Change of Heart 05 - Forging the Future (27 page)

“My understanding was that Andrian’s family was taken while you were in transit from New Orleans. That means that the planning to get him to change his allegiance began before Logan’s response was even given.”

“But—”

“And, Jin, they were always going to go after Andrian. Whenever there is a change in power, you have to immediately secure the loyalty of the sheseru and the khayan—the leader of the khatyu—before you do anything else. They are the strongest in the tribe after the semel, so they must be dealt with. As Artem was made sheseru, they still had to contend with Andrian. He was like a pinned piece in chess. There was no hope that he would make it through this.”

“If Logan had known he was taken, if I had then—”

“That seems like a lot of
if
s to me.”

“You’re talking about his death so logically,” I retorted.

“We’re panthers, Jin. We all know the risks of living this life.”

And that was true.

“When I was ten, I saw Peter’s sheseru deal with a man who had gotten into an accident with him. He was drunk and had plowed his car into the side of Peter’s, which was where Logan was sitting. So not only had he almost killed the next semel, but he could have killed Peter as well, all because he made a poor choice.”

“Yes.”

“So what do you think the punishment was that the sylvan demanded and that the sheseru doled out?”

I waited.

“He was decapitated.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It’s the law we subscribe to as panthers. There’s no court but your semel and sylvan, and the punishment is your sheseru.”

“Yes, but think about it,” I entreated. “If Logan had just stepped down, there would have been no point in going after Andrian.”

“You’re missing it,” he assured me, “because you don’t think like this, about killing to secure your place. And if Logan had immediately said he was resigning from the tribe, you have no way of knowing what would have happened to everyone. Without being semel, Logan could not have kept everyone at the house with him. They could have been housed other places, and he couldn’t have protected any of you.”

“Yes, but—”

“And because Logan is the only semel of the Church line, Russ had to call for challengers, just as Domin said. Without Domin here to say that Logan will be the new semel-aten, then once Logan stepped down, anyone who wanted to challenge for his mate or his family members could do so.”

“Yes, only another semel could hope to challenge Logan in the pit.”

“Sure, but what if another semel wanted you or Crane or Delphine or Danny? By law, they could challenge Logan until he acquired a new seat by challenging another semel of a menhed tribe.” He gently patted my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry Andrian’s dead. He was a good man, a good friend, and I will offer my protection to his mate, but Jin, I truly doubt that he would be any more alive if Logan had stepped down, and he had to wait.”

I knew that now. It was why Logan had told Domin to hurry.

“The law is antiquated in so many ways,” Yuri said, almost sadly. “But it provides great structure as well. At least that’s what you always told me.”

“Did I?”

He nodded. “Every time I railed against it.”

“You must have found me tedious.”

“Come on, Jin. You know I worship the ground you walk on. We all do.”

I snorted. “Maybe you do. Everyone else sees my faults before anything else.”

“Hardly.”

We walked some more, and then Yuri chuckled.

“What’s funny?”

“Christophe is back there finally getting to take members away from the tribe of Mafdet. He’s been waiting years for the opportunity to steal something from Logan.”

“No, they’re friends now.”

“Oh, they were always friends,” he professed, “just the competitive kind. You can’t help that with semels, and this being, simply by geography, one of those places with several tribes clustered together, territories overlapping, you have semels in constant competition with one another for resources.”

“Yeah, but, it’s not Logan’s tribe anymore.”

“I know, and that probably galls him a little, but not enough to not want to take people from the tribe.”

“It’s nice of Christophe to offer, though.”

Yuri nodded. “It is. I mean, not everyone wants to follow Logan to Sobek, but neither do they want to stay in a tribe that they’ll never know who’s running it.”

“Won’t that be the same for the tribe of Rahotep?”

“But it’s always been that way for them. It’s one of those ironic things, that the first tribe has never been a nebu tribe. They’ve always been ruled by the strongest semel.”

“Yeah.”

“But now it’s different. When Logan becomes semel-aten, who in their right mind would challenge him? He’s so strong, and then someday when Ilia’s ready to step into his father’s role, again, where will you find the werepanther to challenge the heir of the only semel-netjer and the only nekhene cat in existence?”

I smiled up at him. “So I guess it will be Logan’s tribe, truly, for the first time. His father will have had nothing to do with it at all.”

Yuri grunted. “And that’s sad in a way, because there’s tradition here, and all of that, but Jin, how much does that really matter? The entirety of the Church claim to the tribe of Mafdet is land on a mountain, a glassworks, and a big-ass house. It’s the people who you fight for and live with. It’s your family and friends who make your home.”

I squinted at him. “I’ve been told that a lot lately.”

He shrugged. “Maybe you should start listening, huh?”

Perhaps it was time.

Y
URI
WAS
cooking, well, grilling, and Eva was chatting with him about Sobek.

“When we found out that Logan was going to be in that first sepat, I was leery about moving to Egypt because I was certain he’d win,” she confessed as he cooked steaks and boneless chicken breasts on the enormous outdoor barbecue. “I was so relieved when I found out that Domin would be semel-aten instead.”

“And now?” Yuri asked, glancing at her over his shoulder.

“Now, with your mother there, and two of my children and my grandson and soon-to-be newest addition… I think I’m ready.”

His grin was warm. “I’m glad. Mikhail will be in heaven to have some of your cooking. You know him. He’s very… traditional… in his eating habits.”

“He’s picky, is what he is,” she said with a chuckle. “But I have missed cooking for both of you, as well as Domin. I can’t wait to do so again.”

She loved with food, so Yuri understood what she was saying.

“I wish you had been in time to save Andrian,” she finished quietly.

“I do too,” Yuri sighed. “We came as soon as we could.”

“Of course you did, you were coming for Logan and Jin, after all.”

She was right. My family had been broken up six, almost seven years ago now, when Domin became semel-aten, but the bonds remained just as tight.

“I can’t wait to see Mikhail and Samani’s children,” Eva sighed. “They’re so beautiful when we do the Skype thing.”

Yuri seemed very pleased. “I’m looking forward to having Ilia, and Crane and Yusuke’s girls, and now Dmitri all there, plus Mikhail’s twins. We’ll have children in the palace when we come home, and that will be wonderful.”

“Do you want your own, Yuri?”

He thought about the question a moment. “I would if Domin and I were at home, but not with the traveling we do. And I realize that while we’re flying all over the world, Domin needs me at his side completely focused on him.” His gaze met mine. “It’s a powerful thing to be so needed, and I find that it suits me.”

It always had.

Ilia wanted to help Yuri cook, and Yuri was more than happy to have his first minion. I excused myself and went upstairs and stopped outside the door of Danny and Justin’s room. Since I heard nothing, I poked my head in just to make sure they were both still breathing.

The room reeked of sex and pheromones, and Danny was on his side being spooned by the much bigger, more muscular semel of the tribe of Qebui. Not only was Justin hugging Danny to him, but his face was pressed into the back of Danny’s hair. When I saw my cousin’s big brown eyes flutter open, I waited.

When I first met him, I’d thought not only that he was a carbon copy of me, but also that our temperaments and knowledge were similar. What I’d missed was that my father had Danny dye his hair jet black like mine, and that the real color was a deep, dark brown like his eyes. My father had wanted a new me and had one for a little while. But in the end, Mitchell Rayne had been disappointed with us both. Even though Danny was much more logical and introverted than I was, he also could not let Logan Church be hurt and so had stepped in to see to his safety when saying nothing would have left him on solid ground with my father and his tribe. He’d leaped to help my mate, and from then on, I’d felt differently toward him, familial, warm.

And now he was the little spoon to one of Logan’s dearest friends, the closest after Domin Thorne, and from the sprinkling of blood I saw, and more drying on his shoulder, I knew that Danny had begged for and been given the semel’s bite. It was supposed to be reserved for semels and reahs—it was generally believed that only the strongest of normal cats could accept the mating bite of a semel, but as long as the semel was careful, it could still be given. The difference was that, from a semel to a reah, it scarred. Under layers of fur when I was an animal, on the back of my neck when I was human, the mark was there. Danny’s would scar eventually if given daily, as Yuri’s had, but it looked like a wound, not like the bite of the tribe leader. Still, though, seeing Danny smile as his eyes drifted closed, watching him nestle back against Justin, who curled his arm across Danny’s collarbone, let me know I was looking at a mated pair.

When I turned around after closing the door behind me, I was surprised to find Logan there.

“Hey.”

“Everything okay in there?”

“Fine.”

“I smell blood, though.”

“You smell more sex than blood.”

“Do I?” He stepped closer, and only then did I realize that he was trembling, pupils blown and breathing heavily.

“What’s wrong?”

“I renounced my place in the tribe I was born into.”

“Yes,” I agreed, exhaling, moving into his space, loving the smell of the wind on him, the sun, sweat, and soap, and underneath it all, me. He always smelled just a little like me because we shared a bed, and I was all over him every single day of his life. Oh, I needed to touch him.

“I feel—” he began, then stopped.

I put my hand on his chest and felt how hard his heart was pounding. “Close your eyes.”

He took a quick breath but did as I ordered.

If I lived a thousand years, there would never come a time when I didn’t appreciate the beauty of my mate. He was my golden man, and it was my responsibility to make sure he realized his value, inside and out. It fell to me, the telling, the assuring, because I was the only one he truly believed, down inside his soul where it mattered.

“You know when you told me years ago that all you ever wanted to do was to rule a small tribe and take care of people?”

“Yes,” he murmured.

“You’re finally getting your wish.”

He opened both his mouth to speak and his eyes to see me.

“No,” I directed, chuckling, hands on his hips, bumping him, rubbing my cheek and then chin over his hard pectorals, scent marking him, wanting everyone to know he was mine. “Listen to me, semel-netjer, semel-aten. This is all going to work out as it should, with you leading the tribe you were always destined for.”

“Destined?” he teased, his eyes narrowing to slits as he bent and kissed up from where my neck and shoulder met to my ear.

“Yes. And you’ll show your new tribe what it’s like to be loved by Logan Church, because for the first time in years, you’ll have no worries.”

“How’s that?” he asked absently, nibbling along my jaw.

I shivered under his hands, one sliding up under my shirt, rubbing slow circles on my skin, the other with gentle pressure on my chin, tipping it to bare my throat for him. “You’re the best man, Logan Church, and with me there, loving you, and everyone accepting your son and his gifts, I have no doubt that you’ll be all that they ever dreamed of in a semel-aten.”

“You have such faith,” he said, his voice hoarse as he bent and kissed me.

I opened for his tongue, wanting to taste him, and he wrapped me in his arms, clutching tight, the languorous mauling beginning a chain reaction of aching need that only he could sate.

He lifted me off my feet, and I wrapped my legs around his waist as he walked me down the hall to the bedroom I’d slept in the night before and closed the door behind us. I arched in his grip as he cupped my ass, and we tumbled together onto the bed.

I was on top, and when he tried to move, to roll me to my back, I leaned over and sealed my lips to his, kissing him deep, sucking on his tongue, wanting more.

“I need—Jin,” he growled.

Leaning sideways, I reached into the nightstand drawer and retrieved the small bottle of lube, dropped it onto the bed beside him, and then returned to my exploration of his mouth.

I couldn’t stop, he tasted so good, and the kisses, one after another, made me forget everything but him. When he rolled me to my back, I moved easily, pliant and willing, and when he told me to take my clothes off, I complied as fast as I could.

“Logan,” I gasped when he pinned me beneath his warm, naked body, his skin sleek and hot everywhere I touched.

“My beautiful mate,” he crooned, and I heard the snap of the bottle before his slippery fingers slid inside me.

I jolted in his arms, biting down on his bottom lip as he continued to plunder my mouth, all the while he scissored and rubbed, working my ass, opening me up, stretching me with slow, intimate circles that drove me wild.

“Come inside,” I begged, my moan sounding strangled as he rose over me, curled forward, and slid home.

“Fuck,” he moaned as I rolled to my side, straightened out my left leg and lifted it to his shoulder.

It was a favorite position because he could pump into me as I jerked myself off while he watched. He loved to watch.