Trusted Bond, page 4
“Hey,” I said tiredly, caught in his cobalt gaze. “What’re you doing here?”
“Artem Varda called his sheseru to tell him that he was protecting his reah and that Yuri should not worry.”
Shit.
“Artem knows, as does every khatyu, that a reah should never be unattended or unprotected. He was certain that whoever was with you would be missing you, and he didn’t want Yuri, or his semel, to worry.”
“Great.”
“It seems that Artem Varda knows his law better than you.”
“He––”
“And I suspect that the only time I will see you after we return from the feast, my reah, is in your home, as that will be where your semel will have you confined to!”
His voice had jumped in volume, and the room went silent.
“I––”
“No,” he said, cutting me off, thrusting his phone at me. I had no recourse but to take it. I would not embarrass myself in front of my tribe by having Mikhail grab me, toss me over his shoulder, and carry me out of the house. We were not going to have that scene.
I took the phone and just breathed.
The chilled voice came over the phone. “Jin.” I was so dead. “How dare you not answer your phone,” my mate said flatly, his voice deep and husky before it rose sharply. “I am your semel!”
I sat there, in the middle of Alexandra Varda’s living room, and waited.
“You will drive home now! I will see you… now!” There was no warmth in his voice, only ice. I could hang up and lie, tell him the call was dropped and hide. I could. If I stripped and shifted, there was no way Mikhail would be able to catch me. I was faster than him, faster than every panther in my tribe, but again, it would cause a scene, and besides, I actually wanted to go home. I was just scared to. “Making me look for you would be a mistake.”
My heart was in my throat. “I’m afraid.”
“Of me?” he growled.
“No, never,” I told him, gazing at Mikhail’s face, seeing the way he was looking at me, his eyes sliding over my face, body, inhaling my scent, knowing I was hurt. He looked physically pained. “You don’t frighten me.”
“Then what?”
“I’m afraid of what you’re gonna do.”
“Why?”
“’Cause you love me.”
“I more than love you.”
I swallowed hard. Everything hurt as the feelings swelled inside my chest, my stomach. I had been so alone, so hurt––was still hurt—and he had been gone. My body had been ripped and gouged, was still mottled with contusions; all I had wanted was my mate. The ache was overwhelming, the pull to go to him much more than need. “Talk to me.”
“I don’t want you to go kill Abbot or Christophe or the other guy.”
There was a long silence on his end. “Logan?”
“What other guy?”
“Is Yuri there?”
“Yes.”
“Just––talk to him and then call me back. I promise to pick up.”
“No, you have my summons. You will appear before me now.”
“You know I don’t have to––”
“Are you confused about the law, that which you know so thoroughly?”
“No.”
He cleared his throat. “Just tell me where you are, and I’ll come to you.” His voice had softened to coaxing. “Or put Mikhail on and he’ll tell me.”
“No, I’ll be right there.”
“Answer me this: how badly were you hurt?”
I made a noise in the back of my throat. “Kinda bad.”
“Are there marks on you?”
“Yes.”
“Marks you haven’t been able to heal yet?”
“Logan––”
“Answer me.”
“Yes, there are marks I haven’t healed yet.”
He coughed softly. “You have a half an hour to be in this house, or I will simply go to Christophe and demand that he hand over the panthers to me, beginning with his own sheseru.”
“I need to pick up my Jeep. I don’t want it to get towed and––”
“Fine, Mikhail will go with you and follow you back.”
“You don’t trust me,” I said flatly.
“I want you home,” he said ominously. “I want to look at you. I want to see you and know you’re really all right.”
“I am.”
“Come home and show me.”
“I’m coming,” I told him, standing up and walking toward the door. “I just need to say goodnight to Artem’s mother and check on his brother one last time.”
“Fine, I will speak to Yuri while I wait.”
“He saved my life,” I blurted out, feeling like I needed to defend my sheseru. “Your life needed saving?”
I talked too much when I was nervous. “No, not exact––”
“In your own home, you were in fear for your life? You didn’t just fight; it was a fight for your life?”
There was nothing I could say to make it better. He was going to go ballistic, and there was no way to stop it. All I was doing was postponing the inevitable. I could not even imagine the fallout.
“How many men were in my house, Jin?”
“Counting Abbot, there were four.”
“Four?”
“One of them ran. I don’t know who he was or where he is.”
“Four,” he repeated to himself. “Yuri knows everything.”
“Then I’ll speak to him while I wait.”
“It’s nobody’s fault.”
“Where were Crane and Markel while Yuri was saving your life?”
Shit. “They were there.”
“Help me understand how Markel, a former sheseru, Crane, your beset, and my sheseru could not contain four panthers?”
“There were only three. One ran––”
“Even better,” he said, cutting me off. “Three panthers against four, if we’re counting you. How is it even possible that you got hurt?”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just isn’t.”
“Who took care of you afterwards, my reah?”
“I… I had to send everyone away.”
“You sent my father away?”
“He had to go talk to Avery.”
“How did he know the panthers fled to the tribe of Pakhet?”
“Avery called to speak to me, but I wasn’t––I couldn’t talk.”
“Christophe was with me in New York at his sister’s mating ceremony—whatever decision Avery made, he made of his own volition.”
“I know. He hates me, it makes sense he would give sanctuary to the panthers that attacked me.”
“Avery doesn’t hate you,” he said, exhaling. “Quite the opposite. It’s doubtful he knew what they had done when he granted them sanctuary. What’s more likely is that they told him they were running from Yuri, and that’s what prompted his agreement.”
The explanation made sense. Avery and Yuri’s bad blood predated my arrival. “I will call and speak to Christophe.”
“Sure.”
“While I await your return.”
He still wanted me home. “It’s late. You’ve gotta be tired from your––”
“I want you home now.”
“Logan.”
“Did you hear me?”
I had. No way not to.
“Jin?”
“I heard you.”
“Good. Now hurry,” he said before he hung up.
I did.
Chapter Three
THERE WAS nothing to do but think on the way home, and because I would drive myself crazy if I kept obsessing about Logan, I started thinking about my best friend instead.
I was worried that if Crane was not accepted soon by Logan’s sister Delphine, he would want to leave. I didn’t want him to go anywhere. He was my touchstone. Just looking at him reminded me of who I was and not to take myself too seriously. I was scared of becoming someone else if he wasn’t around. Crane had become beset of a reah, or companion of a reah, the minute it was discovered what I was. He had chosen me over his family, our tribe, over his whole life. Ever since I was sixteen, it had been him and me, and the thought that he would, or could, leave was fairly overwhelming to think about. As lost in my thoughts as I was, it took me a couple of minutes to realize that the front gate of my home was not opening even though I had just swiped the key card across the panel. “Good evening, my reah.”
I turned to the voice and found Ivan Tenchenko and two other men I didn’t know on the other side of the gate.
“What are you guys doing out here?”
His smile was trying really hard to stay in place as he nodded to another man and the gate slowly started to open. “Logan wants the grounds guarded now, and I have to say, I agree. Anyone can get in and out of his home, and I for one never thought that was safe.”
“It’s not a fortress, Vanya.” I forced a smile, tired suddenly, using the familiar form of his name. “It’s a home, and any member of the tribe should be able to call on us whenever they like. Logan is their leader.”
“Agreed, he is their leader, and as such, they should make an appointment if they need to see him. Both of you make yourselves far too accessible, and if this… attack… has taught us anything, it’s that you and Logan need to take your safety much more seriously.”
“Nice that you worry,” I said, rolling the Jeep forward onto the property, stopping because he called out instead of driving on up to the house.
Mikhail, who was behind me in a car with three others, drove past, leaving off tailing me now that I was safely at home. Apparently I could be trusted to make it to the front door alone. “Jin,” Ivan said, looking in the window at me, “I just want you to know that if I knew you were hurt, I would have never left you.”
“I know,” I sighed. “Sorry if I snapped at you. Hopefully I can talk Logan out of you guys having to be out here all night. It’s stupid.”
“No, it’s not, my reah,” he said, reaching for my hand but stopping himself. “It is my honor to protect both you and my semel.”
Just a short time ago, Domin Thorne had been his semel, and he himself had been a sylvan just like Mikhail. After Logan and Domin had met in combat, Domin’s tribe, the tribe of Menhit, had been absorbed into Logan’s, and Domin had stepped down as semel, thus instantly demoting both his sheseru and sylvan to normal tribe members. I had worried that Ivan Tenchenko and Markel Kovac would resent Logan for being the reason that Domin relinquished his birthright, but neither man ever gave any indication that this was the case. In fact, the exact opposite seemed to be true. They both wanted to belong to Logan Church’s tribe, wanted to serve their semel and protect their reah. I found their sincerity strange, as I didn’t think I would be able to switch my loyalties that quickly had I been in their place.
“Jin?”
I reached for Ivan’s hand and squeezed it tight. I watched the relief wash over him as he covered our joined hands with his other. “Please know that I would protect you with my life, my reah.”
I looked into his eyes but was aware of the other two men closing in on us. “Could I…,” the taller man said, the muscles in his jaw clenching as his hands fisted at his sides.
Again, this was the part that I didn’t get. Everyone, every panther, suddenly had the need to sit with me and talk to me, and mostly, to touch me. Letting Ivan go, I got out of the Jeep. “Thanks, you guys, for keeping me and Logan safe,” I said, gesturing the panther to me, his name coming back to me. “Anthony, right? Anthony Lauria?”
He nodded, unable to speak as he tentatively moved toward me. I shook his hand and then reached for the third man’s hand, who was introduced to me as Antoine Palmer. All three just stared at me with wide eyes as though I were the second coming or something. I didn’t think I was ever going to get used to it. Not the attention of the men in front of me, not the interest of the people back at the Varda house, no one’s. I was just me. I was nothing special, and yet everyone treated me like I was. Back in the car, I drove slowly up to the house and parked as far away as possible. It would have been different if it were just Logan there, but he wasn’t. I would have to see everyone, answer a barrage of questions just to get to my bedroom. But there was no way around the inquisition, so I grabbed my duffel out of the back seat and headed for the porch. The wave of apprehension rolled over and through me, and I stopped as my vision blurred. Standing there in the warm night air, the summer breeze ruffling my hair and shirt, I was freezing. “Jin.”
The voice I knew, his scent, his presence even at a distance making it hard for me to breathe. My body hurt, I was weary, and the man being there was going to make me break down, and they would all see. I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t. Lifting my head, I forced a smile, trying to pull myself together. How the hell was I going to get upstairs in one piece instead of falling apart in front of everyone? Maybe if I ran. “Come to me,” came his sharp command.
I took a deep breath that hurt, every drop of strength I had channeled into not breaking down. It was his fault. I could be strong; I could be a rock as long as he wasn’t there. But the second I saw him, I had the urge to be comforted, to lean and be cared for. I wanted to surrender.
He came to me instead. He ran, and even as I saw the porch crowd with people, no one followed him. I swallowed hard, straightened, and waited as he stopped in front of me. Looking up into the honey-colored eyes of my mate made my heart hurt.
“Hi.”
His scowl was dark as he checked me over, finally lifting a hand to my cheek, the touch feather-light, impossibly tender and gentle. “I missed you.”
I nodded, my voice gone, before I leaned into his hand, closing my eyes.
His breath was warm on my face as his lips touched my forehead. “I’m so sorry.”
“I allowed the man into my home, Jin, not you.”
“You were asked to train him.”
“And now I will kill him.”
My head snapped up, my eyes on his. “Logan, please don’t say––”
“He put his hands on my mate––mine!” he roared. “You belong to me, and he dared to touch you! I will tear him apart!”
I felt the tears on my lashes and tried to blink them away. “You will not cry for fools, Jin. The choice was their own. Everyone knows you’re mine. Everyone knows that you’re my reah. They chose their fate when they followed Abbot’s direction, and he chose to die when he put his hands on you.”
I shuddered there in front of him. “Look at me.”
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” I said to his wingtips.
“Look… at… me.”
I lifted my eyes back to his, saw the gold flecks in the amber depths. He growled in frustration before he grabbed me and hauled me up into his arms. “I don’t want to hurt… I can smell the blood and––”
I wrapped my arms and legs around him, burying my face in the side of his neck, breathing him in, knowing I was home and safe and loved. His hands clutched at me as he turned toward the house.
“Can we just… could it be only you and––”
“Yes,” he assured me, his voice a deep rumble in his chest. “Just us.”
I kept my eyes closed as he walked, heard the wooden planks of the porch creak under his feet, and then smelled something heavenly, some aroma wafting through the house from the kitchen, letting me know I was inside. But no one said my name, the look on Logan’s face, I was sure, keeping everyone silent. I went boneless in his arms, enjoying being carried up the stairs to our bedroom.
“Here, love.”
Opening my eyes, I saw my room in a blur of warm brown tones as I was gently laid down on my bed. All the familiar sights, the smells, and the gorgeous man towering over me made my heart swell with emotion. “Show me,” he whispered, and it was easy to see that I was not the only one struggling for control. The muscles working in his jaw, how clouded and dark his eyes were—my mate was a mess, and it was my fault.
“Promise me you won’t do anything tonight. Promise me you’ll stay here with me.”
He nodded, just barely.
I drew the T-shirt over my head with a little difficulty, but he didn’t bend to help. He just watched me. Unbuckling my belt, I unbuttoned my 501s and eased them down so he could see the bruising on my right hip. He was silent as his eyes moved over the still-healing gouges and cuts, the torn flesh, and the red-and-purple blotches that covered my chest and abdomen. “It’s not so bad anymore.”
He nodded, tipped his head for me to roll over. It was worse on the back. My bruised face with my black eye was already fading, but my sides where claws had sunk into my flesh still looked raw. As my face hit the pillow, I sighed deeply. The bed smelled like Logan, and I inhaled deeply, filling myself with him.
The warm, callused hand slid down my spine, stopping on the small of my back, pressing down gently before making the return trip, settling in my hair, petting me. “I’m so tired.”
“Then go to sleep.”
“But I don’t want you to leave.” I didn’t trust him not to go kill someone if I wasn’t awake to watch him. “Love”—his voice dropped low, deep and filled with gravel as he smoothed my hair back from my forehead—“I am not leaving your side.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” he said, and I felt the soft lips pressed between my shoulder blades. “Close your eyes. I can tell that you’re barely holding on.”
“Could you… just… for a minute.”
I heard him moving before the bed dipped behind me, and I rolled to my side so he could spoon around me. The heat rippling off the man made me shiver.
“Cold?”
“No, just… you feel so good.”
“You missed me.”
“I should have gone like you asked.”
“Yes.”
