae Rophon. He is here with his phocal and his Shu warriors to officiate the sepat, but he will only interfere if he sees a rule broken. The trials themselves will be performed by my semel, myself, and our tribe. It was a great honor to be chosen to host the sepat, and my semel has had the priest here for eight weeks preparing him.”
“Why did the priest choose your tribe, do you think?”
