Honored Vow

turns coaching him.”
    He nodded and then stretched, smiling. “None of you know Yuri
    very well if you think he’s fucking in the bathroom.”
    And his statement brought all table conversation to an end.
    “No?” Crane asked.
    “No,” Mikhail said, chuckling. “I’ve known Yuri Kosa since I was
    eight and he was seven.” He turned to look at me. “He’s my best friend.”
    I knew they were close, I just didn’t know how close.
    “They’re talking, maybe doing more, but beyond that—he’s your
    sheseru first, Jin. Screwing his new friend in the bathroom wouldn’t
    disrespect Logan, but it would make it hard for him to protect you from a
    position of defenselessness. He would never allow his ability to guard you
    to be compromised.”
    And I knew that. “I know.”
    “So Chuluun is gay?” Danny asked Krem.
    He squinted at Danny. “I don’t understand this question. In our tribe,
    panthers are not considered to have a preference until they find their mate
    and then are simply considered to be mated.”
    “You’re all bi?” He was dumbfounded.
    “One cannot know the sex of one’s mate until the mate is
    discovered, so if you only sleep with men or women, might you not miss
    your mate by limiting your choices?”
    Danny just stared at him.
    “Doesn’t it make more sense to taste all that you would so that you
    may find your mate?”
    “It makes perfect sense,” Mikhail agreed.
    Krem turned to my sylvan. “Only a semel must choose a female
    mate, as he must procreate, and that has always seemed, to us, unfair.”
    “To me too,” Mikhail agreed.

    150

    Mary Calmes

    “So your tribe has no problem with Jin being Logan’s mate and him
    being a man?” Crane asked him.
    “No. A male reah seems like the natural progression of finding your
    mate. It never seemed fair to me that semels alone are locked into the sex
    of their mates because they must procreate, but now, with the coming of
    your semel and your reah, I see that this is not the case. We were all
    pleased to hear that there was one semel among the six who had a male
    mate.”
    “I should have been born here,” I told Krem.
    “And we grieve that you were not, if you were met with any but joy
    when you were discovered to be a reah.”
    My smile, I was sure, was bittersweet.

    THE drive down the endless two-lane highway did not have enough to
    look at to keep me awake. I dozed, fading in and out, listening in intervals
    to Crane talking to Yuri and Chuluun, Yuri and Chuluun talking, and
    Crane and Chuluun talking.
    True to Mikhail’s word, Yuri and the maahes of the tribe of Khertet
    had been speaking privately out on a balcony and not having sex in the
    bathroom. Yuri’s scowl after Mikhail leaned close and whispered to him
    was blistering. Apparently that I had even entertained such a thought did
    not sit well with my sheseru. But I could tell from Chuluun’s actions, the
    way he crowded into my sheseru’s space, grazed his cheek over the back
    of his shoulder, and draped his arm across his seat that he was more than
    interested in getting Yuri in bed.
    Chuluun drove and mentioned sights as we passed them in the dark:
    Ögii Lake, Tsenkher Hot Springs, Bulgan Uul Nature Preserve. He
    explained the history and the importance of each as we drove on. But I
    didn’t care. I was cold, so cold, and even though my blood ran hotter
    because I was a panther, it was still a frigid thirty-six degrees below zero
    outside.
    “When does it warm up here?” Crane asked through chattering teeth.

    Honored Vow

    151

    “We’re in the second of the nine nines,” Chuluun explained.
    “Unfortunately you’ve come here during the coldest eighty-one days of
    winter that start right around the winter equinox.”
    “Is that why you left the Jeeps running the entire time we were
    inside?” Yuri asked.
    “Yes, it gets warmer after Tsagaan Sar.”
    “That’s your New Year, in February, right?”
    “Yes, reah,” he answered me indulgently.
    “And the first day of the New Year festival is called Shiniin Negen.”
    He smiled into the rearview mirror. “You’ve done some reading.”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s frickin’ freezing out here.” Crane shivered again, crossing his
    arms tighter. “How do you guys even leave your homes?”
    “With great effort,” he said, smiling at my best friend before turning
    to me. “Tell me, reah, who will fight in the pit with you?”
    “My beset and me, along with Domin