Honored Vow

in the pit but
    also the beauty. On my left, Yusuke held her semel as he lay draped over
    her, heaving with aftershocks of what had to have been a bone-numbing
    orgasm from how exhausted he looked and how scarlet her face was. The
    quivering smile she gave me was embarrassed and sated at the same time.
    On the opposite side of the room, Gavin Medina was in his mate’s
    lap, head back, eyes closed, and his flaccid cock dripping with come as he
    lay, spent and boneless, in her arms. She was stripped naked, as Yusuke
    and I were not, covered in scratches, but smiling down at him as they lay
    together in the dirt. When she turned her head and shuddered, I looked to
    see what was wrong.
    Amirah had risen from where she had been lying close to the wall.
    Apparently she had been struck unconscious at some point and was now
    awake. The three other semels who had killed their mates circled around
    her but didn’t come any closer; she seemed to be holding them at bay with
    her power.
    “It’s not over,” she yelled before she opened her mouth and breathed
    out her pheromones. Hiroshi jerked in Yusuke’s arms; Gavin groaned,
    exhausted, but his primal urges were too strong to deny, and Logan, only
    Logan, didn’t stir or move to rise, instead just tightened his arms and
    rubbed his chin over my shoulder, scent-marking me.
    Amirah came toward us, intent, it seemed, on Logan, because he was
    the only who had not immediately responded. She was strutting forward
    and stripped off her robe as she came, a vision as she closed in.
    My first thought was that she had to be freezing. You could hang
    meat in the pit, and as I shivered, my mate snuggled me tighter, grunting
    softly, comforting me.

    176

    Mary Calmes

    He only wanted me, would, if he were allowed, curl around me and
    go to sleep. He was exhausted—we all were—and still the horror of a reah
    came to try and separate us.
    I was angrier than I thought I was.
    Lifting my head, I released an angry, wild, desperate nekhene power
    to intercept her.
    She screamed and dropped to her knees, fighting, her wail unhinged
    and terrified. If she shifted in the pit she was dead, and everyone knew it.
    That was the law.
    “No!” Her shrieking got louder, and Hiroshi settled, rolling off his
    mate but not leaving her side. There was no allure in terror, and so he
    stayed where he was.
    Gavin curled closer to his mate. I spared Teresa a glance as I had
    Yusuke, and I saw the desperate thankfulness in her gaze.
    “No!” Amirah wailed, and I let it recede, inhabiting once again the
    mantle of reah, of love and shelter and peace.
    “Yield.” I found my voice, my eyes flicking to hers even as Logan
    took a deep breath of me, licking a long line up the side of my throat, the
    small whimpers making me tighten my arms and legs, the desire to climb
    inside his skin nearly overwhelming. “You have done your duty: three
    semels are only panthers, three yareahs lay dead, and three tribes will have
    new leaders. We’re lucky, as the priest had Khongordzol inform us that he
    chose no semels with children, that you have left no orphans crying for
    dead parents.”
    “I don’t care!”
    “But we care!” I yelled back, indicating Yusuke, Teresa, and myself.
    “And you can stop; you’ve done what was required and are now free. Is
    she not free?”
    I lifted my head to the priest and saw that everyone was clustered
    close around the edge now to see the slaughter and the sex.
    “She is free,” the priest said, rendering his verdict, “and no cat may
    ever touch her again without her leave.”
    I returned my eyes to her. “You’re free, Amirah Fehr; you do not
    even have to make account of your actions to the tribe of Ariat or to the
    family of your semel, Terrance McCord.”

    Honored Vow

    177

    She rose stiffly and smiled suddenly. “Attack me again, reah, I’ll be
    ready this time.”
    “Where is your beset?” I called to her. “Let her, or him, offer you
    comfort and counsel now.”
    “Never did I need the same crutch that I have heard you have; I’ve
    never been that weak.”
    But needing Crane had never been anything but a blessing, and
    again, I felt so sorry for her to not even have a companion, not one person
    to always look for as a grounding force. And not that Crane was mine
    anymore, Logan having taken over as my touchstone, but she had no mate,
    no beset and no tribe, she was utterly alone in the world. I ached for her
    and the pain it all must have