Honored Vow

wrap myself up in the fur cloak to return to the
    subzero temperatures outside. I pulled on the traditional thick, unbending
    leather boots that Chuluun had brought me the second night we were
    there. I liked them; they were red, made of buligar, which was the hardest
    leather I had ever felt in my life. It had absolutely no give to it at all. The
    toes were upturned, and when I had asked him why that was, he had said
    that if they were flat, there was no way I would have ever been able to
    walk in them. It made sense, and I was feeling a little like Genghis Khan
    in my fur cloak and boots as I made my way back to the ger.
    At the entrance, I was suddenly yanked forward hard and ended up
    grabbed and tucked to Logan’s chest as someone screamed.
    I was confused, shaken, and I would have been frightened, but I was
    in my own quarters, and my mate was there as well as my sheseru.
    Nothing could hurt me.
    “How dare you!”

    Honored Vow

    243

    I had never heard Yuri’s voice sound like that, menacing and cold,
    completely animal.
    “Bring him to me!”
    I needed to see, but Logan had my head tucked under his chin, and
    he was clutching me tight.
    “Domin! Mikhail!”
    It took a minute because Logan was so damn strong, all power, but I
    wiggled free enough to lean sideways and see that Yuri had one hand
    wrapped around the neck of a man I had never seen… before….
    But I had seen him…. Who was he?
    “It’s the sheseru of the tribe of Nebthet,” Mikhail said. “Armando
    Mojica.”
    He was turning blue from lack of oxygen.
    I prodded my mate. “Logan.”
    He just stared, watching as Yuri slowly strangled the man to death.
    “Logan!”
    “Yuri,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
    My sheseru opened his hand, and the man fell to the floor of the ger.
    Instantly, the coughing and hacking and wheezing began.
    “What—”
    “Fuck!” Logan snarled, grabbing me, lifting me up off my feet and
    walking me backward to my bunk.
    He dropped down with me and wrapped me in his strong arms.
    “What’s wrong?” I asked, my arms up under his, my hands on his
    shoulders. Bunched muscles in his back and arms flexed against me as he
    tightened his grip. He had been really scared. “Logan?”
    It took several minutes with his face buried in my hair before he
    leaned back to look down at me. “I didn’t think I was going to reach you.”
    His voice was a raspy whisper.
    And it had scared him to death. “I’m fine,” I soothed him, pressing
    into him tight. “But do you feel that, inside, that moment?”
    He closed his eyes, breathed through his nose, and when he opened
    his glorious gold eyes, I knew he got it.
    “So you talking about how I’m supposed to live if I lose you?
    Fucking stop, okay?”
    After a minute he nodded. “Okay.”

    244

    Mary Calmes

    I lunged at him and he grabbed me, and we were both on our knees,
    wrapped together, when Domin squatted down beside us.
    “Does anybody care about what just happened? Or do you need to go
    somewhere and fuck?”
    Someone was cranky.
    I turned my head to look at him. “That was the sheseru of the tribe of
    Nebthet, and he’s pissed because if I had only used my power earlier
    yesterday, then his semel would still be alive. I’m sure both he and his
    sylvan blame me.”
    Logan let me go, leaning back to look at me with the same
    expression Domin had, like he was confused and shocked at the same
    time.
    “It makes sense. I would blame me too. But they don’t get that I was
    only partly in control of what I was doing yesterday. I’m working on
    getting command of it, but I still don’t know, and since there aren’t any
    other nekhene cats around to ask, I’m sort of screwed.”
    Domin nodded. “That’s exactly why he was here. He wanted to kill
    you.”
    “Please return him to his sylvan after you warn him not to come
    af—”
    “No!” Logan roared. “He dies!”
    I rolled forward, my hands on his face. “No more blood, no more
    killing, please.”
    “Jin—”
    “Just warn him, let him look at Yuri and Crane and Taj and know
    that he can’t touch me. And then let him look at you, semel-netjer, and
    your maahes, and send him on his way.”
    He was deciding, thinking.
    Let him understand there can’t be any blood because of me. Never
    because of me.
    I stared at him, willing him to remember what it was that I stood for
    in his life: the love, the irrevocable trust, and the vow that was always
    between us.
    He could never punish