Trusted Bond

include me, and I was told
    what an honor it was to have me in their home. In fact, there was an entire
    houseful of panthers who wanted to come in and see me, if I would allow
    it. There was no way to say no.
    I left Alexandra in the room with her son, as he had to be watched,
    had to be reminded to keep drinking water until his body regulated itself
    and he could shift. Until he could, he had more water to drink.
    ―It has to be just plain old water?‖ he whined, looking up at me.
    ―Yep,‖ I told him, rising up out of my chair, slightly unsteady
    myself.
    Rocco reached up and clutched my hand, and Artem was suddenly
    there to grasp my arm. I had not heard the large man come in.
    ―Maybe I should take you home, my reah.‖
    ―No, I‘m fine,‖ I assured him, turning to look down at Rocco and
    squeeze his hand gently. ―You can drink whatever you want whenever you
    want, but you must always make sure that with any alcohol you drink, you
    drink the same amount of water. If you throw off the balance, you run the
    risk of a coma. And if your brother or your Mom has to take you to the
    doctor to put an IV in you… that sucks, believe me. I watched them do it
    to my best friend a couple of times and you sit for hours with this big-ass
    needle in you.‖
    He nodded, his bottom lip trembling. ―Thank you, my reah, for being
    there to help me.‖
    I bent over and hugged him, and his skinny arms went around my
    neck, holding tight. He inhaled my scent and shivered hard.
    ―Come, my reah,‖ Artem said when I straightened up. ―Let me walk
    you to the living room.‖
    I followed him back down the stairs that I had climbed earlier to
    Rocco‘s room and realized that not only were there only panthers at the
    party, but they were all members of my tribe.
    Normally city tribes were much smaller than the more remote
    locations or country ones. The size of a werepanther tribe was dependant
    on the semel. If the semel owned a lot of open, undeveloped land that
    could be hunted on, then the tribe was usually larger, because the land
    could support it. If there was no land, but the semel was wealthy, like
    Logan‘s friend Justin Cho, then the semel could afford to take the tribe
    Trusted Bond

    27

    someplace to shift and hunt on a monthly basis. As he was in San
    Francisco, Justin didn‘t have open land at his disposal, but there were a lot
    of preserves in California and private ranches that he paid handsomely to
    have for his use. His monthly gatherings were always in different places,
    and he hired buses for those who couldn‘t afford the transportation
    themselves.
    The gatherings that Logan had were on his own land, and since his
    family owned a hundred acres of it above Lake Tahoe, there was more
    than enough room. The land itself was probably worth millions and had
    been handed down from generation to generation. It would have cost a
    fortune to develop, as high up as it was. The lower area, house, and
    glassworks, were owned solely by Logan himself and me. My name was
    on everything right next to his. If anything ever happened to him, it was all
    mine. Not that I cared about wealth. What I cared about was Logan. I
    needed him; the rest was gravy.
    Most of the semels of city tribes would not be able to tell the
    members of their tribe just by looking. Only the semels of tribes that
    stayed together, in one place, that were more like extended families, only
    those could say for certain who belonged and who didn‘t.
    It was funny—Logan Church lived in a small place; he had a small,
    lucrative business that generated a reliable source of income, enough to
    support himself, his family and his home. He funneled quite a bit of funds
    right back into his business and so stayed profitable. He was not a rich
    man, but neither was he a poor one. Since I had become his reah, more and
    more people had joined his tribe, settling in Incline Village just to be close
    to him—and close to me.
    Logan should have been a small and insignificant semel of a
    forgettable lake town tribe, but at last count we had a little over two
    hundred members. The monthly gatherings and hunts were now run more
    like festivals, and Logan had just mandated that more khatyu, fighters, be
    trained to police the events. He had put Markel, Domin Thorne‘s former
    sheseru, in charge of the new recruits. I had concerns about the growing
    numbers of our tribe—I wanted us to stay a large family instead of a
    group—but as Logan had become