Trusted Bond, page 10
He was so heavy I could barely breathe, and the gravel was cutting into my palms. “And it’s not like you didn’t give yourself to me willingly all those years ago. It will be just like that all over again.”
No, please God, no. “I will make you feel so good.”
There were spots, and they were getting bigger and brighter. The ringing in my ears became deafening. The darkness was a relief.
THE HAND slid over my bare buttocks, and I shuddered. “I wanted it to just be us, but you’re still strong enough to fight me a little. And I want you to be awake for it; I want you to scream when I fuck you.”
I trembled, bile rising in my throat.
“Can you feel the lube?” he asked, his breath hot and wet in my ear. “I brought it for you.”
Sudden click before my world exploded in glaring light, and I closed my eyes tight so I wouldn’t go blind. I had been in darkness for at least a week, maybe longer; it would take more than just seconds for my eyes to adjust and not burn. The gasp, like many indrawn breaths at once, turned to absolute silence. “Ohmygod.” One voice rose above the others. “It smells like piss and blood in here.”
There was a good reason for that.
“What the fuck?”
I curled up into a ball because I couldn’t move away, no strength left, no nothing, just trying to protect myself. “Jesus,” someone else moaned, and it was sharp and loud and pained. It was as though the person had been startled by my presence.
“What?” Laurent asked, and I heard how surprised his tone was. “I don’t think he can do much anymore, but I still want you guys to hold him down while I fuck him, just in case. Put him over the table over—”
“Oh no…. Oh God.” The wail of dismay hurt to hear.
“What’re you…? No, no, no, you don’t have to worry about—”
“Laurent!” His name was yelled. “Are you insane? What the hell have you done?”
“Look at all the blood… have you ever seen so much—”
“He looks like he was attacked by a fuckin’ animal!”
“Wait, that’s not all me, some of that was on him from before. I think he was in a fight.”
“Holy shit… we’re so fuckin’ dead.”
The voices were layering on top of one another, rising, desperate, and frightened. “Edward,” someone gasped, “what the fuck are we gonna do?”
There were at least four men in the room now besides Laurent.
“There’s someone outside,” another man whispered.
“It’s probably Sean, just let—”
“Why the fuck are you whispering, you stupid shit? There’s only us here.”
Loud bang followed by cursing, and I heard shuffling across what I knew now was an old stone floor covered in dirt. “Edward!”
“Here,” the call went back, but just barely. “Edward, goddamnit, it’s like a fuckin’ maze in here, where—”
“Here!” the voice snarled back, louder, mad.
“Fuck!” the newest addition yelled, close now. “Why the fuck am I getting a call the middle of the fucking night to come out to the middle of—Jesus.”
It sounded like he had been sucker-punched in the gut.
“What the hell did you guys do?” His voice caught, broke. “We didn’t do shit! This is all your semel’s work, Sean—your fuckin’ semel!”
“David. What’re—”
“Because your useless-ass sylvan didn’t know who to call.”
“Call Bobby, for crissakes! He’s the one who—”
“You can’t call fuckin’ Bobby, he’s a sheseru!”
“Yeah? So? That’s who you need to—”
“That is a reah lying there bleeding to death on the fuckin’ floor. Do you know what the first priority of any sheseru is, you stupid fuck?”
“Why are you yell—what?”
“Yeah, reah—you heard me. I remember him; you will too—just give it a second.”
“But reahs are women not—except… except….”
“Oh, he’s got it now, boys.”
“Jesus Christ, Dave, could you both just try and get a—”
“What, Ed? What? What would you like me not to do right now?”
“You’re his brother. You—”
“And he fuckin’ just killed us all with his bullshit.”
I knew who they were. It would have made sense for them to hide their names, but I understood why they hadn’t. They were looking at me huddled on the floor and talking about me like I was already dead. And maybe I was. There was a long, low exhale of breath from above me. “What are we gonna do?”
Edward was Laurent Bruyere’s sylvan. David was Laurent’s brother, and Sean was one of Laurent’s oldest friends. The fourth man could have been anyone. I wished it had been his sheseru, Robert Kingman, Bobby, but they were smarter than that. If they invited their sheseru, he would have turned on them in a second. I had never met Bobby—he had been away when I met Laurent—but by all accounts, he was a good man and hardwired the same way every sheseru was, to protect and guard a reah. “This isn’t just another one? This isn’t just some random guy?”
The fourth man had spoken, and from his tone I understood that the reality of his situation was just, that second, becoming clear for him. I understood too that Laurent Bruyere, who had once upon a time been kind and sweet, had turned into an abomination. I was not the first man he had tortured and planned to rape. “Who—who is he?”
“Jin Rayne.”
“You—”
“The missing reah?” The fourth man squeaked out. “Ohmygod, Laurent, you kidnapped the reah that everyone’s been—”
“He’s my reah! He belongs to me!”
“Oh fuck me!” David, or Edward, it was hard to tell, cried out. “You guys don’t need to—”
“Laurent, you stupid son of a bitch! You tortured the reah!”
“He’s my reah! He’s mine to do—”
“You can’t do that to a reah! He’ll be missed and—”
“And Bobby’s not here to clean it up!” David roared, his voice, when he was screaming, clearly recognizable. “We’ve never asked him to clean anything up—he doesn’t know about what Laurent does, he can never know. He can’t ever find out.”
“He won’t, okay? He’ll never find out, but right now we need to figure out what the fuck we’re gonna do with the re—”
“No!” The word was yelled so loud it hurt my ears. “My reah stays with—”
“He’s not your reah, you fuckin’ psychopath! He’s mated! He has a semel who he belongs to who’s looking for—”
“No!” Laurent screamed again, and it was awful and high-pitched, sounding desperate and terrified. “Yes! He’s—”
“He’s mated, you idiot!” David roared at him. “Everyone’s talking about it! You kidnapped a mated reah!”
“You’re insane! He can’t be a mated to a semel, he’s a man! Only a—”
“Yes, he can! Yes, he is! You stupid fuck!” David lost it, his voice shaking with fear. “You stole a fuckin’ mated reah! You are so dead, and your tribe… your family… our tribe, my family, all of us, Edward, Sean, Eric, me, your own brother, we’re all fuckin’ dead, because we’re here with you and… oh God.” He whimpered. There was a thundering silence, and all I could think was that the fourth guy’s name was Eric. Why it was important, I didn’t know, but it was. I wanted to know everyone’s name. “He’s mine.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“That’s all you have to—”
“Don’t,” Edward said, his voice deeper, harder, and colder. “He’s out of his mind. It’s up to us. Everyone’s dead if we don’t act now… right now.”
“You guys are insane,” Eric said, his voice squeaky. “You don’t just kill a reah. You die for touching a reah… I don’t even know what happens if you kill one.”
I couldn’t have spoken if I wanted to, but I was too scared to ask for help. No one would help, it was past the point of no return—anyone who saw me now and knew Laurent had only one choice. They would have to help shovel the grave. I wasn’t stupid; I knew how things went when people were cornered. Sins were covered up. I would be covered up. Mercifully, the light went off, but the kick to my side made me feel like I had been dropped in hot lava. “Don’t touch him anymore! For crissakes, Laurent, just leave him the fuck alone!”
“I will do whatever I—”
“Laurent! We need to figure out what to do!”
“What are you—”
“We can’t let anyone find him! We’re all dead if anyone ever finds him!”
Many shoes shuffled across the floor, and then I heard the bang of a heavy door as it was slammed back in place. The quiet after so much noise was comforting. I listened to silence for as long as I could before I passed out.
Warm breeze on my face, scent of dirt and the smell of flowers, but like at a store, that smell of stems and leaves in water, not the decaying smell from the wine cellar. I was outside, and just the fresh air thrilled me. When I opened my eyes, I saw the stars, millions of them glittering all at once, pinpoints in a black curtain. I was naked, and that more than anything else made me feel vulnerable. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even roll myself over and have some semblance of modesty. Lifting my right hand, I touched the side of a hill that I must have either been thrown down or rolled over. My fingers sank into the cool earth, and I took a deep, settling breath. I had never been so tired, and I had lost too much blood to heal. Normally I would have shifted and restored the blood loss, but I had gone too many days without food and only a quarter of the water I needed. Hot tears rolled down the sides of my face and slid into my ears. I wanted Logan. In that moment, when there could be anyone, his was the face I saw. He would have been so happy to hear it, that I thought of him first.
When I tried to lean toward the hill, pain exploded in my chest, behind my eyes, ran down my side like a knife carving through my skin. I shuddered and, on instinct, shifted. My body was still trying to mend itself, and apparently I had just enough reserve to pull off one last act of self-preservation. I knew I was a panther for the split second before I was gone.
Chapter Seven
THE SOUNDS of talking stirred me from fragmented nightmares. Nothing made sense until I woke up and realized that I was dozing, fading in and out so fast that it was hard to keep track of where reality ended and the dreams began. Listening to the voices was soothing, the language beautiful, hypnotic, until there was a grunt of disapproval.
“I can’t”—quick growl—“it’s too hard, Hashim, I can’t keep up. My Arabic’s not that good.”
“C’mon Chris, you’ve been doing much better.”
“Yeah, but could you just—I wanna know stuff.”
“Your father said that he wants you to immerse yourself in the language before school starts. How are you going to follow along if you—”
“Fine, whatever, I’ll immerse tomorrow, I swear to God, but right now I wanna know about the panther.”
Heavy sigh from Hashim. “Fine, what do you want to know?”
“I want to know how you know that we’re looking at a werepanther—one of us—and not a regular cat that belongs in the zoo.”
“How old are you?” Hashim asked snidely. “Why?”
“Just tell me.”
“I’m sixteen, why?”
“You have your answer.”
“What?” he asked irritably.
Heavy, exasperated sigh. “Sixteen is too young. When you reach maturity at twenty, like me, you’ll be able to immediately sense another of your kind. It comes with age.”
He scoffed. “You’re supposed to be mature?”
“I will kick your ass.”
“Fine.”
“Just think about where you are. This is Sobek. How many panthers have you seen that aren’t werepanthers like us?”
There was a pause. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Foolish.”
“Shut up.”
Another lull. “So what? Are you gonna tell your dad? We can’t move him by ourselves unless—”
“I sent Ari to get my father; they should be back soon.”
A jolt of fear ran through me before I remembered that I was in my panther form. No one could tell who or what I was. “Do you think he’s dead?”
“She,” Hashim clarified. “Look how small she is.”
“What?”
“Chris, are you looking at her?”
“Yeah, but when I shift I’m small—smaller,” he corrected himself, coughing, “too.”
“Yes, but… there, do you see those teeth? Look where I’m pointing.”
I knew I was taking in air through my mouth, which left my jaw open and my fangs visible. “You don’t get those until you’re over twenty, until maturity. She’s as big now as she will get and much too small to be anything but female.”
“Yeah, but she smells funny.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean even I should be able to tell she’s a girl, but… she doesn’t smell right. Girls smell more like dirt and flowers or like grass, but this panther… she smells like burning wood.”
I heard Hashim inhale deeply. “Yes… it’s odd.”
“We could look,” Chris suggested.
“Lift another panther’s tail?” Hashim asked and I heard the indignation in his tone. It was certainly a horrible breach of etiquette as normally it simply wasn’t done, or not needed to be. But in this case it would answer the question quite quickly. “Are you kidding?”
“Well I––”
“It’s just not done and besides there’s so much blood that I just don’t think we should move her at all.”
“Yeah, sure but maybe we should tell—”
“Boys!”
I tensed, the yell running through my body, shattering my frayed and raw nerves. “We didn’t touch her,” Hashim defended himself and his friend Christopher, and I heard him moving, felt the dust rise up and coat my fur as his change of position stirred the dirt. “We just kept watch,” he stammered out. “Oh crap, look,” Chris said shakily. “That’s your sheseru, right?”
“Yes, I knew he was coming to see my father, I just didn’t remember that he was visiting today.” Hashim took another shaky breath.
Sheseru.
“He scares me.”
There was a sheseru close by. “He scares everybody, it’s not just you.”
I tried to open my eyes, but there was just no possible way. “Shit.”
“Dad, she’s here! I—”
“Don’t yell,” another voice commanded softly. “We do not want to scare the poor creature. If she is hurt enough to lie so still, we know her injuries are grave. Let’s try not to frighten or disturb her in any way.”
Before anything else, a sheseru was the guardian of a reah. If the tribe had no reah, a sheseru would protect their yareah, but they would never feel truly fulfilled. All I had to do was let the approaching man know what I was, and he would be inexorably drawn to my side. “Is that blood?”
Concentrating, I purged every thought in my head but one. Save me.
I never used my pheromones to draw anyone but Logan. I never filled the air with my scent, never rippled the space around me with heat and need, and never, ever sent out a call for any but my mate. I had never needed to before. Even years ago, when I had been beaten and tortured by my own tribe, even then, as I had been too young, I had not used the power of a reah to serve my own desire. But I wanted to live. I wanted Logan. And that craven hunger translated into an aching, devouring appeal. His roar tore through me, and I heard everyone yelling at once.
“Roshan, what is it? What’s—”
“Silence!” he hissed, raw with anger. It felt as though booming thunder rolled through me, and I knew, without benefit of looking, that I was in the presence of the strongest sheseru I had ever met. I felt almost a caress of soothing power, the slide of another animal at my side, silky fur that I would have sworn I could feel under my own pelt, smoothing instead over my bare skin, a cool, gentle touch. “How can this be?” His voice broke before he caught his breath, his hand running slowly down my back. I tensed under the tender pressure.
“Oh no,” he panted. “No, no, no… I would never harm you. I would put out my own eyes before I ever caused you even a moment of pain.”
“Bring a blanket!” someone else yelled. “Hashim Ben-Yossef, you and your friend will be rewarded. You will appear before your semel at his villa in a week’s time.” He took a deep breath. “However did you find her?”
“Who, my sheseru?” the boy asked reverently. “The reah.”
Quick indrawn breaths from both boys. “This cat is a reah?”
“Indeed she is,” he said, and I heard the deep shiver in his voice. “The second one I have been so blessed to see.”
Everything tilted suddenly, and I was aware of being lifted, wrapped up, and crushed against a wall of solid heat. “I will never allow anyone to hurt you again, my reah.”
That fast, I was his reah. I had reached out to him and called. He had succumbed to his basest nature, to the tie that a sheseru and a reah shared, one of warmth and need on the reah’s part, safety and protection on the part of the sheseru. First even before enforcer of his leader, it was a sheseru’s place to be guardian of his lord and master’s greatest prize… his mate. I had simply imbued his instinct with my need. I was carried in his arms, held close to his heart. “I will find the men responsible for this ruin, my reah, and they will die howling in the pit.”
It was Yuri’s place to punish, not his, but I could not correct him at that moment. I couldn’t even speak. “How were you allowed to be taken, my reah? Whose failing allowed you to be stolen from the side of your mate?”
I wanted to shift and answer, but I felt weightless suddenly, like I was floating. “Reah? Shift for me so I may see your form and hear your words.”
Any sound. I even tried to blow out breath and managed nothing.
“I wonder what my semel will say about your mate’s lack of care.”
