Trusted Bond

I shot out the other end.
    As I gathered myself for the race, I took inventory of my body. The
    two previous dinners, the gorging I had done at every sitting since I woke
    up in the semel‘s home, as well as that which I had just finished, would
    sustain me. I was steady on my feet, I wasn‘t lightheaded, and I felt power
    rolling through me. It wasn‘t my normal surge of speed waiting for me to
    call upon it; something was different, changed, twisted. I was not myself.
    My vision was higher, like I had grown, like I was larger. I was not
    at all the panther I normally was. The fact that I was at eye-level with the
    men, and they were all over six feet, was momentarily disconcerting. The
    bolting of the doors as they were secured snapped me from my daze. I
    rushed forward.
    Usually I would have looked for another way out, seeing the locked
    exit, but I was focused on that escape route and had the sudden urge to
    charge the door. I always weighed my choices when I was in my panther
    form. Most cats did not, could not, completely a slave to their animal
    nature, but being a reah, I was never without the full use of all my
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    Mary Calmes

    faculties. The confidence was what swayed me; there was no voice, in that
    split-second timing, that said no. I lowered my head and rammed it.
    There should have been a moment of terror that a ten-foot hand-
    carved wooden door easily two feet thick succumbed to my weight, falling
    forward into the yard. I tried to think, but my brain just filled with
    screaming, roaring joy that drowned everything else.
    I was free.
    I flew out into the courtyard, and when I saw the stone wall, I
    gathered and leaped. It was an ambitious jump for anyone, but I felt my
    body sort of still, enfold on itself, and then explode outward. The speed
    went from almost a slow-motion stilling, the top of the roller-coaster, to
    the slow tip over, the hurtling downward roar.
    I saw the others surround me, the Shu cats, and wondered at Jamal‘s
    motives. I did not wonder at those of the semel. I knew that Ammon had
    ordered his men to catch me, trap me, and put me in another dark place.
    Why he hated me or feared me, I had no idea. And for the first time in as
    long as I could remember, I didn‘t care. There was only the joy of my own
    power.
    Worrying about others was what I did. Never, ever, did I think of
    myself first. I was made to put the needs of everyone before my own. It
    was hard-wired into a reah. But my mate had been purposely kept from
    me, my tribe was an ocean away, and everyone I loved or wanted or cared
    about was missing. All I had was speed and my power, and for once, I let
    it be all there was. I focused only on the damage I could inflict.
    My mind drifted. What did I smell like? Logan had said once that I
    smelled like fire and rain, burning wood on a crisp autumn night and the
    air when it was so pure after a storm that you could taste it when you
    breathed it in. I thought of his words, what they meant to him, the home
    and warmth and love that I alone represented. And then I released that
    feeling out.
    Panthers fell around me. I had been racing with no less than twenty
    across the field that lay beyond the wall of the semel‘s villa. But when I
    turned my head, I saw some of them collapse, others flying forward
    headfirst into the ground, dropping as though they had been blown down
    by a heavy wind. The pheromones overwhelmed many, but others, like
    Jamal, kept pace with me, ran on, fought to remain at my side. When I
    doubled back, he had to scramble to keep pace, running by me for several
    Trusted Bond

    147

    yards, the whiplash turn hard to maneuver. I was back on the streets faster
    than I thought possible.
    I didn‘t return to the villa but instead charged down one of the
    cobblestone roads. The streets were narrow, crowded with shops and
    restaurants, and beyond that was the marketplace I had visited the day
    before. A panther charged in front of me, trying to turn me, herd me in
    another direction. But I stopped, changed direction, and ran on. It was a
    move worthy of an NFL running back, that ability to make everyone
    trying to tackle you stumble or run by as you simply stopped on a dime for
    a second in order to change course. I was exhausting them, and I was
    surprised. Not that I couldn‘t normally outrun and outdistance any cat I
    came across, but they were Shu panthers and so should have been up to
    the challenge. I was even more shocked that there was no hint