Honored Vow

collided with him, filling them and hugging him hard.
    Crane bolted next, and then Mikhail. When finally he was in front of me, I
    smiled big even as the cries of the entourage that had lost, by his absence,
    their maahes filled the air.
    “I knew you’d be okay.” I sighed deeply. “After Crane reminded
    me.”

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    He turned to my best friend and gave him a grin of pure evil. “You
    told him I was too mean to get hurt?”
    “Pretty much.” Crane smiled back.
    “I missed you,” I said instead of lunging at him. As a rule, we didn’t
    hug.
    “Me too.”
    Staring at him, I realized how shaggy he looked, the full beard and
    mustache, his hair pulled back into a queue longer than he ever let it get.
    But eight weeks of introspection, of solitude and silence, had maybe been
    good for Domin Thorne.
    I just stared at him.
    “Logan’s fine.” He answered the question I hadn’t even asked.
    “Did you talk?”
    “I talked to him,” he teased me. “I figured things out, and before he
    shifted, remember, we had a whole day alone just getting here.”
    And the way he said it was funny. “You guys did what, plotted
    together?”
    He arched an eyebrow for me. “Something like that.”
    “What did you talk about?”
    “That’s between my semel and me,” he said playfully, but I heard
    the thread of seriousness in there. They had decided something, figured
    something out, but what?
    “He’s worried about what will happen if he dies.” My brain jumped
    there.
    His brows furrowed. “No, Jin, Logan doesn’t think he’ll die.”
    I was surprised. “He’s not scared at all?”
    “No, he has bigger concerns.”
    Bigger than death? What the hell?
    “Domin—”
    “The priest is talking,” Crane cut me off, turning me around so I
    could look up at where everyone else was.
    Hamid Shamon was asking that the mates separate themselves from
    their retinue, as they had to be taken and cleansed and changed into the
    ceremonial robes.
    I turned and looked at Crane. “He means sacrificial robes.”

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    Mary Calmes

    He glowered at me. “Knock it off.”
    I saw the other yareahs turning and hugging people, and so I lunged
    at Crane. He clutched me tight, face buried in my hair. Ever so slightly, I
    felt him tremble.
    “I’m not worried about this now or Yuri’s part or Mikhail’s. I’m
    worried about you and me and Domin and Andrian keeping those assholes
    off Logan in three more days,” my best friend told me.
    But that concern had not even crossed my mind.
    “My reah.”
    I turned to Yuri. He hugged me first, and then Mikhail did. Domin
    patted my shoulder. The others I smiled at, and even though Danny
    wanted to touch me, Mikhail wouldn’t let him. Inside the home of the
    semel, there were strict rules, and so the non-caste rules that I had in my
    tribe were not relevant. Only those one lower than my station—Yuri,
    Domin, Mikhail, and Crane—and one higher, Logan, could I touch.
    Everyone else was off limits inside Orso Bataar’s home.
    Tribe members came forward, and my people formed a circle around
    me, all of them facing out as I stripped out of my clothes. A fur cape was
    passed to Crane and then to me, and I wrapped myself up in it from head
    to toe. Everyone moved at the same time, and the priest instructed us to
    form a line and kneel. Following his instruction, we all moved quickly.
    Hamid Shamon descended with everyone who had been above us on
    the tier, what looked, from the floor, like a portico carved directly from the
    rock. He stopped in front of the first yareah.
    “Katrina Kozel, yareah of Anatoly Kozel, semel of the tribe of
    Ptahket from Kiev in the Ukraine. We grieve the loss of your maahes.”
    She bowed low, thanking the priest for receiving her and for his
    sympathy before she offered him her hand. He squeezed it briefly before
    stepping aside. The semel-aten took her hand next; then his new sheseru,
    the man who would be testing her mate; the phocal; and the semel of the
    tribe of Khertet and his mate Khongordzol.
    The small procession moved down the row, one after another. They
    moved from one yareah to the next: Narae Yusuke, yareah of Narae
    Hiroshi, semel of the tribe of Reshep from Hokkaidō, Japan; Teresa
    Medina, yareah of Gavin Medina, semel of the tribe of Nebthet from Santa
    Cruz, Bolivia; Juliet Payne, yareah of Wallace Payne, semel of the tribe of

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    Taweret from Drake, Pennsylvania; and Kushi Oyuun, yareah of