Honored Vow

by Mary Calmes

  When he stood up, Yuri slid a fur cloak over him, and Logan pointed at the now-bloody and mauled body of the yareah of Reshep. I had watched with horrified eyes as every remaining member of her tribe, including her semel, had spit on her. She had lost her right eye as well as that side of her face. The ripped flesh would heal, but never completely. The scarring would be heavy. Her eye was gone forever; she would never be the beauty she once was.

  “I claim, as a member of my tribe, Yusuke Narae. She will be a member of my khatyu.”

  “You cannot!” Hiroshi snarled at Logan before looking up at the priest. “She will be staked for her cowardice and—”

  “To me, what she showed you was the depth of her love,” the priest told the semel. “But you have marked her, shown her your displeasure, and by your wish to have her staked, released her from your tribe, and so she may be claimed by another.”

  “She will have nothing! Her clothes will be burned; I will not have them given to her! She will not be allowed to contact her family, as they are members of my tribe! She is dead to me and to the tribe of Reshep. There is only khet.”

  I understood that he was in a fury; he was completely out of control, as he had just been through the same ordeal that Logan had. But whereas my semel had retained his humanity, Hiroshi had not. If only he had food and sleep, if only he had waited and not been so rash, if only he had taken a breath before attacking, his head might have cleared and he would have remembered how much he cherished and adored his beloved yareah. Instead, he had maimed the woman who was his mate.

  “Logan Church,” the priest called to my semel. “You will have to feed and clothe and care for the former yareah of the tribe of Reshep. She might someday try and kill you for what has transpired here today. Are you aware of the danger that—”

  “She will not,” Logan said, cutting the priest off. “I apologize for my impertinence, Your Grace, but she cannot blame me for any that was brought on her this day. Her semel, and her semel alone, has mauled her and marked her for death. I will claim her and give her life.”

  “So be it,” the priest agreed, and he raised his hand, palm up, to present her to Logan.

  Hiroshi Narae stepped back from the bleeding, inert body of his yareah. Her tears had mixed with blood, and she was trying to cover her nakedness from prying eyes, and her modesty in the face of the horror that had been visited on her made my heart hurt.

  “Crane,” Logan said.

  He moved fast.

  My best friend was met at the fallen woman by a member of the tribe of Khertet, who offered him a soft fur robe. He thanked the man, spread the cloak gently, slowly lifted Yusuke, and then tenderly wrapped her up. He stood up with her in his arms as though she weighed nothing, and as he walked back to us, he began speaking to her.

  “Take her to our quarters,” Logan told him, and Crane gave him a slight nod as he walked by, holding her tighter, her head turned now, tucked under his chin.

  I took a stuttering breath and leaned into Logan’s side.

  He clutched at me, and I felt the tremor run though him.

  “Tomorrow at noon the challenge for the seat of semel-aten will commence. Logan Church and Domin Thorne of the tribe of Mafdet will face Ammon El Masry and his maahes, Rector Vincent, of the tribe of Rahotep, in the pit to decide who will be master of Sobek. May the semel most deserving be granted the grace of Ra.”

  I already knew who that was.

  THE sylvan of the tribe of Reshep, Morimoto Arai, and the sheseru, Fuwa Kenichi, both came with all of Yusuke’s belongings that she had brought with her to Mongolia. They both bowed low to me, asking that I please keep her out of their semel’s sight, as they had been told to burn all her things but could not, in good conscience, do so. They had done their duty, as honor demanded, and followed the orders of their semel to hold her down as he gnawed on her face, gouged her flesh with his claws, and bit through her right eye and cheek. They could do no more to her; it had already crossed the line into torture and abomination. As I looked at them, I realized that they had both very recently been violently sick.

  She had only one suitcase; they would send other things when, and if, they could.

  I bowed low. “Thank you.”

  They bowed back and then were gone. There was no time to linger lest someone see them. I took the suitcase inside the ger to where Yusuke lay sleeping. Even when she had drifted off, she had not released Crane’s hand. As I looked at him, I realized how content he looked as he studied her face.

  She was strong, and she shifted as fast as Logan could, which was to say pretty damn fast. She had been able to morph back and forth six times before she was too exhausted and passed out. There was now a slash across the patch of pink skin covering her right eye. The entire right side of her face was criss-crossed with scars, but they were not grooves, as I had thought they would be; instead they were raised lines that cut across otherwise smooth porcelain skin.

  I had heard her begging at first to be allowed to take her own life, whimpering softly, urging Crane to hear her. She even lifted fingers to his face. He covered her little hand with his, pressing it against his cheek, smiling down at her. She began to shiver, and he tucked the blankets around her chin before he lay down in front of her so they were facing each other. I watched as she stared at him and listened to him talk. He had already told her that he had been scourged; it was the piece of information that had allowed him to be close to her. He was maimed, so was she, and the horrifying tale he confessed to her had brought fresh tears. After all she had been through, that she could still weep for someone else said so much about the size of the woman’s heart.

  “She’ll find her place,” Yuri said from his place beside me.

  I turned to look at him.

  “And so will your boy.”

  “My boy?”

  “Who’s the only boy around here?”

  He meant Danny. “Oh yeah, I know.”

  I got a smile then.

  Looking at my sheseru, I realized that in the time I had known the man, he had changed so much. “And you?”

  “Me what?”

  “Will you and Domin find your way?”

  “I figured you knew.”

  “Only because Mikhail told me,” I confessed.

  “You’ve been dealing with your own shit.”

  “But I should have seen that you were hurting. Forgive me.”

  “Nothing to forgive.”

  “And now? Is there a happily ever after for you and my maahes?”

  He sighed heavily. “I hope so. Jesus, Jin, have you ever wanted anything so bad that just thinking about maybe getting it made you sick?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Then you understand.”

  “I do,” I said, glancing over at Logan, who was sleeping on my bunk, his face buried in my pillow, absolutely dead to the world.

  We had fed him, talked briefly, put gallons of water down him, and listened as he thanked each man who had come on the odyssey with him. He had hugged everyone, even Danny, had sat with Yusuke and accepted her tearful, heartfelt pledge of fealty, and then Yuri and I had taken him outside and scrubbed him.

  He had been delirious over being clean, absolutely giddy afterward, and then when dumb things like shaving had been finished—I had told him the beard and mustache were hot, but he wasn’t buying it—he had felt like a new man. Things we took for granted, like deodorant, hair gel, clothes, he had appreciated so much. When he had been sitting inside in long underwear, jeans, heavy wool socks, a long T-shirt, a flannel shirt, a wool cardigan, and a parka, he had finally been able to look at me, sigh, and ask me how I was.

  “I’m good,” I had said, chuckling. “You?”

  He had grabbed me and thrown me down on the bed and confessed that all he really wanted to do was take off all his clothes and hold me in his arms.

  “Maybe when you wake up,” I had told him.

  His eyelids had fluttered. After the food, the water, he had been sated, and
he was clean and warm. As he stretched out, head on my thigh, his eyes had drifted closed.

  “Will you stay right here?”

  “Yes, sir, I will,” I had said, smiling down at him.

  “I love you,” he had said, wrapping his forearm around my thigh. “And the tribe means so much, and my family and Yuri and Mikhail and….”

  He had been fighting sleep so hard.

  “Rest, love,” I had said, threading my fingers through his hair, loving the feel of it, the warmth of his scalp, inhaling his scent that was musky and sweet and smoky all at the same time.

  “But, Jin,” he had muttered, sighing deeply, “it’s you, you know that, right?”

  “Logan—”

  “Just you. I would never give up for you. I have to have my mate; you’re the only thing I can’t live without.”

  “I know, me too.”

  And now, three hours later, I sat with Yuri in the ger with everyone either asleep or close to it around us.

  “Where’s Domin now?”

  “He’s out running, trying to clear his head.”

  “You didn’t want to run with him?”

  “I did, but I didn’t think it was a good idea. I need to be smart enough to give him his space when he needs it and be there when he needs me.”

  I looked into his eyes. “Mikhail says you’ve been in love with the guy since you were sixteen.”

  He shrugged his massive shoulders.

  “You don’t deny it.”

  He just looked at me.

  “Jesus, Yuri,” I sighed. “When it was going to be Domin and Logan in the pit—you had to have been terrified.”

  “Yes. Either way I would have lost.”

  “But Logan, he thought of making Domin his maahes.”

  “Because he didn’t want to destroy him, either,” he said softly. “I mean, there was the feud, you know? That bullshit that Domin’s father kept alive, but once he died… then it was over and Peter welcomed Domin into their house. Everything was good for so long until Domin was old enough to lead, to take the seat away from his uncle, who held it until he turned twenty.”

  A new semel was “made” the moment they turned twenty. As soon as the first-born son, the heir came of age, if there was an heir of age, the semel in power stepped down. Logan had become semel as would his son after him. When Logan had turned twenty, his father had passed him the mantle of command; it was how it had always been, another antiquated leftover from when people only lived to the ripe old age of thirty. There were so many of our laws that needed to be revamped or tossed out completely.

  “So Domin took over being semel from his uncle and what?”

  “Discovered a tribe full of corruption, plagued with debt, and basically just falling apart at the seams,” Yuri told me. “It was a mess, and the only thing he could think of to do was to unite against a common threat.”

  “And that threat was the tribe of Mafdet.”

  “Yeah. I mean, he knew Logan, knew his weaknesses and how far he could push him. If you hadn’t ever come, I don’t know what, if anything, would have ever changed.”

  “They were just dancing around each other, Logan and Domin.”

  “Yes, they were.”

  “And all that time, you just waited and hoped.”

  “There was nothing else to do,” he assured me. “I wanted Domin, but Logan was my semel.”

  My heart went out to Yuri, who had spent years holding out for Domin even as the relationship between the two tribes, between the two men, disintegrated.

  “And then Domin fell in love with Koren.”

  “He was infatuated with—”

  “It was love, Yuri, on both sides,” I corrected him. “And Koren may be too stupid to know it, but someday it’ll hit him like a sledgehammer, and when it does, he’s gonna die a little over what he gave up.”

  “Or not,” Yuri said.

  And he was right. This was Koren we were talking about, who apparently never knew his own mind, so the chances were good that he would never, ever realize what he lost. “What if,” I began, “Domin picks you, and then six months, a year later, Koren wants him back. What happens then?”

  “Then I have faith in Domin,” he told me, “if he even chooses me to begin with.”

  I stared at him. “So even if you lose in the end, you’ll take him for however long you get.”

  “Hell yeah,” he said, smiling at me. “Whatever I can have for however long I can have it.”

  I grunted. “Your heart is much stronger than mine.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. You fell in love with Logan and you weren’t even sure if he was gay or not. That’s pretty damn brave.”

  “It’s not brave,” I argued. “The man is my mate, the only one I will ever have. I mean, I know you guys don’t really get it, but tomorrow, if he dies… Yuri, you might as well kill me too. I won’t live through it.”

  “But you expected him to; if you had died that time you called for the law of Bast and planned to take Logan’s place in the pit.”

  “He can live without me, Yuri, he’s the semel. He’s the strongest, the reah the weakest.”

  “That’s a lot of shit,” he scoffed. “Logan is physically stronger than you, but I’m tellin’ you right now, if you die, he’s done. You don’t know, you weren’t with him when that psychopath Laurent Bruyere kidnapped you. I have never seen him like that, and I’ve known him since we were kids.”

  “What was he like?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  “He was hard and cold and mean. I had no idea Logan could ever be like that, but he—it was like he was someone else, someone angry. The change once he found you was amazing. I got my semel back.”

  “I—”

  “Here’s the thing,” Yuri sighed. “I’m not brave, I just fuckin’ want what I’ve been waiting for, for half my damn life, and you and Logan need to never be apart again for any reason other than choice.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Amazing, huh?”

  “What is?”

  He tipped his head, and following where he was looking, I saw Yusuke’s right arm slide around Crane’s waist as she snuggled closer. “That she can even be alive and isn’t a complete fuckin’ basket case. Her whole life ended today, everything about who she is, what she is, just done in the time it took her psychotic mate to maim her. I saw it, the way he just terrorized her and bit her, and she was struggling so hard, and even when it was done, she was just so shattered, so shocked that the man she loved would turn on her like that.”

  “Yeah, but we’re panthers,” I told him. “We know that being scourged or marked or sent into exile or accepting a title is part of the duality of our nature. All these things are our reality. I’m not saying that the horrible things that happened to Crane or Yusuke or the yareahs that died in the pit or the semels that will never again be men, I’m not telling you that those things are okay, but for us… they’re part of being a panther. The betrayal of her semel may be hard for Yusuke to wrap her brain around, but the rest, his actions, I mean, she’s known all her life, we all have, that we live and die at the command of our semel.”

  He nodded.

  “I mean, a regular man does not in his life imagine himself in a large room with eight panthers trying to kill him. But you made the decision to step into the pit for Logan, to show others that he is strong because he has a strong sheseru. It’s fucked up, Yuri, and Russ is right, a lot of it is outdated barbaric crap.”

  He smiled at me. “It is, and it’s time for someone to change it.”

  “Which is what I told Logan,” I said, exhaling. “I think he’s supposed to be semel-aten because he won’t just be about the power, like they’ve all been for the last hundred years, but actually about bringing the laws into this century.”

  “That would be brilliant,” he agreed. “But Sobek?”

  Egypt. I felt the same way. “I know, I kinda just want to live in my town for the rest of my life.”

  “Me too
,” he agreed.

  “Although,” I said, smiling at him, “wherever Domin is—”

  “Whatever he wants,” Yuri said hoarsely. “I’ll do whatever he wants if he’ll just keep me.”

  “You’re killing me with this, you know.”

  He smiled at me, and I saw the feeling there, what I meant to him. “You were amazing today, Jin. You controlled your power, you protected Logan, and you didn’t hurt anyone from your own tribe. I’m so proud to stand with you and my semel.”

  I felt my eyes swimming suddenly, and he leaned forward to hold me. All of us were overly tired, overly emotional, and just completely overwrought. Yuri normally never hugged me. He protected me, he was my champion, we sat together a lot and talked, but hugging was not an activity we participated in. But all of us were raw and vulnerable and needy. So he held me tight, and I let him.

  I woke up in the night to the beautiful sight of my sheseru smiling, eyes closed, head back, as Domin sat in his lap, kissing under his jaw and down his throat. Yuri was in heaven with Domin in his lap, straddling his thighs, and the soft whimpering moan made me sigh. When my maahes leaned back, looking into the face of my sheseru, Yuri’s eyes slowly drifted open.

  “What do you want?”

  “You know what I want,” Yuri told him, his voice husky and low. “I want you to keep me. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  Domin’s dark-brown eyes looked black in the low light. He had shaved at some point during the day and the strong chiseled features were again visible, no longer hidden under a thick beard. Yuri was enjoying the feel of the smooth skin if his fingers continually grazing over the man’s face were any indication.

  “And I’d really like you to mark me,” Yuri confessed breathlessly.

  “You’re insane, you’d never survive it.”

  “I think I would.”

  Domin exhaled sharply. “Listen to me. Between a semel and his true-mate, the mark hurts but heals. Between two regular cats… the semel’s mark is never given, because you could bleed to death,” he finished, obviously shaken. “Besides, what makes you think I would even want to do such a thing?”

  Yuri’s dark eyes, not quite the cobalt Mikhail’s were, more a warm royal blue or sapphire, just melted. God, he was so gone it was painful to see all the need there on display. “Please.”