Honored Vow

voice, and his musky, sweet scent, I could momentarily
    stave off a breakdown. His presence was soothing, girding.
    That revelation was disconcerting, because we weren’t friends and I
    knew he was only there out of duty but… after we picked him up, just the
    calm that washed over me when he sat down in the back of the limo, the
    way his hand slid over my knee as he moved by, had helped. And we
    weren’t friends, we weren’t close—the maahes, or prince, of my tribe and
    I were more like roommates than anything else, or had been before he
    moved out. Now, when he came to see Logan on tribe business, we barely
    had two words for each other, so it was weird that his being there meant
    anything at all. Yuri made more sense; he was my sheseru, there, as
    always, to protect me, keep me safe, and so his solid presence comforted
    me. But Domin, that he mattered at all, especially since his duty was to
    Logan and not to me, was confusing. Why being swallowed in the deep
    dark-brown gaze shored me up I had no clue.
    Logan put his hand gently but firmly on the back of my neck before
    he told the man that we were ready. As I walked into the antiseptic-
    smelling room, I realized that his touch was the only thing keeping me
    vertical. If Logan were not standing beside me, I would have been on the
    floor. I had no strength of my own, only his. As werepanthers, touch was
    always comforting—animals craved contact—but at that moment it was
    all there was.
    Inside the room we were introduced to Althea Nelson. She was the
    assistant medical examiner for Clark County, and she began with an
    explanation.
    “There was a fire, his townhouse burned, so I want you both to be
    prepared for what you’re going to see.” She was a small woman, thin,
    compact, with clear, piercing brown eyes. Her look managed to be
    sympathetic and matter-of-fact all at the same time. “Are you ready?”

    Honored Vow

    3

    The body of my best friend was lying under a black plastic sheet on
    a cold metal table in a brightly lit room. I had never been less ready for
    anything in my entire life. My heart hurt.
    Two hands came down on my shoulders as I felt my mate’s chest
    press against my back. There was more of his strength coming my way,
    transferred by heat and touch through my clothes, through my skin, deep
    into me. It was all I had.
    The sheet was folded back.
    It took a second because my brain questioned, but my stomach
    rolled, and so I was briefly overwhelmed, drowned under a landslide of
    emotion before the scream tore through my brain. Because I was the reah
    of my tribe, one of my gifts was that during the change from human to
    animal, I normally retained my logic. Being a reah was the only reason
    that I was able to take a breath and finally speak. In that moment the cat in
    me, and not the man, was more useful.
    “That’s not Crane Adams.”
    Seconds of time clicked by before the assistant medical examiner
    figured out what she wanted to say to me. I watched her, saw the concern
    flit across her sharply cut features. She probably heard disbelief a lot. “Mr.
    Rayne, you—”
    “This man looks like him.” I coughed because my throat was dry
    from not being used. “But that is not his face.”
    She cleared her throat. “Mr. Rayne, how can you tell what—”
    “No,” I cut her off. “I know what you’re thinking, but I’m positive.
    I’ve been looking at him since I was six years old. It’s not him.”
    “Mr. Ray—”
    “And if you check for an appendix and find one, then you’ll know
    you’re looking at the wrong man too.”
    There was thundering silence.
    I heard the clock on the wall. It was one of those white faces with
    black numbers, nothing artsy about it, function being its only offering.
    “Mr. Adams had his appendix out?” She looked startled. “That
    wasn’t in his health records that we received from Chicago.”
    “Because it happened in Arizona when he was twenty-one,” I
    informed her, and even though it was horrible and some poor man was
    dead, my relief was overwhelming. A whimper passed my lips as I

    4

    Mary Calmes

    recalled Crane insisting that he was not hungover, he was really sick this
    time, goddamn it! The whining had gone on for hours before I finally
    broke down and took him to the emergency room. He had been way up on
    his high horse as they wheeled him into surgery, all that righteous
    indignation because for once I was wrong. The last thing I’d heard as the
    doors swung closed