Crucible of Fate

there, if he were with me….
    “Domin, please!”
    Koren’s voice, as though that would—but I had to thank him and I’d almost forgotten. I needed everything balanced between us.
    “Koren,” I coughed because it was all I could get out.
    “Domin,” he said softly, and I felt his hands on my chest, on my throat, in my hair. “Oh, please.”
    “Thank you for standing beside me at the challenge,” I said, and then it was like my body was set on fire and my bones were melting under my skin.
     
     
    M Y EYES blinked open, and I found Jin, Crane, and Jamal.
    They were stunned.
    I scowled, which made Jin’s face light up.
    “I had to remind the disbelievers that they were in the presence of a semel, not a regular cat. You do not shift enough; they have all forgotten about your power.”
    “Of course,” I said, clenching my jaw as I swatted at their hands and moved fast, much too fast, rolling to my feet in one fluid movement. “Did you call Yuri? Did he answer his phone?”
    I would have fallen if Koren hadn’t been there suddenly to catch my shoulder and brace me.
    “ Domin ,” he said. My name was infused with more feeling than I thought the man capable of. “Be careful, you lost so much blood.”
    “Did he answer?”
    “No, my lord,” Jamal responded. “We have tried; there is no answer.”
    I realized then that I was naked from the waist up, splattered in blood, with an enormous, puffy, red barely healed scar extending from my abdomen to my left pectoral.
    My eyes lifted to Koren’s clear olive ones.
    “The priest had a dagger,” he said. “You would be dead if it hadn’t been for Jin.”
    I looked over my shoulder at the mate of the semel-netjer. He was in a robe with nothing underneath, I was betting.
    “Thank you for saving my life.”
    Jin’s eyes glittered, the light in the clear gray eyes really something to see.
    “The wound in your stomach is deep,” Koren clarified as I held Jin’s gaze. “The knife was only dragged across your chest, the damage merely superficial, just a scratch in comparison. Had Jin not put himself between you and the priest, he would have had your heart.”
    “And what has happened to the priest?”
    “The nekhene cat dismembered him,” Jamal chimed in to tell me.
    The idea that the delicate man I was seeing—because even at five eleven he was still fragile—being strong enough or fearsome enough to rip through flesh, muscle, and bone was shocking. And there he stood, contained, even demure, staring at me from behind his mask of serene tranquility.
    “Did you frighten everyone?” I demanded to know.
    “I did, my lord,” he reported. “But when your wound was shown and the weapon discovered, I was less terrifying and more avenging angel.”
    “Good.” I exhaled slowly, realizing that I was drained and barely able to stand, but having a burning question for Jamal. “When did you start calling Yuri?”
    “The second we knew you would live, my lord, the moment we could stop focusing on you, we tried calling him.”
    “And he hasn’t picked up?”
    “No, my lord,” he slowly uttered. “His phone must be off.”
    But I knew they were trying to call a regular cell phone, not a satellite one.
    “Koren shared with us that Yuri had taken the wrong phone, as he heard a conversation that you and Ebere had about it.”
    I had forgotten Logan’s brother had been in the room as well.
    “So it could be anything, any interference between here and Ipis, but it could also simply be, as I said, off.”
    I absorbed that. “Jamal.”
    “My lord?”
    “Keep trying to call Yuri.”
    “Of course,” he said, sounding pained. “Now, would you please go to your room? If you could see the hue of your skin, you—”
    “It doesn’t matter about me. You have to find Yuri!” I yelled and exerting that much energy made my knees buckle.
    Koren pulled me close, bracing me with his slightly taller frame. “Put your arm around my neck.”
    I did as I was directed.
    “Lean on me, for once.”
    Something sarcastic and barbed lay on the tip of my tongue, but his face, turned into me, behind my ear, flooded me with comfort. It was instinctive, his nuzzling, one cat to another, but it calmed me, the man I was, not simply the animal. “I’ll take you to your room,” he said, his voice a sultry purr over my skin. “Let me.”
    I was light-headed.
    “We’ll be right behind you with water and meat,” Crane rasped, pushing Jin forward.
    “You’ll keep trying