Change of Heart 05 - Forging the Future (19 page)

Literally, the pin-dropping analogy was valid.

“I am the semel of the tribe of Mafdet. You are the semel-bennu.”

“No, I—”

“So, Russ,
brother
, as you remain duat in the territory of Miguel Garza, I have taken the liberty of informing him that you have both left his territory without his permission and are now going to challenge me for my seat.”

“You cannot!”

“I already did. He should arrive before the challenge.”

“Miguel Garza has no hold over—”

“Oh, he does,” Logan cut him off. “Ask Father.”

All eyes were on Peter, who couldn’t seem to find his voice to speak a word.

“Is this your yareah?” Logan asked Russ about the woman on his arm.

“Yes, I… this is Lydia, who—”

“Demand a champion for your child now, yareah,” Logan cautioned her. “The semel of the tribe of Deshret may demand a blood sacrifice.”

She gasped and rounded on Russ. “I asked you if it was
maat
to leave, and you said it was.”

“Yes, I—”

She slapped him hard across the face and turned quickly to Koren. “You must champion my child.”

“I cannot.”

“Cannot?” she cried. “Or will not?”

“It won’t be necessary,” I told her.

She whirled to face me. “You’re the reah.”

“I am,” I said gently. “It’s only posturing, lady. Ask Artem Varda, who will be your husband’s sheseru. He’ll stand as champion for your son.”

“You’re certain?”

“I am.”

She took light hold of my hand. “Thank you.”

I squeezed it gently. “The semel will want menat, tribute, to forgive the trespass, and perhaps to have your semel flogged. You must insist on whatever price he names or punishment doled out. It won’t kill Russ—he can heal the damage—and the money is of little consequence. Protect your son.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“But—” Russ began.

“No,” she shouted, and when Peter tried to touch her, she slapped his hand away. “My son is what’s important.”

“Of course,” Russ offered, soothing her.

“You all treat Logan as though he is still semel,” Marina snarled from the settee. “But he is not. Guards!”

Logan’s former khatyu surrounded us.

“Have this man whipped to show the tribe Ruslan Church’s true power!”

“Yes,” Peter shouted. “Russ! Do it now!”

Russ looked from his yareah to Koren to Peter and back to Marina before his eyes returned to Logan. “You have brought pain to my house,” Russ accused. “Now you will pay for that transgression. Take him!”

My power rose fast, and I took hold of both the yareah’s hand and Russ’s because the nekhene in me wouldn’t recognize either of them.

It still burned. Both of them screamed and sank to the floor—and I knelt with them—but my ferocious rage did not wrench them through their shift as it did everyone else in the room.

Once, my power had been unstable. It had been a glamour to lure a mate and so had become sexual, carnal with an appetite that only Logan could sate. It had then become a hunter and sought to eradicate weakness by pulling all through their shift to uncover strength, punishing those it deemed unworthy. But now, finally, I balanced the feral nekhene cat that lived in me and the reah that I was, creating a melding that had become, at last, protective. It suited me, and Crane was right, I lived well in my skin.

I breathed out fierce, annihilating power and then took a breath and calmed before rising. The kiss on the back of my neck was unexpected, as was the scowl. Even as I shivered with goose bumps because Logan Church glowering at me was sexy as hell, I couldn’t keep from smiling.

“What?”

“I didn’t want anyone to know you got your memory back,” he informed me.

“Well, tell a person next time,” I quipped.

He threw up his hands before squatting down beside Russ and Lydia, both of whom were staring at Logan in absolute horror from where they lay on the floor, reeling, collapsed in shock and pain. They weren’t panthers like everyone else, but that was the only blessing.

“Sorry,” he said affably as we heard movement on the stairs from the basement, and Andrian’s mate, Irina, and his four-year-old son spilled into the room with Danny less than two paces behind them. I hadn’t drenched the house in my power, which was the only reason the two of them––Andrian’s son was still too young to shift––were on their feet, having instead focused on the room and the people in it. Once, long ago, that kind of control hadn’t been possible. But I’d had years of practice since then.

“My reah!” Irina screamed and ran to me, arms out, hitting me hard, her son too, and me, there, clutching them both, hugging them tight. “Andrian promised you and my semel would come for us!”

“Of course,” I crooned. “I’m only sorry we couldn’t save your mate.”

She nodded fast as she began to weep. “We will go with you and my semel, yes?”

“Oh yes,” I swore, petting Dmitri’s head before I pointed to Logan.

Dmitri looked up, gave me a tearful, toothy grin, then leaped at my mate.

Logan plucked him from the air and tucked him against his chest, snuggling the boy tight and patting his thin back. “We will raise him and Ilia together,” he promised Irina, and that was it: she collapsed in a dead faint.

I caught her easily, and when the door opened and Crane and Markel came in, I passed her to my best friend. “Take her to the house, get her a room. When she wakes up, we’ll need to take her home to collect her things.”

“Yes, my reah,” Crane answered, his gaze slipping to Russ before flicking to Danny. “And him?”

Danny was there, shivering, eyes on me, unsure and frightened. He looked even thinner and paler than normal.

“Well?” I asked.

It dawned on him that I was asking him to make a choice, giving him one, and his smile through his tears was beautiful. “Please, Jin, let me return to my family.”

“And are we truly your family?”

“Yes,” he answered quickly, his eyes brimming with tears.

I gestured him to me.

Bolting, he filled my arms, squeezing tight, beginning the litany of words: how much he’d missed me, how happy he was to see me, how pleased he was that I was restored, and how right I had been about Koren Church.

“Told you,” I growled, hugging him back before shoving him out to arm’s length. “I need you to collect your things from wherever they are, go to the house, shower and shave, and be ready for Andrian’s funeral. Eva made a feast. You and Irina and Dmitri all need to eat.”

“Yes, my reah.”

I pointed at Logan. “Get on your knees and beg forgiveness and swear fealty.”

Instantly, he went to the floor in front of Logan.

“No,” Logan grumbled, hauling Danny to his feet by the back of his shirt. “You smell bad and you look worse.”

“Yes, my semel,” Danny agreed.

“Never, ever, does your voice not fall in support of mine.”

“Yes, my semel.”

“You will never be my sylvan again, but I will have you in my tribe.”

Danny’s breath hitched. “Thank you, my semel.”

“Wherever I go, you go.”

“And you brought me into the tribe,” he said.

“So I can remove you. Yes. You belong to me.”

He trembled, and I knew that Danny wanted to belong to Logan all the way—mind, body, and soul—but that would never be. Logan Church was my domain alone.

Danny turned to me, and I gave him a dismissive wave. I’d never seen him run so fast.

Logan knelt beside the still shell-shocked Russ and Lydia. “So, Russ, here’s what’s going to happen,” he told him in the rumbling tone he had that ran right through you. Logan’s voice was truly part of his appeal, the deep vibrato, the whiskey, smoky sound that made you think of sex when combined with the man’s clear gold eyes. Lydia was having trouble looking away from him. “Tonight I’m going to sit vigil for my friend Andrian, whom you killed, and tomorrow, when Domin Thorne arrives and takes over the tribe—”

“Takes over what?”

“The tribe,” he explained. “The tribe you’re trying to take from me. He can do that, and he will.”

Russ went from stunned to frightened in the blink of an eye.

“And when he does, I suspect that no matter what you think, he’ll find a way to make us equal in the pit. I don’t know how, but I’d put money on him—if we fight at all.”

“Logan—”

“I’m sure when he gets here, he’ll explain what’s going to happen with Miguel Garza and you, and then, I suspect, he’ll have some other announcements. By Sunday, I’ll be gone along with our sister, our mother, and everyone else you can’t stand to look at.”

“No, Logan, lis—”

Logan lifted his hand for silence. “In the meantime, you, everyone under this roof, and the rest of the tribe, need to stay away from anyone who has pledged themselves to me.”

“Logan, please—”

“Because if I see anyone, if any of your men touch any of my people, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

All Russ could do was nod.

“You killed a good man today, a kind man, and a loyal man, and for what? Because he wouldn’t change allegiance?”

Russ kept silent.

“A real semel cannot be made to do anything he doesn’t believe in. A semel is a rock, Russ. You have to learn to be one.”

For the first time since we arrived, I saw pain in Russ’s face.

There were many tribes, all over the world, run by younger brothers because of death or challenges or abandonment. Most of them didn’t have to learn to be good men, but they did have to learn to be strong men, both physically and mentally. A semel had a head start: they were firstborn, and birth order, in a line of a semel, gave one inherent abilities. The semel was the alpha, strongest, fastest, with increased healing ability and an overabundance of testosterone and pheromones that could be used to call any panther to him. It was a heady mix of power and adrenaline and sex drive that could be catastrophic for a tribe if it had a selfish wastrel of a semel, or a blessing if he happened to be anything at all like my mate. A semel bound the tribe to him as he was followed and worshipped, but he also cared for it in quiet imperceptible ways where he used his strength to guide and mediate and to serve as a model of how to lead.

Logan had disappointed the tribe because he could
not
lead, could not see to his duties with me gone, and that was his failing. But what the tribe was missing, what Russ and everyone else were clueless about, was that this one weakness was the only one Logan had. They had no idea what the shortcomings of another semel would be.

“Look around,” Logan bade Russ.

We all took a moment to survey the living room.

All the khatyu, as well as Peter, Koren, and Marina—who had ordered Logan whipped—were panthers and still writhing in pain. To be wrenched through your shift, to not be in control of bones cracking, muscles breaking and lengthening, was torture, and they were all still in the throes of the annihilating anguish.

“Don’t test Jin,” Logan warned. “It’s not healthy.”

“Yes,” Russ agreed, eyes on me. “I didn’t know your memory returned, Jin. I’m happy for you.”

All I felt for him was ice. “What happened to Samantha?”

“Who?”

I glared at him.

“Oh, oh, my—my girlfriend who you met that time you—”

“She called me because you were in danger. What happened to her?”

“I had to give her up,” he replied sharply.

I glanced at his yareah. “To be a panther.”

He coughed. “Yes.”

I had liked Samantha, his human girlfriend, but it took strength to bring a human into a werepanther tribe, and the love had to hold. Apparently Russ didn’t love hard enough. “Okay,” I said simply. “She’s better off anyway.”

“You—”

I raised my hand. “I’d prefer to never speak to you again, so please, address my mate,” I said abruptly, turning for the door.

“Heed my words,” Logan said behind me. “Stay away.”

I stepped out onto the enormous porch that I used to sit on in the summer and realized for the second time that it was cold. It wasn’t my home anymore; it was Russ’s now, and that made it easier to leave.

“I’ll miss the bay window you put in for me, and the marble patio in my bedroom. I loved being there with you, and all my memories are good.”

“We’ll make new ones,” Logan promised as he walked up behind me and draped an arm around my shoulders.

As we walked down the steps and began toward the path that led out to the guesthouse, we noticed the two panthers lying in the leaves, panting heavily. The clothes they’d crawled out of gave evidence of who they were.

Logan stopped over Sasha. “You were never strong enough to be my sylvan,” he said, scowling at the contorting animal. “It was only ever going to be Mikhail.”

“He can’t understand you,” I huffed. “You know that.”

“Yes, but I understand, and that’s all that’s important.”

And he was right. It was.

Chapter 11

I
T
WAS
well after midnight when we gathered outside in the field behind the guesthouse. My hand in Logan’s was necessary for both of us as we stared at the funeral pyre and he spoke Andrian’s lineage. He gave the names of Irina and Dmitri as Andrian’s survivors, and then Irina stood and spoke about her husband.