Crucible of Fate

“And once you set your sight on a course of action, you will not be able to push it from your mind.”
    He was so right.
    I was assaulted by everything that needed to be changed on a daily basis and crushed under the weight of the status quo. The landslide of obligations from the vital to the mundane never stopped. There were expectations and demands, and endless responsibilities.
    I hated it.
     
     
    S IX months had come and gone, and still I felt like I was drowning. Every morning when I woke up, I wondered if that day would be the day I finally got my bearings. I was still waiting. I wanted to go back to the night Logan Church had twisted in his seat and stared at me with a glint in his gold eyes, and tell him to go to hell.
    “You should be a semel again,” he had said with that familiar deep rumble in his voice. He had no idea the effect he had on me, on everyone; it was simply how he was, just Logan. “You’re ready, Domin. You need to step out into the light.”
    Two years before, the man had ended my reign. I had been the semel of a tribe of werepanthers, leader of the tribe of Menhit, and he had fought me in the pit and won. He could have cut out my heart with his claws, but instead… instead he offered the path to redemption. He opened his home, welcomed me into his tribe and into his life. I was trusted, my counsel heeded, my strength relied upon. It was a gift, the second coming of the friendship we had when we were young. I had worried that I would be consumed by bitterness and would turn on him, catch him unawares, betray him, and then kill him. But I had forgotten about my own heart.
    I loved Logan. Not like a lover, not with carnal intent, but—and it was so cliché—like the brother I never had. I wanted him back in my life more than I wanted to hurt him.
    I was a shitty leader: the selfish kind, the vindictive kind, the one everyone wished would just die already so they could get someone better, someone who cared at all. So when he beat me in the pit, absorbed my tribe, and took me in, I simply surrendered. Logan was a force of nature, and I had been so tired of fighting him, fighting his nobility and his ethics and his strength, that I let the bitterness go. No good had come from it. Time, instead, to try something new.
    Being his maahes, the prince of his tribe, had worked for me. I was easily the second in power. He made the decisions; I carried them out. He navigated; I drove. I was able to be his emissary because I was talking for him, not me. It was so easy.
    What came as a surprise was that I changed. I shed my anger, my vanity, and all the pain, and I became everything he’d always seen in me. The man’s faith had made me better, his day-to-day belief invested me in the future of the tribe, in the people, in growth and security and the welfare of all. I was different now, and I owed it all to my old friend, my new semel, Logan Church.
    So when he had gazed at me with his honey-colored eyes and told me he wanted me to reclaim my birthright, I couldn’t argue, because he believed. I could be, he said, not just a semel, but the semel, the semel-aten, the leader of the entire werepanther world. I would be able to lead those who wanted to follow me because of the changes I had experienced myself. I would be able to get through to those werepanthers who had lost their faith and their way. I would be a catalyst for change and restore prodigals to the fold, Logan was certain of it.
    “You’re insane,” I had replied. “It should be you. You’re the strongest.”
    He shook his head. “You’re wrong, it’s you.”
    But no one was stronger than Logan Church. He was semel-netjer, the only panther in the world whose mate was also a nekhene cat.
    Jin Church, his reah, was the most fearsome werepanther I had ever seen, that anyone had ever seen, and only Logan had tamed him, could tame him, because only Logan was his true-mate. It was ridiculous for him to even suggest that I could be stronger.
    “But you can go anywhere and do anything,” he assured me. “I need to stay in the place I was born, rule my tribe, and never leave. All I want to do is go to bed every night with my mate in my arms and wake up every morning to his beautiful gray eyes. Do you understand? You’re stronger than me because you can be whatever you want. All I can be is me.”
    I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
    “You’re going to be semel-aten.”
    I was certain I had not heard him