Honored Vow

never hurt me,” I told him, collapsing down onto the bed,
    rolling over on my back to look up at him.
    The smile he was gifting me with made his gold eyes molten with
    heat. “Should I lick you again to make sure?”
    And amazing as it was, as sated as I was, the thought of his
    wonderful, talented tongue back in my ass made my cock throb and my
    ass twitch all over again….
    I wanted him; the nekhene ached for him… where was he?
    My desire finally permeated my thoughts, dragging me back from
    the past to the here and now.
    The yelling was a surprise.

    “JIN!”
    I blinked hard, the last of my daydream dissipating from my
    thoughts. I forgot I had been thinking about Logan, about being loved by
    Logan. I had started off in another place and wound up back at my mate.
    Always my mate.
    “Jin!”

    Honored Vow

    131

    My head snapped up, and Mikhail was there in front of me, angry,
    breathing hard, trembling with fisted hands.
    “Stop!”
    I squinted at him and heard gasps in the room.
    He sank to his knees in front of me, and I watched him puddle to the
    floor.
    “Fuck,” Yuri groaned, and I looked for him.
    I was surprised that the great room was filled with panthers.
    Delphine had shifted, as had Markel, Ivan, Koren, which surprised me,
    and Taj, which shocked me even more.
    “What happened?” I asked Mikhail as he knelt at my feet, hands on
    his thighs, looking like he was doing yoga as he took deep in-and-out
    breaths.
    “Your fuckin’ pheromones happened,” he growled at me as Danny
    padded over to him, rubbing his chin over the man’s shoulder, licking
    behind his ear. He was cute, the size of an ocelot, but gold, maybe more of
    a small cougar.
    “Crane,” I gasped, terrified, as I whirled around to look for him.
    “Where—oh.”
    My best friend had not shifted to his panther form, but what was
    amazing was his enormous grin as he lay there on the floor, spread-eagled.
    “Are you all right?”
    “Fuck yeah,” he sighed, and I realized from the look on his face that
    I was looking at a very satisfied Crane Adams.
    “You came in your jeans.” I scowled at him.
    “I can’t come,” he told me as he rolled his head to the side to look up
    at me. “I don’t have balls full of jizz anymore, idiot.”
    I was horrified at my stupidity, but his smile blindsided me, and then
    I got it. “You were hard and you had an orgasm.”
    He took the baseball cap off his head and scrubbed his still-shaved
    head—he had decided to keep it military buzz short for the foreseeable
    future—and then let out a deep breath up from his soul.
    “Yes orgasm?”
    His eyes were back on mine. “Fuck yeah.”
    The recovery time for a human man was long; apparently the
    recovery for a werepanther took six weeks. And not that he was cured, not

    132

    Mary Calmes

    that physical and emotional scars could be so quickly dealt with, but to
    know that he could still have sex—that would go a long way to helping
    him heal.
    “And?”
    His gaze stayed fastened on me.
    “How do you feel?”
    “I feel better than I have in I don’t know how long,” he said, and his
    eyes were soft.
    He looked like him. The fear wasn’t there anymore, the broken
    shadow in his face was gone, and the smile was all wicked and wild. I
    made a sound in the back of my throat.
    “I missed you too.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.
    Only Crane Adams came back from the horror that had been visited
    on him to the man now sprawled out in front of me. Only him. He was so
    strong inside and out, and—
    “Oh shit,” Mikhail said slowly in disbelief.
    “Oh shit, what?” Crane yawned, sitting up and then rolling to his
    feet.
    “Crane.”
    He looked at my sylvan, waiting.
    “You didn’t shift.”
    His squint was fast. “Why would I shift?”
    “Jin’s power.”
    “And?” He was confused.
    “Crane,” Mikhail said, “Jin’s power is nothing to scoff at.”
    “Yeah, but it’s still just Jin,” he gestured at me. “I wouldn’t have
    even had the, uhm”—he coughed and smiled at the same time—“reaction
    to his scent if my body wasn’t so damn weak.”
    “Danny shifted earlier with just a hint of Jin’s power. Taj shifted, so
    did Markel and Delphine and Ivan. Only you and me and Yuri are still in
    human form. Even Koren shifted.”
    We all looked over at Koren, who was purring loudly as Danny
    rubbed his muzzle up under the larger panther’s chin.
    “Shit,” Yuri grumbled, walking to the front door and throwing