Honored Vow (28 page)

“God,” he sighed, smiling suddenly before he grabbed me tight and wrapped me up in strong arms. “We didn’t think we were gonna get you back, and then Crane had that brilliant idea to get you to Logan. I envy him the power he has in you, Jin, but that bond, the one between a semel and his reah, must really be something, because shit—the power is something.”

I let him hold me and tried to breathe.

“Jin.”

My eyes lifted to Taj as he and Andrian moved where I could see them.

“I’ve never experienced a run like the one you took us on tonight, thank you for that and for allowing us to be there to show all of us what the love between a semel and his mate should look like.”

I pulled away from Domin and bowed to Taj.

He returned the bow, and when I straightened I felt better, more me.

“Jin,” Taj said my name.

I could barely speak.

Taj was the same but managed to get out a very rusty sounding thank-you.

“You can’t ever go back to the Shu,” I told him. “You understand?”

There was a quick nod from him. “I do,” he said, his voice gravelly and low. “And I thank you and Logan for making me part of your tribe and showing me what a true home is. I will not fail you, you know I won’t. I’ll stand with you and Crane and Andrian and kill anyone that tries to hurt any of you.”

“It’s just Logan.”

“It’s never been just Logan,” he assured me, giving me a trace of a smile. “And he would agree with me if he were able.”

I really didn’t want to fall apart right there with people starting to close in on us, milling around, looking at the freaky reah. Domin had said I was in my nekhene form for a while, so that meant I had been gawked at and pointed at and basically been on exhibit with my mate. It was horrible and it wasn’t over yet, and now on top of it, Taj’s heartfelt confession was going to make me cry.

I wanted to run away.

“Listen,” Crane said, draping an arm around my shoulders. “We’re gonna get you cleaned up, okay? You’re covered in the blood of dead men.”

I nodded.

“But Yuri’s gonna hafta carry you again, because you don’t have any shoes, and you’ll get frostbite if you walk in the snow, even with your body temperature. You and Taj talking out in the snow in human form tonight was not bright.”

My eyes flicked to him.

“Domin told me. Not smart, Jin.”

Apparently I was making all kinds of poor decisions lately.

“Don’t do the poor-me bullshit, just let Yuri carry you, and I’m gonna wrap your feet in another blanket, alright?”

I didn’t argue.

Once we were outside, I felt so much better even though, really, the cold sucked all the air from my lungs.

Behind the back of the ger was a shower that was enclosed with clear plastic walls on all four sides, a protected, sealed heater on the top and warm, flat, smooth river stones on the bottom. It was like stepping into a sauna. You had to pour hot water into the base and it cycled and was pumped up a pipe, and then it rained liquid down on you from the shower head. The water had been brought from the home of Orso Bataar, from the hot spring that ran under the cave, on the order of his yareah. It was carried out to us in huge insulated tubs by several members of the tribe of Khertet.

“What exactly did happen?” I asked Crane as I stood under the water.

“Wash the blood out of your hair, Jin.”

“Talk, then.”

“Fine, wash.”

I did as he asked while he explained.

Two cats had come to kill Crane because, as the priest had explained, Ammon El Masry wanted my best friend dead. With Crane gone, he felt my control would slip, and with me gone, Logan would not be far behind. It was smart, it was a good plan, but he had counted on Crane being broken, which he wasn’t, and me being much less in control of myself than I was. His information on both counts was faulty.

“Did I really tear them apart?”

“Yes,” Crane assured me. “It was fast, faster than anything I’ve ever seen, it was like they were yanked into thin air and blown up. There were only scattered pieces left.”

I started retching.

“Stop,” he ordered me. “You saved me, even though two guys, Jin—c’mon, I’ve faced five before and been okay, just me.”

“You’re still hurt,” I barely got out, my voice garbled, my eyes watering like they did after a bout of heaving.

“I’m pretty strong, Jin,” he assured me. “You have to stop letting your heart stop every time you think something might happen to me.”

I nodded.

“Less talking, more rinsing,” Yuri said as he poured another huge tub of scalding hot water into the basin in a continuous stream, letting Crane concentrate on pumping only. By the time it reached me, it was only warm, the air cooling it that fast, the heater making sure I didn’t freeze as well as the rocks at my feet. 

“How long was I in my nekhene form?”

“A long fuckin’ time,” Yuri grumbled, sounding angry and hurt at the same time.

“You shift so fast for Logan,” Crane told me. “But not for the rest of us.”

I heard his voice tremble. “You guys were worried I wasn’t shifting back.”

They didn’t need to answer me for me to know it was true.

“Did anyone else see me in my nekhene form?”

“Everyone,” Yuri told me. “All those rubberneckers you saw. And you scared the crap out of all of them, the entire tribe of Khertet, their semel, all the other yareahs and their retinues, and Danny,” he finished with a heavy sigh.

I looked at him through the plastic as warm water sluiced over me. “But not you guys, right? You weren’t scared, were you, Yuri?”

“No, my reah.” He smiled at me. “You never scare me or any of those that truly know you and your heart.”

“And no one from my tribe was—”

“No,” Crane assured me, passing shampoo and shower gel in through the folds of the shower to me. “Now hurry up before we all freeze.”

I showered as fast as I could, but there was still ice in my hair when I stepped inside the ger twenty minutes later.

Everyone was there, sitting, sipping hot tea, bundled up. After I changed behind the partition, I joined them, taking a seat beside Mikhail in the circle.

“God, it must be late.” Danny yawned, sharing a heavy quilt with Andrian, leaning against him.

“It is,” Yuri agreed, also having changed, ready to take a seat.

Domin looked up, and I saw my sheseru’s cobalt eyes hit those of my maahes. He lifted the quilt, inviting, and Yuri sat down beside him, letting Domin put the cover around him before he scooted close, pressing into the smaller man’s side.

The muscles in Yuri’s jaw flexed, quivered, and I wondered about that for a second before Crane dropped down beside me and wrapped me in a heavy quilt, getting comfortable, shoulder to shoulder with me.

“Yuri.”

My sheseru looked over at Danny.

“Are you ready for the challenge today?”

He nodded, his eyes drooping. “I am, I just—I need to sleep, and even though I’m exhausted, I don’t think I can.”

“You can,” Domin told him. “And we all should.”

“Agreed,” Mikhail said, and as he was the sylvan in our midst, we all deferred to him.

I asked Yuri to take the partition down because I didn’t want to be separated from the others even by a slip of silken gauze. He smiled at me as he removed it.

A half an hour later, snuggled between Crane and Mikhail, I fell asleep fast, exhaustion blindsiding me.

T
HE
scent of arousal woke me, hard and aching, three hours later. I sat up and looked around and instantly was pulled back down. I was faced with eyes glinting in the darkness, those of my sylvan.

“What’re you doing?” I whispered.

“If you make a fuckin’ noise and do anything to mess this up for him—reah or no reah, I swear to God I will smother you to death with your pillow.”

I was still asleep, I had to be.

“Did you hear me?”

“What are you talking about?” I said under my breath, being quiet enough that no one but him, or Crane on the other side, could have heard me.

He made a sign for me to lift up a little.

I moved just enough to see over the top of his head, and there, in the flickering glow of the lanterns, on the furs closest to the stove, were Yuri and Domin.

Yuri was positioned facedown with his ass in the air. His hand was on his enormous rigid shaft, jerking, tugging, pulling as he strove for release at the same time Domin pistoned inside of him from behind. Domin’s hands were braced on Yuri’s flanks, and if the look on the face of my sheseru was any indication, he was teetering on the edge of a shattering orgasm. I had never seen the look of absolute bliss on the man’s face before, ever.

My head thunked down as I turned to look at Mikhail. “Since when?”

“Since when what?” he answered, which was impressively done because I “heard” every word without him making any noise at all. He enunciated perfectly.

“Yuri likes Domin?”

He pointed beside me, and when I turned, I saw that over Crane’s left shoulder was where all the luggage had been stacked. It was quite the pile, and at that moment it could not have been more perfect.

It took long minutes of maneuvering to get us both over my best friend, who luckily slept like the dead, and down on the other side of the suitcase, duffel bag, and backpack mountain. As I faced a grinning Mikhail, I realized that in all the time I’d known the man, I could count the times he’d smiled at me. He was not a man given to shows of affection.

“Talk.”

He shrugged broad shoulders as we huddled close together, whispering. “Yuri Kosa has been in love with Domin Thorne since he was sixteen years old.”

“What? How?”

“Why would Logan just allow a man that tried to kill him to be his maahes? Why would he care about that man’s tribe?”

“Logan cares about all tribes, he cares about everyone.”

“Not enough to allow a viper into his home.”

“He let Abbot George into the house, and he nearly killed me,” I reminded my sylvan.

“He let a sheseru in training into his home, but he never thought for a minute that someone wouldn’t be there with you at all times. He was certain that Yuri would never leave you unattended with Abbot.”

“That wasn’t Yuri’s fault,” I defended him.

“It was Yuri’s fault,” Mikhail told me. “But that was when he thought that everyone was as mindful as him. He thought that you would be fine because the burden of the protection didn’t just fall to him. Now he knows better.”

“But then—”

“But we’re talking about before that, we’re talking about when it was brand new—Logan would have never let anyone he didn’t know live in his house. Abbot was visiting; I’m talking about a permanent fixture in the house. Why would he do that?”

“Why would he do that?” I echoed the question.

“Think.”

“Because Logan and Domin had history,” I said, the truth hitting me.

“Exactly.”

“Why didn’t he explain?”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“Tell me.”

“We all went to school together: me, Logan, Yuri, Domin, and Christophe. We’ve known each other forever. But Domin never saw Yuri, only Logan and then Koren.”

“Domin had a crush on Logan?”

“We all had a crush on Logan; it’s the lure of the semel. When they first shift, their pheromones—you know, it’s crazy; all anyone wants to do is roll over and submit, men and women alike.”

It was true; a semel’s first shift was a heady thing for the entire tribe.

“You don’t know until later, until you sort things out, whether what you’re feeling is real or not. Me and Christophe figured out that we were straight, Yuri that he was bi, and Domin that he was gay. But then when Domin shifted, Yuri knew who he really wanted in the whole forever-and-ever way.”

I nodded. “And when Christophe shifted?”

“Christophe’s shift came so long after Logan’s and Domin’s that by then Logan had asked me to be his sylvan and Yuri to be his sheseru, so we were all separated already.”

“How did Domin choose Ivan and Markel?”

“He met Markel at a club, and they got in a fight that ended with Domin holding him down and asking him to be his sheseru, and Ivan was the son of Domin’s father’s sylvan, so it made sense.”

“I see.”

“It’s great that Logan’s going to make them both akers when we get home, they deserve that.”

“Yes, they do.”

He waited for what I would say next.

“So because Logan and Domin had a history, that’s why he made him his maahes.”

He widened his eyes, gave me a subtle nod of his head.

I heard breath catch from the other side of the ger, there was a hiss of pain/pleasure, and then purring, whining, and soft, urgent whimpering. Scents came as well, the tell-tale smell of semen and sweat.

Leaning sideways so I could see around the mound, I saw Yuri’s head twisted back, over his shoulder, and Domin kissing him hard, grinding his mouth down over my sheseru’s, claiming him. Yuri’s tears surprised me, as did his trembling and the low moan that escaped as Domin fisted his hand in the bigger man’s hair, holding tight. The angle, the pressure, Domin’s weight—the entire action was suggestive of a kind of domination that I would have never guessed that my hulking, scary sheseru wanted.

Low growl, and I turned back to Mikhail. “What?”

“Stop that,” he scolded me.

“But they’re so pretty together.” I smiled at my sylvan. “And hot.”

His scowl was dark.

“You knew, all this time.”

“Of course.” He squinted at me. “Like you know Crane, I know Yuri.”

“And so Yuri’s been what, pining away?”

“Not pining, hoping.”

“Hoping that Domin would get over Koren?”

“And every other guy,” Mikhail grunted, and even in the quiet I could hear the bitterness in his tone. “Yuri’s been breaking his heart over Domin since he was sixteen, like I said.”

“Sex changes nothing.”

He shook his head. “It will, you’ll see. Domin’s not stupid anymore, when he feels the love that’s there, ready, waiting, he’ll claim it. Before, when he was a semel, he was a self-destructive, vain, egoistical piece of shit. But when Logan beat him in the pit, made him maahes, he started to change. I mean, Yuri died a little when he started up with Koren, but I knew it was only a matter of time.”