Crucible of Fate

terse.
    Instead of listening, he took my face in his big hands, hauled me close, and kissed me hard and deep and possessive. When he tipped my head back, my mouth opened, and he swept his tongue inside and mated it with mine.
    I grabbed hold of the heavy jacket, my hands curling around the lapels as I whimpered in the back of my throat. I needed more, wanted more, and I resented everything, all of it, because being semel-aten meant I could not claim my mate whenever I wanted.
    The rules, the protocols, the granted audiences and the myriad of people I saw in the course of a day kept me continually from his side. And then when I did see him, it often erupted because I was angry and he was the only one I could vent my frustrations to—or on—and became me attacking him, yelling, picking fights….
    I wanted everything to be right between us before he left. I put all of it, everything I was thinking and feeling, into the kiss. He had to know how much I loved him. I needed it engrained in him, simply recognized and understood.
    I sucked his tongue inside my mouth, then slid mine over his, stroking, slipping it back and forth, drawing the kiss out, feeling the shiver run through him. I moaned loudly when his hands gripped my ass tight.
    “Domin,” he whispered. I kissed him until he had to tear his lips from mine to breathe. “Are you trying to kill me?”
    “Just trying to make an impression,” I said, lifting my mouth for the next one, tightening my arms around his neck to bring him back down to me.
    “I’ll never get out of here,” he pretended to complain as he fused his lips to mine.
    Seconds later when he shoved me away, I was surprised. “What?” I was panting.
    “I have to go.”
    “Yuri—”
    “Love.” The tone, the lull in it, the adoration, brought me out of my pheromone-fueled haze.
    “I have to go,” he repeated.
    “Take your phone.”
    “It’s in my pocket.”
    “Okay.”
    “You’re adorable.”
    Faced with the dancing clear-blue eyes of my mate, I couldn’t even growl at him. I forced a smile instead to hide my worry, my fear, my aching heart, and most of all, my devouring need to keep him with me. “How long?” I posed the question as nonchalantly as possible.
    “Two weeks, I would think.”
    “How far away is Ipis?”
    “It’s a ten-hour drive,” he said, taking my chin in his hand to lightly brush his lips over mine. “I’ll be home before you know it. I love you.”
    I dismissed him with a flick of my wrist. The evil glint in his eyes said I wasn’t fooling him in the least.
    Watching him walk away was almost physically painful. What the hell was I supposed to do without my mate for two weeks?

Chapter 2

     
    Y URI had called me once from the road and apologized for accidentally taking the wrong phone with him. He’d taken his regular one and not the satellite, so the reception would be spotty at best. I had not been amused.
    “You did it on purpose,” I groused.
    “I really didn’t,” he said, chuckling. “But please don’t worry. I’m under your protection. Who would dare touch me?”
    It was not comforting. I had not been able to talk to him since. I wasn’t really worried—more annoyed with him for not being more careful—but I didn’t even have time to do that properly because of everything swirling around me. I was lucky a new semel wasn’t expected to host the Feast of the Valley until the second year of his reign. I would have been royally screwed since it would have been a mere three weeks away. How it was July already, I had no idea.
    “Elham,” Ebere said, standing when I walked into the room. I still didn’t know what she was doing in Sobek. Maybe it was time to pin her down.
    “What?” I said curtly, feeling like I had just walked into a conversation already in progress.
    “We still haven’t talked about him.”
    “First off, what the hell are you doing in Sobek? Cairo too boring for you all of a sudden?”
    “I was getting to that.” She was annoyed but trying not to let me hear it in her voice. “And no, I love Cairo. I came to talk to you about Elham. I––”
    “What’d you do with your kids? Ditch them somewhere?”
    She glared at me. “My children are safe with my mother and their aunt, my lord. Thank you for your concern.”
    I grunted. “So now you want to talk? You haven’t wanted to fill me in about anything since you got here.”
    “I know, and I’m sorry.”
    “And now, after days of silence, you want the