Honored Vow

feline. The muscles were pumped
    big, but even in this form, Yuri still would have been bigger. The shift
    altered features but couldn’t add size or weight, just lengthened some
    muscles and bulked others. I was the only cat who changed completely,
    and no one knew why, the answer always being the same: nekhene.
    As my eyes ran over my mate, I calmed, dragged in air, and finally
    lifted my hands to his face.
    He shivered, taking a step back, and I fell again as he dropped me
    down the wall, abrading my robe, scraping skin as I crashed to the ground.
    “Logan,” I got out, even as he was on me, claws driving into my
    shoulder as he held me trapped in his grip.
    I heard a snarling growl close, and he turned his head and moved,
    giving way to the other panther, allowing him close. It was the way of
    cats, the dance of dominance. Another cat would growl at Logan and bare
    his teeth, and Logan would retreat, allowing the other cat close until he
    decided he wanted to investigate me again and would drive the usurper
    away. I had seen it at many gatherings, with panthers, the circling, the
    flash of fang, the swipe with claws. It would go back and forth, because
    Logan wasn’t certain of me, wasn’t sure who or what I was. So he

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    Mary Calmes

    retreated and let the other dominant male near. It would go on as each
    semel struggled to realize what he could claim, what was his, and who
    belonged to him.
    Normally Logan knew me at all times, but he had been an animal too
    long and been allowed to shift back, only partway, to his werepanther
    form. So now he wasn’t sure of me, and the noise and the smell of blood
    and Amirah’s suffocating, cloying pheromones… all of it swirling
    together was driving him mad.
    Scrambling to sit up, I sat there, frozen, as the other semel leaned
    forward to sniff me. It was hard to smell anything in the chaotic pit, but he
    tried, pressing his nose against my throat even as I turned my head away.
    Seconds later, the semel flipped me over onto my hands and knees,
    and I made a noise that I wasn’t proud of, part anger and frustration, part
    sick, cold terror. In my human form there was no fighting whatever he had
    planned. I was completely at his mercy unless I shifted—but if I became a
    nekhene, I would lose everything. But to be raped… Logan would hate
    himself, hate that it had happened to me, that he had allowed it to occur,
    and so I would lose him anyway. I wasn’t sure what to do, and I had
    seconds to make a choice that would affect the rest of my life.
    It turned out I didn’t have to.
    I had never heard a noise like the one that followed my own. It was a
    strangled, roaring cry, almost a howl, and it was filled with pain and
    outrage and fury. The sound blew through me, made me shiver with dread.
    I was released instantly, and the entire room went silent and still. No one
    moved, not even Amirah.
    The hush was almost as frightening as the sound had been. When I
    turned my head, Logan was crossing the floor to me, eyes huge, mouth
    open, snarling low as he came so all I saw were fangs and claws and his
    hard, obvious erection. The semel who had thought to claim me scuttled
    away, and I was aware that the space was frozen around me. No one was
    even breathing as Logan dropped down, crouching on the ground beside
    me, panting, heaving, nostrils flaring as he inhaled me.
    I understood at once, because he smelled like her.
    He had been on the other side of the room, prepared, from the looks
    of him, to fuck Amirah, the scent of arousal clinging to him, when he had
    heard me whimper.

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    The sound he knew, my resonance, coupled with my familiar posture
    of submission when he turned to look for me, had combined to clear the
    fog from his brain. For a split second, he had been the semel of the tribe of
    Mafdet, and he knew who I was, what I was, knew I belonged to him and
    that another was about to claim me. He had warned the other semel fast
    that to touch his mate would bring swift death. I would remember the
    sound for the rest of my life and pray that he would never have to make it
    again.
    I rolled to my knees and faced him. “My semel,” I said softly,
    leaning forward, my lips parting, finally releasing my pheromones. I
    wrapped him in the aroma that was mine alone, letting him taste my
    desire, my overwhelming, devouring need.
    He reached for me with a clawed hand, and I slowly, gently touched
    the underside of his wrist, my thumb sliding back