Honored Vow

oblivion until I was again looking into the
    raw and ragged eyes of my mate.
    The hatred in him was palpable. If he got loose, even for a second,
    the man flogging me was dead. When my legs finally went out on me, the
    shackles cut into my wrists as I hung there on the cross. It was undignified
    and I felt weak and unmanly, like I should have held myself up, but I was
    drenched in blood, muscle and bone feeling as though they were exposed,
    and each new fissure that opened in my flesh caused more shivering.
    My tongue was swollen in my mouth; my head was pounding with
    dull, aching, relentless pain, and I could not control the retching caused by
    the nausea. I was in shock, and my body was shutting down with the need
    to eat and drink and shift.
    “The trial of law is now concluded.”
    It took long minutes for the words to register, and I realized I was
    tensed and waiting for the next stroke of the lash that was not coming. I
    found that I could not unclench my body.
    When I felt hands on me, I looked up at Mikhail. He was flecked
    with blood, covered in sweat and dirt, and his eyes were dead.
    I shook my head. I didn’t want to see the hurt there on him, in his
    gaze, but I couldn’t fix it right that second. I couldn’t even stand. I would
    have reached for him, but my arms would do nothing but hang useless at
    my sides.
    “It’s over, Jin,” he told me.
    I was a panther a second later, rolling, twisting, clawing free of the
    restraints. There were gasps as I lifted my head and surveyed the pit.
    Teresa Medina was on the ground, panting, her hair soaked with
    sweat, looking more dead than alive.

    Honored Vow

    211

    Yusuke Narae was shifting, but not so fast that I couldn’t see her
    ruined flesh. We had all been horribly beaten. I walked stiffly over to
    Yusuke and stood over her as she finished. I helped her out of her
    restraints, shredded them with my claws to free her. When I bent my nose
    to hers, she touched it with hers. It was dry and hot, and that was
    dangerous. She needed water to cool her feverish temperature. I purred,
    and it calmed her, allowing her shift to quicken. Once she was lying
    beneath me, all sleek golden panther, she rose and walked with me to
    Teresa.
    The yareah of the tribe of Nebthet was not moving. She had been
    released and laid on the ground, but her chest was not rising and falling.
    When I called to her, it took long minutes for her eyes to flutter open and
    focus. She looked like she was hovering on the verge of death, her skin
    ashen, covered in sweat, as she began to shiver.
    I called again, a warning, and she tensed before I sent my
    pheromones hurtling into her.
    The spasm made it look like her body had been snapped in half
    before she convulsed with the shift. Others tried to close in on us, my
    tribe, Yusuke’s, even Teresa’s, but Yusuke’s warning snarl, her bristling
    stance, hair raised, made everyone keep their distance.
    She was all panther; there was no yareah in there at the moment, just
    animal if anyone was stupid enough to test her.
    “They’re out of their minds with pain,” the priest told the room.
    “Everyone stand back.”
    It took long, exhausting minutes, but when Teresa, too, was beside
    me, I bolted for the door with the two yareahs close behind me.
    I could smell the water and the meat, and so led them to it.
    It was toward the entrance of the semel’s home, in the long hall,
    three enormous platters of raw meat and a trough of fresh mountain-
    stream water.
    I drank first, gulped down liquid until my tongue no longer felt as
    though it were cracking in my mouth. Yusuke did the same; Teresa ate
    first. We switched then, us eating, Teresa drinking. And the three of us
    didn’t move, just tore through the meat, drank and drank and drank, filling
    ourselves, until each one of us could breathe.

    212

    Mary Calmes

    I shifted then, back to man, and then back to panther, and I watched
    the others look at me, Yusuke shifting twice in the time it took me to do
    ten, Teresa only once. By the fifteenth time, the skin on my back was
    tender but new. On her fourth shift, Yusuke no longer had open, seeping
    welts on her skin, but scabs. Teresa was having more trouble.
    Finally, I returned to panther form and lay down. Yusuke came
    forward, head down, and I gave her the growl of welcome. She was
    instantly curled into my side, tail wrapped around her as we watched
    Teresa eat. She had to stop when she started retching, and I lifted my head
    and