Crucible of Fate

werepanther CIA or something. There has to be. Someone is handling situations, and we know it’s not me. I’m a figurehead with no power except for any other semel over my tribe right here.”
    “You make law for everyone.”
    I dismissed that with a wave.
    “And it just so happens that the tribe of Rahotep is the largest single tribe in the world.”
    “Yes, but if you put it into perspective and say every panther in the world….” The number was just staggering. “Who does that? Who is responsible for everyone?”
    “I think, in all seriousness, everyone is responsible for their own and maybe the tribe closest to them. I mean, it was on Logan to make you stop when you were out of control; maybe that’s how it is everywhere.”
    I shook my head. “That’s too simple. Think about it. What if Logan and Christophe were just as fucked up as me? If that was true, then the entire corner of Nevada would have crazed werepanthers running around.”
    “Yes, but Logan ended your tribe,” he reminded me. “He ended your reign as semel. Who’s to say that something similar doesn’t occur every day?”
    “But if single semels are just policing themselves, why doesn’t the whole thing just collapse and we’re on the six o’clock news everywhere?”
    He shook his head. “You’re overthinking this.”
    I wasn’t, though; he was just missing it. There had to be a big brother—there simply had to be—but who or what that was, that was the question. I didn’t want to be a figurehead. I wanted to make a difference, and on a larger stage than my own tribe. But I had no idea how to do it.
    I did have the power to change the law, though, and that was where I was planning to focus all my energy, if I could just figure out what to start with and how. Everything had to be revamped, but I was buried under the weight of what I should have been doing versus what I was doing. I was on my second rant of the night. If the first was the conspiracy of silence, my next familiar tangent was change.
    Yuri said the time for me to simply be had passed. I had to embody the revolution I wanted to see, not simply hope for it. I alone could become a catalyst for action.
    “There’s no way,” I railed, pacing in our room, back and forth at the foot of the bed as he lay stretched out on the mattress watching me. It was how it always went, from firebrand to quitter; I swung back and forth daily. “How do I, the infidel, expect to simply upend thousands of years of this-is-how-we-do-things ?”
    He was waggling his eyebrows.
    “What?” I yelled.
    “You simply say ‘this is the way we’re going to do it from now on.’ You do what we’ve discussed—proclaim yourself akhen-aten and begin a new reign with your players on the board.”
    I found myself staring at him. “It’s not that easy.”
    “I think it is.”
    “That’s because you’re not the semel-aten!”
    “And you’re not either.” He tipped his head to one side. “Well, at least you don’t want to be.”
    “Yuri—”
    “You hate it here,” he said, cutting me off. “Not because you’re here in Egypt, but because you don’t like how the upper class treats the lower, how the priest keeps his temple, or how you are supposed to treat the servants in your own villa. You hate the classes of people instead of one tribe that stands together, and you hate that a hundred semel-atens before you and a hundred priests have kept this city in the Dark Ages instead of letting it join the modern world.”
    “Yes!”
    “Then fucking fix it, my lord,” he placated me.
    “It’s not that easy.”
    “Change is never easy.” He shrugged. “Who lied and said it would be?”
    I flopped down on the end of the bed.
    After a moment, I felt the mattress lift and dip and realized he was moving behind me. When his strong arms wrapped around my neck, I grunted and leaned back against him.
    “You’ll do the right thing.” He sounded so sure.
    “How do you know?”
    “Because you always do.”
    “That’s not true.” I closed my eyes, savoring the feel of his skin, the heat of his chest against my back, and the stubble-covered jaw grazing mine.
    Did he know what a simple comfort his touch was? How did everyone in the world not want a mate? Having someone to listen when you unburden your soul and to sleep wrapped around in the night? How was that not a prerequisite for life?
    “You are inherently good,” he said, his voice a vibrating purr against the side of my throat.