Honored Vow

it
    open as Koren charged out of it, Danny seconds behind him. They flew
    out into the night together.

    Honored Vow

    133

    “I’m sor—”
    “Oh for crissakes, Jin,” he groused at me, “I don’t give a fuck who
    Danny fucks—I care more about Koren.”
    Koren?
    “Wait. That didn’t come out right. I—”
    “What am I missing?” my best friend asked me.
    “Crane didn’t shift.” Mikhail’s voice rose on purpose to try and get
    us all to focus.
    And we all turned to look at my best friend at the same time.
    “What?”
    “Even in your weakened state,” Mikhail began, studying him for
    perhaps really the very first time, “you didn’t shift. How?”
    Crane shrugged. “I dunno. I’ve had a lifetime of feeling Jin’s power
    run over me. Given, it’s a helluva lot heavier now than it used to be, I can
    actually feel it sort of push its way inside, but it’s still Jin, so I take a
    breath and let it do whatever it wants.”
    “You’re talking about Jin’s power like it’s a living, breathing thing.”
    “Which it’s not, and I get that, but it’s still Jin, right? I mean, you
    guys like him a real lot, but I love him and so does Logan, and I think
    that’s why the power doesn’t bother us. Even the nekhene form likes me,
    I’ve felt it.”
    “You’ve felt my power change to nekhene?” I asked him.
    “Sure. It’s like your reah power is gentle, soothing, makes me feel
    good. The nekhene power, it’s like prickly heat on the back of your neck.
    It comes at me, and I think about you and how I feel about you, and then it
    calms and feels like reah.”
    I was staring at him.
    “What?”
    “I fight it. I fight the power welling up; I fight feeling out of
    control… I fight every part of it.”
    “Yeah, don’t do that.” He yawned before he smiled at me.
    “Don’t do that? This is your sage advice?”
    “Yeah.” He burped and blew it out the side of his mouth. “Sorry, the
    burritos we had for lunch are kinda comin’ back on me.”
    The man was unbelievable. Effortlessly he dealt with my new form,
    my changed energy, because he simply accepted everything about me.

    134

    Mary Calmes

    Without the fight, there was nothing for the nekhene to rebel against, and
    so my power, when it encountered Crane, simply gave up and played nice.
    What the hell?
    “So if everyone just stopped fighting, they wouldn’t shift.” I turned
    to look at Mikhail.
    “It’s not that simple,” he assured me. “Crane has how many years’
    head start knowing you, knowing your power? The rest of us don’t have
    that luxury, and we’re cats, our first instinct is not to submit, not to just
    allow your power to render us helpless.”
    “Is that how you feel when you fight my pheromones?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “It’s not your fault, but you do need to learn to control it. Maybe in
    the next two weeks before we fly out of here, you should let Crane tell you
    how to not fight.”
    “Maybe,” I said, turning to look at my best friend.
    “So….” He smirked at me, gesturing to all the other panthers in the
    room. “How much apologizing do you gotta do now?”
    Shit.

    Honored Vow

    135

    Chapter Eleven

    THE flight from Reno, Nevada to Buyant Ukhaa, the airport in Ulan Bator
    (or Ulaanbaatar, I wasn’t really sure which was the correct spelling; the
    tour book I had said one thing and my plane ticket another), took twenty-
    five hours and twenty minutes. We flew from Reno to Los Angeles and
    then flew United from there to Beijing and Air China to Mongolia.
    The flights were comfortable, and I was glad that Peter had insisted
    on first class. He said that savings were for rainy days and that Logan
    would appreciate riding in luxury on the way home after the sepat. I
    appreciated his unshakeable faith that his son would be home. When I had
    been almost to the door, my mate’s father had surprised me by grabbing
    me tight and pulling me close for a hug. After long minutes, he had let me
    go, stepping back to look down into my face.
    “Bring my son home to me, Jin,” he had said hoarsely.
    I had promised him, as well as Eva and Delphine and Koren, that I
    would bring Logan back, along with Domin. They wanted their maahes
    back too.
    Now, as I stood in an international airport of a very modern-looking
    city—I had stared at it from the air as we landed—the enormity of the task
    was starting to bear down on me. I was a world away from my life, what I
    knew, and my power base.