Trusted Bond, page 16
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 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 that I was tiring or that my adrenaline was waning. I felt like I could have run on forever. For a moment I stumbled, over-thinking. If birds ever questioned why they could fly, they never would. The flood of uncertainty made me falter, but even then, I pulled up and threw my head back so the cats that caught up with me blew by without touching me. The dead stop I came to was too fast, too sudden, and the few that had tailed me were gone from sight, the slowing down and stopping taking them halfway down the street. Something sharp came to my nostrils, and when I turned, I saw claws and fangs filling my vision.
Without thinking, I batted at the panther. I didn’t even extend my claws, just wanted him away from me. No one was more startled than me when the cat was hurled through a window across the street, the glass almost exploding as it shattered into millions of pieces.
“Jin!”
My head swiveled around, and looking back at the others, I saw that Jamal had shifted back to himself, to his human form, having changed fast because he could. The Shu were chosen because of their ability to morph from man to animal and back again with blurring speed and Jamal was the leader, the strongest, the fastest. It made sense that he was there to intercept me.
“Stay where you are!”
Jamal had commanded me, and as I watched, he raised his hand, striding toward me. How a man could be so damn comfortable in the middle of the marketplace naked as the day he was born was beyond me. I did not have that kind of self-confidence. If I could have, I would have smiled; as I was a panther, I sat down and tipped my head.
The motion froze him where he stood. To show him I wanted to be friends, I reached out a paw to him. “Look.” He tipped his head in my direction, wanting me to look at myself. I was stunned. The paw I had raised was twice the size it normally was. I almost leaped back from him.
“Wait.” He lifted both hands as two of the Shu warriors, both in uniform, hurried into the street. One slid a robe onto him; the other cinched it tight at his waist. They stayed right beside him, and I realized I was looking at Shahid and Taj. Unlike the others, they had not been chasing me, instead staying behind, perhaps awaiting our return. “Jin, please… come with me to see the priest. He summons you.”
Was he to be trusted?
“Jin.” Jamal took a step forward, reaching out both hands to me. “Please, I will take you to the temple; I will present you to the priest of Chae Rophon, his grace Hamid Shamon.”
Was it strange that the priest wanted to see me after so many days?
“He was delayed making his way here from the coast, but he wants to see you. He’s at his temple, at his home here in Sobek.”
I wanted to trust him. I desperately wanted to see the priest, to have him override Ammon’s commandment and return me to Logan Church. He was the only one who could.
“You have been summoned before the priest of Chae Rophon. You must come with me.”
Looking around, I saw the crowd of people. Everyone was speaking at once, pointing, gasping, if anyone had a cell phone or a camera, I was certain many pictures of me would be taken, but as all electronic devices were strictly forbidden in Sobek, as well as cameras of any kind, they all had to imprint my image on their minds.
“Come with me and I will take you to the man who will allow you to see your mate.”
Logan.
I rose to follow him, and there was rustling to my left. “No!” Jamal shouted, ordered, to no avail. They were not his men there; they were Ammon’s. If they had been the Shu, I would never have seen them until it was too late.
My head turned, and I saw the net. Leaping forward, I had thought I would accidentally trample Jamal, but instead I found myself on the low-hanging roof of the restaurant across the street. Flipping around, I looked at a terrace back across the street another three stories up. I coiled and sprang and vaulted up over it easily. When I arrived, with so little effort exerted, I was stunned.
After a minute, there were shouts from below, but I didn’t look over, instead waiting as the volley of darts flew passed the terrace, arched high in the sky, and then fell like rain back to the ground. They were small, but I noticed them distinctly against the blue sky. They were the same darts that Laurent Bruyere’s men had used, and I wondered if every semel had access to them. Maybe Logan’s khatyu had them as well. Maybe Yuri had rifles loaded in an armory somewhere that I was not aware of. The thought was sobering.
I realized that I had no idea what went on in my own tribe as far as defense. What Logan did or did not do to protect his tribe, as far as weapons beyond tooth and claw, I was clueless about. I hoped I was uninformed because there was nothing I had not been told. “Reah, come down!”
I ignored the order even though the sheseru who yelled it out should have been my savior. Roshan Tabir could rot for all I cared, and his damned semel with him. If they wanted to fight, I could and would.
I wanted my mate.
Coming to terms with my decision, sitting on the cool patio, feeling the breeze, I calmed. Whatever it took to find my mate, to get to my mate, was what I would do. “Reah!” The semel-aten roared instead of his sheseru. “Come now!”
I was not stupid enough to look over the side, not after the barrage of darts, and not after his men, those who reported to Roshan, had tried to net me like a dog. I would not go to Ammon El Masry or his sheseru. I hoped he screamed himself hoarse. “Jin Rayne!”
Different voice, one I had never heard before. “Please.”
I was a sucker for “please.” Rising, I walked forward and peered over the railing. Jamal was there on the ground, and with him were Ammon El Masry and Roshan Tabir and another man I didn’t know. “Reah,” the stranger called up to me. “Come to me.”
He was the owner of the voice, the deep, resonant baritone that soothed me. “Come, reah,” Roshan seconded. He and the other men were separated from the rest of the crowd, but altogether there were at least two hundred people there cluttering the street. Where had they all come from? My eyes took in everything, and I had the urge to leap down to the stranger, but I didn’t want to be captured. “Reah.” The man beside Roshan spoke low, but it still carried. The timbre of his voice was powerful, deep, and flooded me with calm. “I am Hamid Shamon, priest of Chae Rophon, master of Satis. Come to me. None shall harm you, none shall have you—I know not why you were kept from your mate,” he said, and there was an edge as he turned to the semel-aten, who did not give him a drop of his attention, instead gazing up at me. “But,” he said, lifting his eyes back to me, “I will return you to him, as that is where you belong, at the side of your semel, Logan Church. He is semel-re, and you are his reah. Hear my words and judge by them.”
He knew the magic word. Logan. I leaped over the railing and fell down two stories to the cobblestone street below me. I landed like a spring and was on my feet looking at them seconds later. It should have taken effort. The fact that it didn’t was wrong. That I was eye-to-eye with them was also very wrong. My size was dangerous for reasons I was unsure of. Hamid Shamon took a step forward, no one else moving. I took one back.
“No,” he commanded, reaching out a hand to me. “Reah, come to me. I swear on all that I am that no one shall touch you again without your permission.” The urge to run was choking me. “Please, reah.” His voice was deep and rich and rolled right through me, calming me and my flight reflex. The intense warmth of the light brown eyes, the laugh lines in the corners of them, the way he was purposely trying to seem non-threatening… I appreciated it all. “Come closer, come to me.”
I shivered hard and stepped forward. As his hands sank into my fur, he leaned into my side before burying his face in my neck. The relief that flooded me made me gasp. I had thought the semel-aten was all-powerful, but the energy that was rolling off the priest made me sway for a second on my feet. His strength reached out and wrapped around me, and I pressed my jaws together tight so I wouldn’t cry out, howl like a banshee. Others were not so fortunate, crumpling to their knees with desperate, breathless howls. I had forgotten who the true master of Sobek truly was. There was no one werepanther as strong, as feared and forceful as the priest of Chae Rophon. My teeth would have chattered if I hadn’t held my jaw shut tight. He was flooding us all with his power, showing me, showing everyone, and it was hard to withstand. “Reah,” Ammon said from the ground, the wave of crushing strength having driven even the semel-aten down to one knee. “No,” Hamid cut him off. “Your dominion over the reah ends now. He’s mine.”
“With your permission,” Roshan spoke up, he too on his knees on the cobblestones, “this is a reah, and as such the semel-aten—”
“First,” Hamid said, clipping his words, “you forget yourself, sheseru. You do not speak to me. Only a semel may address me unless I invite otherwise.”
I watched Roshan swallow down the rebuke. “Second,” Hamid almost hissed the word, “this is not simply a reah, as his size alone gives testament to. We must ascertain his true nature, but it is certain that the semel-aten has no claim on him, as he is a mated reah. He should have been returned to his semel the moment it was learned to whom he belonged. You do not keep a mated reah from his mate! Look what you’ve done with this decision!”
“Your grace,” Ammon began, “I—”
“You have withheld the reah’s mate, and see now what you have wrought in fear and desperation. Jin Rayne has changed in response to this forced separation, and we are now left with”—he gestured at me—“a creature I will have to decide if I can allow to leave.”
Allow to leave? I felt a knot of fear twist in the pit of my stomach.
“No,” he said gently, warm brown eyes back on me. “Wait, reah, wait and see before you grow cold with dread.”
But I was already terrified. This was it, this man—the end. If he said I was confined to Sobek, there was no one else to appeal to. “Calm yourself, reah,” he soothed me, his hand on the back of my neck, his fingers digging into the muscles there, his scent, the strength that flowed off him, all of it blanketing me in peace. There was no confusing Ammon’s power with Hamid’s; the priest’s power trumped all others. “I mean you no harm.”
But he could take away everything from me. “I will prove to you my word and take you now to your mate.”
Logan. “If you change back for him, return to your true form, you are his to take from Sobek.”
Joy, hope, love… I was flooded with it and was undone. If I had been human I would have broken down sobbing, I was so happy. As it was, I stood in front of him trembling like a leaf in a stiff breeze. “Oh, reah.” Hamid clutched at me, his knees buckling out from under him, only his hold on me keeping him upright. I was confused. Was my power a match for the priest of Chae Rophon? Was mine washing over him, driving through him, making him hold tight to me so he wouldn’t drop to his knees? Surely not. There had to be some other explanation. “I feel your joy.”
Everyone did, apparently. There were sounds from everywhere in the courtyard at once, laughing, giggling, gasps, squeals of delight, that welling up of feeling when your bottom lip quivers because you’re filled with such trembling, overwhelming happiness. No one was unaffected. “Reah,” the priest said as his eyes glistened with tears. “You have no idea of your power, and I cannot say if you will ever return to your former self.”
I had to, or I couldn’t be with the man I loved.
“Now come, let us go and see Logan Church,” he announced shakily, dismissing everyone who stood near with a trembling wave of his hand. “I find myself burning with curiosity to lay eyes on the man who has such a mate as you. Clear a path!”
The only men strong enough to walk with me were Hamid and Ammon, the priest and the semel. “Come, Jin,” Hamid said, using my name, directing me.
I wasn’t fooled—I was a reah first and a man second, just as I was to Ammon. They both saw me as a thing, not a man, but for the priest, it was reverent. I was sacred. As we slowly made our way from the marketplace, he spoke gently, kindly, his voice low.
“You have shown yourself, by this transformation, to be more than a reah, Jin Rayne, and I do not believe that you will be able to change back into human form. This much power, I believe, would need to be burned off, used, before it could be directed, focused on bending to your will. You cannot channel it at the height it is now. You will have to calm before it’s useful.”
He thought I was some mindless brute in the form I was now and that I would need to do something, fight, perform a task, to drain off the power so then, and only then, could I shift back to my true form, my human one. “If you cannot shift back, you must remain here in Sobek, at the temple of Satis with me and the other priests, the council of Ennead. Your life will not be as you expected but fulfilling nonetheless. You must not be consumed with fear and hate if you are unable to be with your mate. There will still be happiness for you, reah.”
I would change back to me and show him I could and make him stop talking about the life I could live without Logan Church. “This new form, though frightening, you will learn respect for, and in time, perhaps even enjoy. The power in you will perhaps serve another purpose with time. None of us can know our true destiny until it presents itself to us.”
It was crap. My destiny was to be reah of the tribe of Mafdet and the mate of Logan Church. I shifted to show him I could. “Reah?”
Nothing happened. Normally I simply thought of being a panther and instantly became one. All it took was my decision and it was done. It was the first time in my entire life that my body did not conform to my will. It was terrifying. “Give me a sign, reah, that you understand my words.”
I would have to make some kind of sound, as I was still in my panther form. I froze, and Hamid moved from where he was at my right to step in front of me. “Calm yourself, reah. As I said, you cannot shift back. You are truly a beast, and I fear that you will never be a man again. Look at your paws. I have no idea what you are, but even to say you are a panther does not ring true.”
My paws were three-toed appendages that reminded me of skin-covered talons. I felt as though I could straighten up and tried. It was like being in my werepanther form but to a freakish degree. On two legs, I was twice the priest’s size, looking down at him from a new height where I had never been before. It was terrifying.
“Jin Rayne”—Hamid’s voice splintered through me—“you must control your thoughts and feelings, because when they are good, it is as addictive as a drug, but when there is anger or fear… you must contain your power. You must!”
But I had no idea how to do that. “I do not want to shut you away. Do not force my hand.”
The priest was trying so hard not to react to me the way everyone else had. He didn’t want to hurt me. “Walk with me back to the villa of the semel-aten, as that is where your mate is.”
It took everything in me not to let the rage well up inside and turn and slaughter Ammon El Masry where he stood. I had been so much closer to Logan the night before than I could have ever imagined. We were housed in the same structure. And while it was huge, still, he had been right there. The villa I had begun my run from was at the end of the next street. I had left from the side that faced the fields. I was returning on the side where the main street ended, just as I had the day before when I left and returned with Femi and her mother, sister, and the other yareahs. There were inns and galleries and shops and then a huge park and then the villa of the semel-aten. An enormous wrought-iron gate faced us as we approached. To the right and left, on either side, were guardhouses for sentries. The gate opened at our approach, and at the top of the stairs, across the courtyard, standing beside an enormous pillar, I saw a familiar head of gold hair. There was no time for words. I wasn’t sure if Hamid said anything to me; I was no longer beside him to hear them if he did.
