Honored Vow

by Mary Calmes

  The task at hand was overwhelming, and for a moment I let all the fear and uncertainty flood me.

  “Stop,” Crane ordered hoarsely. “Don’t forget who you are, Jin. Yeah, that’s the semel-aten up there and the priest of Chae Rophon and some guy who gets his rocks off hurting his own kind, but you’re the only fuckin’ nekhene cat in existence. Get it in your head.”

  I centered and calmed.

  “We will now return to all but one tribe their princes,” the priest said, gesturing toward a side entrance.

  Every other entourage turned to look, holding their breath. None of us worried. We all knew Domin better than that.

  He was the second maahes through the archway, and his smile was wide and all him, wicked and warm all at the same time. I was surprised that Yuri moved around me and ran toward him. Domin lifted his arms, and my sheseru collided with him, filling them and hugging him hard. Crane bolted next, and then Mikhail. When finally he was in front of me, I smiled big even as the cries of the entourage that had lost, by his absence, their maahes filled the air.

  “I knew you’d be okay.” I sighed deeply. “After Crane reminded me.”

  He turned to my best friend and gave him a grin of pure evil. “You told him I was too mean to get hurt?”

  “Pretty much.” Crane smiled back.

  “I missed you,” I said instead of lunging at him. As a rule, we didn’t hug.

  “Me too.”

  Staring at him, I realized how shaggy he looked, the full beard and mustache, his hair pulled back into a queue longer than he ever let it get. But eight weeks of introspection, of solitude and silence, had maybe been good for Domin Thorne.

  I just stared at him.

  “Logan’s fine.” He answered the question I hadn’t even asked.

  “Did you talk?”

  “I talked to him,” he teased me. “I figured things out, and before he shifted, remember, we had a whole day alone just getting here.”

  And the way he said it was funny. “You guys did what, plotted together?”

  He arched an eyebrow for me. “Something like that.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “That’s between my semel and me,” he said playfully, but I heard the thread of seriousness in there. They had decided something, figured something out, but what?

  “He’s worried about what will happen if he dies.” My brain jumped there.

  His brows furrowed. “No, Jin, Logan doesn’t think he’ll die.”

  I was surprised. “He’s not scared at all?”

  “No, he has bigger concerns.”

  Bigger than death? What the hell?

  “Domin—”

  “The priest is talking,” Crane cut me off, turning me around so I could look up at where everyone else was.

  Hamid Shamon was asking that the mates separate themselves from their retinue, as they had to be taken and cleansed and changed into the ceremonial robes.

  I turned and looked at Crane. “He means sacrificial robes.”

  He glowered at me. “Knock it off.”

  I saw the other yareahs turning and hugging people, and so I lunged at Crane. He clutched me tight, face buried in my hair. Ever so slightly, I felt him tremble.

  “I’m not worried about this now or Yuri’s part or Mikhail’s. I’m worried about you and me and Domin and Andrian keeping those assholes off Logan in three more days,” my best friend told me.

  But that concern had not even crossed my mind.

  “My reah.”

  I turned to Yuri. He hugged me first, and then Mikhail did. Domin patted my shoulder. The others I smiled at, and even though Danny wanted to touch me, Mikhail wouldn’t let him. Inside the home of the semel, there were strict rules, and so the non-caste rules that I had in my tribe were not relevant. Only those one lower than my station—Yuri, Domin, Mikhail, and Crane—and one higher, Logan, could I touch. Everyone else was off limits inside Orso Bataar’s home.

  Tribe members came forward, and my people formed a circle around me, all of them facing out as I stripped out of my clothes. A fur cape was passed to Crane and then to me, and I wrapped myself up in it from head to toe. Everyone moved at the same time, and the priest instructed us to form a line and kneel. Following his instruction, we all moved quickly.

  Hamid Shamon descended with everyone who had been above us on the tier, what looked, from the floor, like a portico carved directly from the rock. He stopped in front of the first yareah.

  “Katrina Kozel, yareah of Anatoly Kozel, semel of the tribe of Ptahket from Kiev in the Ukraine. We grieve the loss of your maahes.”

  She bowed low, thanking the priest for receiving her and for his sympathy before she offered him her hand. He squeezed it briefly before stepping aside. The semel-aten took her hand next; then his new sheseru, the man who would be testing her mate; the phocal; and the semel of the tribe of Khertet and his mate Khongordzol.

  The small procession moved down the row, one after another. They moved from one yareah to the next: Narae Yusuke, yareah of Narae Hiroshi, semel of the tribe of Reshep from Hokkaidō, Japan; Teresa Medina, yareah of Gavin Medina, semel of the tribe of Nebthet from Santa Cruz, Bolivia; Juliet Payne, yareah of Wallace Payne, semel of the tribe of Taweret from Drake, Pennsylvania; and Kushi Oyuun, yareah of Aldar Oyuun, semel of the tribe of Girdaht from Guangdong, China.

  When the priest reached me, he took a breath before he spoke.

  “Jin Rayne, reah”—his voice rose on the word—“of Logan Church, semel-netjer of the tribe of Mafdet from Incline Village, Nevada.”

  “Thank you for receiving me, Your Grace,” I told him after I bowed low, offering him my hand.

  He took it in both of his, and his smile was radiant. “Jin,” he said, and his voice was infused with warmth. “It is my honor to see you again.”

  “As it is mine,” I assured him.

  He nodded and moved to stand beside me, which, from the sounds in the room, no one missed.

  “Reah,” Ammon El Masry said, his cat eyes gleaming, eyeing me but not lifting his hand. “I have a surprise for you.”

  I waited, and he turned his head to look at Orso Bataar.

  “You promised me she would appear.”

  The older man squinted at Ammon for a moment and then called across the room to Sükh, his sheseru.

  “Why do we wait?” the priest asked Ammon.

  “The reah must meet his equal.”

  “There is no equal for a mated reah,” Orso’s yareah Khongordzol said, gliding forward, extending her hand to me. “And as the priest has presented you, I have no need to wait.” She smiled at me, and I was struck again by her regal bearing, the dark, beautiful glittering eyes and the warmth of her smile. “It is an honor, my reah.”

  Women that wanted to mother me, really, I just couldn’t get enough of them. I took her hand and held it tight. “The honor is mine. Thank you for our accommodations outside. I would love to see more of your home when the sepat has concluded.”

  “And it would be an honor to show it to you and your mate.”

  I felt hot tears fill my eyes fast, but they didn’t spill. She just went blurry for a second. She had basically told me she thought Logan would win and that it made sense to her. But it did to me as well.

  There were gasps all around, and I turned as a woman started toward us. She was stunning, and I had no doubt that she knew it. Her walk was the fluid grace of a dancer; she flowed across the floor, and the air almost sparked with electricity. She was radiant, her huge brown eyes with thick feathery lashes, her skin the color of warm cinnamon, flawless, glowing, her features delicate and fragile, and when she spoke, calling out a greeting to the priest, her voice was lilting and mellifluous. Here was a reah, the embodiment of feminine beauty and mystery. There was not an eye not riveted on her… except….

  “Such airs,” Khongordzol said under her breath.

  “You dare speak to me, yareah filth.”

  “You are not mistress in this house.�
�� Khongordzol’s voice rose loud and defiant. “And as you are not my mate’s reah and I will not be taurth, you will get on your knees.”

  All yareahs hated unmated reahs because the potential was there that they could take a semel from them. But once the semel acknowledged that the reah was not their mate, then the yareah, as mistress in her home and undisputed mate of the semel, had all the power. Normally, unless the semel in question was the semel-aten, the reah was sent away. As the semel-aten was the only one who could claim a reah as a consort, as wosret, his mate, his yareah, had to deal with the continued presence of the reah. Ammon El Masry’s yareah, Ebere, had had no recourse but to live with Amirah Fehr in her household. It was why, when she had met me, she had treated me so poorly at first. She had forgotten that I was a mated reah, and had just seen me as a reah.

  We had mended things between us, and even though she had cancelled her trip to visit with us in the summer, it had been, she confessed, because she had moved with her children back to Cairo. She and her mate no longer shared a bond; it had been shattered years ago, and she was tired of pretending it still existed. I wondered vaguely if she was there for the sepat.

  “I will never bow to you,” Amirah snapped, bringing me from my thoughts and pulling my attention back to her.

  “I think you will,” Khongordzol said, her tone icy.

  Her head lifted. “Your husband gave me sanctuary, and I was called here by the semel-aten to speak with the mated reah, and that I will do.”

  Khongordzol growled, and I realized at that moment that I had been right and Orso had nothing to do with receiving the reah into his tribe. Ammon must have found out Amirah was alive and sent her to Orso after the priest called the sepat. He was going to use her, her allure, to stack the odds in his favor. Even happily mated semels still might want to have a reah on their land, in their house, ensconced in their bed.

  It made my stomach roll to think that she would allow herself to be used, but she had made choices I did not understand before as well.

  According to the law, all reahs, on discovery that they were reahs—so at the time of the first shift—were to be presented to the semel-aten. So basically you flew to Sobek, met the semel-aten, and once you were of age, eighteen, you were sent to Sobek if the semel-aten wanted. Amirah’s parents had presented her to Ammon El Masry when she was sixteen, and when she was eighteen, he had requested she return. She then became wosret, his consort, until she found her mate. Every year at the feast of the valley, she walked at his side and saw semel after semel.

  The thing was that every semel was supposed to make the trip to Sobek every year, but this was life, real life, and not everyone could go to every feast. Logan had missed many before he saw me, only wanting to go to the last one we attended because he wanted to present me to the priest, the semel-aten, and as many semels as would be there. The fact that all had not gone as planned was not his fault.

  But Amirah, who had not wanted to remain the consort of the semel-aten and did not want to live her life as basically his mistress, had pretended that she had found her mate. And the power of a reah was heady to begin with, and coupled with pheromones and the promise of a true-mate, Terrance McCord had succumbed and had taken a reah home to his tribe from the feast of the valley a year ago.

  “May I speak?” I asked suddenly, and the argument that had risen in decibel level while I was thinking came to a stop.

  The priest granted me permission. “Yes, reah.”

  “The semel-aten was mistaken,” I said, turning to look at Amirah. “Because he told us all, even His Grace, that you were dead.”

  Her eyes flicked to mine. “The sylvan of my tribe found my semel, my sheseru, and me. He’s the one who allowed the lie.”

  “Is he still alive?” I asked her. “The sylvan?”

  She squinted at me. “As far as I know, why would you—”

  “Is he?” I asked Ammon El Masry.

  His eyes narrowed as he regarded me. “He is not.”

  I looked back at her. “So maybe the sylvan was looking after you at the request of the semel-aten, huh? And you’re here… why?”

  Her eyes studied my face. “I want my freedom.”

  “And so because you want to be free of the semel-aten, the price is to help him here at the sepat and try and tempt any of the mates of the yareahs you see here beside me, is that it?”

  Her eyes were hard as her chin snapped up. “I do not answer to any of you mated chattel.”

  She saw mating just like as I used to, as a prison, as a death sentence.

  “May I have permission to speak?”

  I turned my head to look at Yusuke. We all did.

  “Speak,” the priest told her.

  Her eyes met Amirah’s. “I tell you now, reah. If my mate becomes semel-aten, then he has dominion over you, and the day he does, I will take your head myself for what you visit on us this night.”

  Amirah smirked at Yusuke. “You will be dead in the morning, as will your mate.”

  “We’ll see, reah.”

  “Oh,” Amirah spat back, “you would leverage your power against mine!”

  “Silence!” The priest’s voice rose, and no one dared say a word. “The mates will retire to prepare for the opening of the sepat. There is nothing in the law that says that a reah may not enter the pit with the other mates of the semels. It is done; she may attend and change with the other mates.”

  He moved in close to Amirah, and his eyes looked right through her.

  “Thank you, Your Grace.”

  “Your choice of path is a mistake,” he told her, his voice dark and low.

  “I will be consort no longer. I will be free.”

  He nodded. “Well, then, do now as your master bids you and meet Jin Rayne.”

  She stepped close to me. “I have heard of you.”

  “And I have no use for you,” I told her, leaning sideways, “or your master. May I greet the phocal now?”

  “You may,” the priest said, and Ammon, as angry as he was, and Amirah, as fuming as she was, had no recourse but to step back because the priest allowed me to disrespect both of them. After a moment, Jamal Hassan took their place in front of me, and I lifted my hand for him to take.

  “Jin.” He smiled.

  “Have you seen Taj?”

  “Not yet, but we’ll have time while you prepare for the beginning of the sepat.”

  “Good.”

  Khongordzol introduced me to her mate then, and I met the semel of the tribe of Khertet and thanked him for his hospitality and for the kindness of his maahes, sheseru, and sylvan. He nodded and then stared at me.

  “You pride yourself, as does my semel, on the treatment of a tribe like a family. It had to have gone against your sense of maat to allow Amirah into your tribe. The actions of the semel-aten are regrettable.” I bowed when I finished, and he bowed back, deeper, longer, and I understood that he appreciated what I had said. It wasn’t that he needed forgiveness or would ever ask for it; the whole encounter was simply, as I said, regrettable.

  “You speak out of turn, reah,” Amirah snarled at me.

  “Mind your tongue, bitch,” Kushi Oyuun warned her, dark eyes flashing as she looked at Amirah. “We may all die tonight, and that would be regrettable. You die tonight and no one will mourn you.”

  Amirah took a breath to speak, and I lifted my hand. “We need to follow Khongordzol now,” I cut off her venom. “Let’s go.”

  And with that, Khongordzol took my arm in hers and led us in our fur capes from the pit. When we returned, the sepat would begin.

  “Jin!”

  But I didn’t turn around to look at Crane. I wasn’t that strong.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THERE were candles everywhere and braziers set up in each corner of the huge space of the pit of the tribe of Khertet. One end, I realized when we returned, had an enormous grate that rose and lowered on a winch. It was just like a coliseum in that respect. The heavy grate lifted, animals came boundin
g through, and you fought them. But this time, creatures did not escape out onto the floor—werepanthers did.

  We stood in a row, looking, just as I had quipped to Crane earlier, like sacrificial lambs. Above us, seated, looking down from a safe height, was the entire tribe and everyone that each mate had brought with them to the sepat. When I looked up, Crane, of course, was the first to lift his hand to show me where they were. The second hand lifted to me was Ebere’s, and I nodded at her as she smiled down at me. It answered my question: yes, the semel-aten had brought his mate.

  All of us, every mate who stood in the pit, had been bathed and scented with oil. The point was for purification but also to confuse the semels. We all needed to smell the same. We were also all dressed in white silk robes cinched at the waist with a tie. Even Amirah, who had walked in with us and taken her place in line, was outfitted the same.

  “This is very brave of you, reah,” Teresa, Gavin Medina’s yareah, told her as we all waited for the grate on the other end of the room to lift. “You might be torn to shreds along with the rest of us.”

  “You forget,” Amirah sneered back, “I’ve been here as long as they have. I’ve stood outside the cells of each of your mates, just beyond their reach, torturing them with my scent for weeks. I’ve had sex in front of them and watched them spill their seed with wanting me. None of them will hurt me, they all want me, and any of them that come near me will tear you to shreds when you try to claim them,” she purred. “I’m a reah, and mated or not, mate or not, I can take them from you.”

  “But why would you want to?” I asked her.

  “My deal was struck with the semel-aten, if I help him turn semels into panthers; he renounces his claim over me as wosret. I have no desire to return to being his consort.”

  “There are other ways to secure your freedom,” I assured her.

  “I disagree but I see only animals anyway, it’s a simple task to turn your semels from you.”

  “They’re men first,” Yusuke said, and I realized how much I liked her voice. It was strong and husky and confident. “And men love those that make their homes a sanctuary. We’ll see what we see.”