Honored Vow (25 page)

The hush was almost as frightening as the sound had been. When I turned my head, Logan was crossing the floor to me, eyes huge, mouth open, snarling low as he came so all I saw were fangs and claws and his hard, obvious erection. The semel who had thought to claim me scuttled away, and I was aware that the space was frozen around me. No one was even breathing as Logan dropped down, crouching on the ground beside me, panting, heaving, nostrils flaring as he inhaled me.

I understood at once, because he smelled like her.

He had been on the other side of the room, prepared, from the looks of him, to fuck Amirah, the scent of arousal clinging to him, when he had heard me whimper.

The sound he knew, my resonance, coupled with my familiar posture of submission when he turned to look for me, had combined to clear the fog from his brain. For a split second, he had been the semel of the tribe of Mafdet, and he knew who I was, what I was, knew I belonged to him and that another was about to claim me. He had warned the other semel fast that to touch his mate would bring swift death. I would remember the sound for the rest of my life and pray that he would never have to make it again.

I rolled to my knees and faced him. “My semel,” I said softly, leaning forward, my lips parting, finally releasing my pheromones. I wrapped him in the aroma that was mine alone, letting him taste my desire, my overwhelming, devouring need.

He reached for me with a clawed hand, and I slowly, gently touched the underside of his wrist, my thumb sliding back and forth over the pulse-point as his eyes slowly narrowed and his mouth closed.

There were sounds around me; life resumed, but I was only vaguely, peripherally aware. This was my mate in front of me, and he had to claim me and I had to tame him.

“Do you know me?” I murmured, reaching back, moving my hair, baring the side of my neck so he could see skin, smell skin.

He was thrumming with power and sizzling heat and was, as always, a gorgeous specimen of male beauty. I wanted to eat him. The whine I released was deep and throaty and full of longing as I squirmed in front of him. When the clawed hands grabbed me, hauling me forward into his lap, I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on.

It was his turn to whine.

His engorged, leaking shaft was caught between us, wedged against his ripped, muscular torso, and when he began to pant, I reached down and stroked him. He shuddered beneath me, pushing up, trying to get more of his cock into my hand, and I fisted the long, hard, thick length of him, beginning the slow, tight pull and slide that I knew from experience would bring him release.

As I watched him, I realized that I would let him bury himself in my ass, even dry, even though it would have torn me up, because my logic had drowned in emotion by that point. But I couldn’t move, couldn’t even lift to maneuver him beneath me; the sharp, clawed hands anchoring me to his thighs left me no wiggle room. And he could still hurt me, even inadvertently, by slicing through an artery if he gripped me too tight. So I tugged and slid my hand over him instead, opening my robe to reveal my own throbbing shaft dripping with precome, pressing it along the length of his, using both hands now to jerk us off together.

The velvety hardness of Logan’s dick next to mine, the smell of him, of me, of us together, made me writhe in his lap, buck against him, and ache to be filled.

He moved fast, leaning forward, his jaw open before I realized it, coming for my throat. And the thought leaped into my mind that if I died in his arms, it was worth it to have loved him at all.

The sandpaper tongue grazed my collarbone, licked up the side of my neck, and then tasted the spot behind my ear. His long, sharp fangs came next, pressing to the spot where my shoulder joined my neck before he nipped at the skin and trembled under me.

I squeezed and yanked, felt his cock swell further in my grip as I pumped harder, faster, and felt my own release build.

One hand moved from my thigh, his right tangling in my hair, yanking my head back as I cried out, just that much of his dominance bringing me to orgasm. I cried his name as I pumped out thick streams of semen onto his muscular, taut abdomen. I shot over my wrists, my fingers, and over the purple head of his swollen shaft a second before he found his own roaring release.

We shuddered through our aftershocks together, and when I lifted my hand to my mouth, he watched with heavy-lidded eyes as I began to lick semen from my fingers. He leaned forward, tongue out, wanting to taste, and I pressed light fingertips to the sandpaper surface, smiling, purring at the same time. He whined in the back of his throat, and I extended my own tongue, rubbing it along his, slowly, decadently, over and over until he leaned forward, wanting more. I opened my mouth, and his tongue slipped in and explored. He whimpered as his hands returned to my thighs, yanking me forward, needing me closer, tighter.

I wrapped my legs around his back, my chest now plastered to his beautiful sculpted one. Even under golden fur, the definition was still there, and as I closed my lips on his questing, thrusting tongue and sucked hard, I lost myself in the taste of him. He growled and clutched at me, one hand on my ass, kneading, squeezing, the other holding the back of my head, cradling, but his claws trapped me, rendering escape impossible. Not that moving even flickered through my consciousness.

I licked and sucked and wriggled in his lap, and when he winced at the contact of my stomach pressing against his sensitized, flagging penis, I took that moment to take a breath and nuzzle my face into the soft fur at his throat. I sighed deeply, and I heard him begin to purr. He was content, and I let the feeling flood my senses.

We were safe because we were together. Always.

Finally, I lifted my head and took in the blood and gore in the pit but also the beauty. On my left, Yusuke held her semel as he lay draped over her, heaving with aftershocks of what had to have been a bone-numbing orgasm from how exhausted he looked and how scarlet her face was. The quivering smile she gave me was embarrassed and sated at the same time.

On the opposite side of the room, Gavin Medina was in his mate’s lap, head back, eyes closed, and his flaccid cock dripping with come as he lay, spent and boneless, in her arms. She was stripped naked, as Yusuke and I were not, covered in scratches, but smiling down at him as they lay together in the dirt. When she turned her head and shuddered, I looked to see what was wrong.

Amirah had risen from where she had been lying close to the wall. Apparently she had been struck unconscious at some point and was now awake. The three other semels who had killed their mates circled around her but didn’t come any closer; she seemed to be holding them at bay with her power.

“It’s not over,” she yelled before she opened her mouth and breathed out her pheromones. Hiroshi jerked in Yusuke’s arms; Gavin groaned, exhausted, but his primal urges were too strong to deny, and Logan, only Logan, didn’t stir or move to rise, instead just tightened his arms and rubbed his chin over my shoulder, scent-marking me.

Amirah came toward us, intent, it seemed, on Logan, because he was the only who had not immediately responded. She was strutting forward and stripped off her robe as she came, a vision as she closed in.

My first thought was that she had to be freezing. You could hang meat in the pit, and as I shivered, my mate snuggled me tighter, grunting softly, comforting me.

He only wanted me, would, if he were allowed, curl around me and go to sleep. He was exhausted—we all were—and still the horror of a reah came to try and separate us.

I was angrier than I thought I was.

Lifting my head, I released an angry, wild, desperate nekhene power to intercept her.

She screamed and dropped to her knees, fighting, her wail unhinged and terrified. If she shifted in the pit she was dead, and everyone knew it. That was the law.

“No!” Her shrieking got louder, and Hiroshi settled, rolling off his mate but not leaving her side. There was no allure in terror, and so he stayed where he was.

Gavin curled closer to his mate. I spared Teresa a glance as I had Yusuke, and I saw the desperate thankfulness in her gaze.

“No!” Amirah wailed, and I let it recede, inhabiting once again the mantle of reah, of love and shelter and peace.

“Yield.” I found my voice, my eyes flicking to hers even as Logan took a deep breath of me, licking a long line up the side of my throat, the small whimpers making me tighten my arms and legs, the desire to climb inside his skin nearly overwhelming. “You have done your duty: three semels are only panthers, three yareahs lay dead, and three tribes will have new leaders. We’re lucky, as the priest had Khongordzol inform us that he chose no semels with children, that you have left no orphans crying for dead parents.”

“I don’t care!”

“But we care!” I yelled back, indicating Yusuke, Teresa, and myself. “And you can stop; you’ve done what was required and are now free. Is she not free?”

I lifted my head to the priest and saw that everyone was clustered close around the edge now to see the slaughter and the sex.

“She is free,” the priest said, rendering his verdict, “and no cat may ever touch her again without her leave.”

I returned my eyes to her. “You’re free, Amirah Fehr; you do not even have to make account of your actions to the tribe of Ariat or to the family of your semel, Terrance McCord.”

She rose stiffly and smiled suddenly. “Attack me again, reah, I’ll be ready this time.”

“Where is your beset?” I called to her. “Let her, or him, offer you comfort and counsel now.”

“Never did I need the same crutch that I have heard you have; I’ve never been that weak.”

But needing Crane had never been anything but a blessing, and again, I felt so sorry for her to not even have a companion, not one person to always look for as a grounding force. And not that Crane was mine anymore, Logan having taken over as my touchstone, but she had no mate, no beset and no tribe, she was utterly alone in the world. I ached for her and the pain it all must have caused.

“Attack me!” She yelled.

“Don’t leverage your power against mine,” I warned her. “If I pull you through your shift, you’re dead. You’ll be wounded and left to die outside, at the mercy of the elements and animals. It is not a death I would wish on anyone, even you. A reah is a precious thing, please don’t force my hand.”

“You think you can do it! You think I can’t turn all these semels to slaves that will still turn on their yareahs, and their reah, and carve you into pieces?”

She was so drunk with her own power that she wasn’t even listening to me.

“Please,” I begged her as she advanced.

“You’re trembling, reah,” she said snidely, “frightened of losing the man you hold clutched tight to your chest. Because whatever you think in that deluded brain of yours, he would pick a reah who is a woman that is not his over a true-mate who is a man because, really, all you are is a sick, filthy abomination. Your bond is unnatural and unclean, and you will die now and see the semel of the tribe of Mafdet drink your blood even as he fills me with his hot seed.”

“You can come live with us,” I offered, meaning every word. “You can be a part of our tribe and travel the world but know that you’ll always have a home to return to where you’ll be protected and cared for and loved.”

She put on a show of being shocked, eyes wide. “Live in your tribe? Live in sin with the rest of your disgusting panthers? Are you kidding?” Her voice rose. “You’re a monster, and you’ve polluted and disgraced everything you’ve ever touched. You should have killed yourself the moment you had your first thought to go to bed with a man. It’s vile and so are you, and the bond you share with your mate is a—”

“This is your final word,” I cut her off, shaking not with anger or fear but with the need to break down and sob. She was so angry and broken, and I wished, with every part that was reah, to heal her and protect her and that she would accept my offer of a place in my tribe.

She laughed at me as she exhaled heat and desire in a wave of throbbing, pulsing power.

There were gasps from above us as even the gallery was hit hard with her pheromones. Logan leaned back, looking at me, I knew, because my scent was changing. I pushed out of his grip, and he looked at me before his head swiveled fast to Amirah.

I saw the hair rise on his back, the ridge of fur that ran the length of his spine, as he bristled, became wary, ready to fight. She smelled like danger to him because I was his mate and she was threatening me. But if he killed her, he would be a panther forever just as if he slaughtered me or one of the other yareahs. I could not allow his desire to protect me to endanger him.

“Jin!”

I looked over at Yusuke, saw her dark eyes on me.

“You can’t save everyone. You want to, I know you do, reah, but sometimes,” she said, and her smile was full of aching sorrow as she glanced around the pit, “you can’t.”

“Protect your mate,” Teresa called over to me. “Honor those who love you, and guard your tribe, reah of the semel-netjer.”

My eyes flicked back to Amirah as she let out a call to Logan, to the other two semels, the lure of her scent and flesh drowning and overwhelming.

I exhaled and released the fury of the nekhene. It was a wild, untamed thing, but Logan Church had claimed it, held sway over it, and the energy that lived and breathed inside of me was curious about him, wanted to run with him, see if he was really strong enough to mate with. Amirah wanted to take the semel from the nekhene, and so the power blew out of me in a scalding jealous rage, exploded so that my back bowed and I gasped with the release of the ancient annihilating wrath.

If it had been two months ago, Amirah might have countered, but Crane had stripped the temptation from my power, taken away the lust and the seduction and the glamour and the allure. He could not curb my will—the essence itself was feral—but he had trained me not to call others, to instead keep them away. In the past, the energy shifted those not worthy to mate with me into panthers but still wrung sexual submission and climax from them. Now, it brought them to their knees and attacked. If I was allowed to shift, the power transformed me, worked through me, and assailed only those that I could physically touch. If I couldn’t shift, it blasted through whoever was in my way.