Crucible of Fate (14 page)

“No, my lord.”

“Well, for crissakes, she’s gonna want to know.”

“Yes, my lord.” He sounded pained. “But would you please just—”

“Anyone in the tribe of Feran could be trying to kill him.”

“My lord, aren’t you forgetting who Yuri is?”

“I don’t understand what—”

“He’s not some weak creature easily overcome; he was a sheseru and one of the strongest panthers I have ever seen. He will not be easily dispatched, my lord.”

“Unless he’s taken by surprise.”

Jamal shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I see him as far too capable.”

But I couldn’t see him at all; that was the problem. I needed to gaze into his eyes with my own, put my hands on him and feel his heart beating under my ear as I laid it on his chest. “I swear if I we both make it out of this, you are never leaving my side again.”

“My lord?”

I had spoken the words between clenched teeth. “Just—okay, if whoever is after him doesn’t try and kill him, what else could they do?”

“What are you talking about?” Koren was irritated, but I hadn’t been asking him.

One of the best things about Jamal was his willingness to hypothesize with me and think about the worst-case scenario. All the others went on and on about not dwelling on what could happen or on bad things, but Jamal would go with me down the dark and twisty road in a heartbeat. It was a splendid quality.

“I believe the greatest concern would be if, for whatever reason, the tribe of Feran tried to conceal him,” Jamal enlightened me.

“Conceal him?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “If they were to take him into the catacombs of Abtu to hide him or simply abandon him there, then for us, who are not familiar with the caverns, it would be highly unlikely that we could locate him. The cave is vast. You would have to cover so much ground to secure him—I don’t know how we would be successful before he died of starvation or dehydration.”

“Why would you say that to him?” Koren was indignant. “That’s not helping.”

“Yes, it is,” Jamal asserted. “My semel prefers to be prepared for every eventuality and to make himself ready, if he can.”

My mind was working. “So we would need speed in that instance.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

Speed.

“Here,” Crane said as he walked into my room carrying a huge basin of water, followed closely by Jin, who carried a platter of sliced meat. “Shift, Domin, and let’s get this all down you.”

“Jin,” I said, meeting his gaze. “I need you to come to Ipis with me in case the tribe of Feran hides Yuri in the catacombs of Abtu.”

“Of course.” He smiled like it was the sanest request in the world.

“I know that Logan will be here soon, but—”

 “I wouldn’t let you leave the villa without me anyway,” Jin stated. “And I couldn’t leave here without seeing Yuri. I wouldn’t.”

Logan was going to kill me.

Chapter 7

W
E
WERE
still fighting.

“I forbid it.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“You’re the semel-aten, for crissakes, Domin!”

“Technically I just named myself akhen-aten,” I mentioned drolly, trying to inject some levity into the situation.

“Call yourself what you want, but the world knows you as the semel-aten, and as the semel-aten, it is completely irresponsible and selfish of you to put yourself in danger!”

“We’re talking about my mate,” I reminded him.

He spun around and pointed at me as I lay there on the bed. “Do not start this shit again. No matter what you try to say, Yuri Kosa is not your mate!”

He had no idea about anything.

“You don’t just give up on us for… that.”

“You lost me.”

“Domin,” he said softly, soothing. “How do you go from years of us to taking Logan’s sheseru into your bed?”

“He wanted to be there, I wanted him there… I’m missing the question.”

“Domin—”

“You want me now because I’m the semel-aten.”

“No.”

“Oh yes.” I laughed softly and it hurt, so I tried to stop. “Yuri just wants
me
. We can live in a shack on a beach somewhere, and he would be perfectly content.”

“That’s because you’re beautiful and—”

“It’s the chase, the hunt you crave, Koren,” I said honestly, for once. “I understand, but I don’t want to run anymore.”

“How can you give up on us? On me?”

“
You
gave up on
me
!” I yelled, finally sick of his bullshit. “You left me! You have never known what you wanted, and I kept—no.” I deflated. “Not again.”

He stalked back over to the bed and flopped down beside me, placing a warm hand on my cold chest, still clammy from the shift, my body still trying to regulate itself and heal at the same time. I needed to sleep, but I wanted Yuri more. If anything happened to him….

“Domin!”

I flicked my gaze back to Koren.

“I know that you don’t want Yuri to get hurt, but there’s a world of difference between that and actually claiming the man for your mate.”

How could I make him understand?

“Here’s what happened,” he said, sliding his hand up over my left pectoral, across my collarbone to my throat. He was gentle as he traced his fingers over my skin, and my eyes drifted closed as he rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip. “I stepped out of the picture, and you finally saw him.”

I made a noise of agreement.

“Why do you think you never saw him before then?”

Because I was stupid? Because I was blind? Because I was so infatuated with the idea of having Koren Church that I couldn’t at all see what was right in front of me?

“You didn’t see him because you never even considered him.”

Batting his hand away, I rolled over on my side. “You should go.”

Immediately his hand was on my hip.

“It was a brand-new thing, being semel-aten, and you didn’t want to start the adventure alone, so you took—”

I cut him off. “No.” Because I had not loved Yuri when we arrived in Sobek, but it was so much more than that now.

“Just—”

“No!” I yelled.

“Listen to me! He’s not the one for you. He’s
not
.”

If I had my full strength, I would have thrown him out, but I was exhausted. That didn’t mean I was defenseless. I could wield my memories like a whip. “I came home with that piece of key lime pie because it’s your favorite,” I began. “And I—”

“Oh, for shit’s sake, Domin, not this again!” he yelled, leaping off the bed to get away from me. “Why do you always—”

“And I threw open the door, and there you were with Talon Danvers.”

“I—”

“You knew she was mated, she’s a goddamn yareah!” I exclaimed.

“You know as well as I do that Christophe and Talon have an open—”

“But that’s not the point,” I said, rolling over on my back. “The point was that I had pie in my hand and what did you say?”

He shook his head.

“Koren?”

“I don’t remember.”

But I did, and that was the problem.

I had come in, flushed with excitement to see him since he had just returned from a business trip. But instead of coming home to me, waiting for me, he had gone immediately out to a club and picked up a woman. And not just any woman, but Talon Danvers, yareah of the tribe of Pakhet. My barging in had not even given him pause.

“Room service!” Koren announced happily as he continued to pump in and out of the woman writhing below him. “Thank God. I’m starving!”

It was hard to even pull oxygen into my lungs, but that was fine—the air in the room was thick with the scent of sex and sweat anyway.

“Come here,” he demanded, his hot gaze raking over me. “Talon will suck your dick.”

But unlike Koren, it mattered who touched me in bed, and I never wanted a woman to do it. For me it was not a preference, it was simply how I was made.

I took a step back, and my face, I was sure, was his first indication that something was wrong. Instantly, he was defensive.

“Like you haven’t fucked anyone since I’ve been gone,” he snarled, all the while still hammering into Talon. “It’s not like we’re mated, Domin.”

And we weren’t. Just because I had thought it in my heart, carried myself as though I were special because Koren Church loved me, counted the days until he came home… didn’t make what I felt real. It didn’t make me matter to him. I was settled; he was still on the prowl. It was crystal clear as I fled the room, dropping the pie on the floor in the doorway.

As I tore down the steps and out the front door, I heard a car. When I checked the driveway, I saw Logan get out of the passenger side of Jin’s Jeep Wrangler and Jin draped forward over the steering wheel. It took a second for me to realize he was laughing, not crying and that Logan was fuming.

“You’re a maniac!” Logan roared as he stalked toward the house. “How did you even get a driver’s license?”

It hurt to watch them because it was all so normal, Jin climbing out and then running after his mate, Logan yelling at him to stay away because he was mad.

“Baby!” Jin called after him.

“No!”

When Jin finally ran, stepping around in front of him, barring his semel’s path, I saw Logan glower before he took Jin’s face in his hands.

“Be more careful,” he demanded, growling at Jin. “If anything ever happened to you, what the hell am I supposed to do?”

Jin tipped back his head, and Logan bent and kissed him, and it was sweet and hot but mostly it was just them. Mates.

I bolted from the porch, but Logan caught my arm before I could reach my car.

“Are you all right?” he inhaled. “You smell like you’re hurt.”

It was just my heart, though; I wasn’t bleeding.

“Domin?”

I cleared my throat. “Your brother is fucking a yareah in his room. You better take care of that, my semel.”

His eyes widened, and I saw the anger and embarrassment flood his face.

“I mean, we both know Talon Danvers is a whore, but still… under your roof?”

Logan ran up the steps into the house, and I was almost free. Except for Jin.

“What’s wrong with you?” He sounded worried.

“Koren is screwing Talon Danvers in his bed.”

His eyes got huge. “But you were waiting for him to get home.”

“I was,” I said, and I got in my silver Gran Turismo and drove away.

“Domin!”

Back in the present, I realized, as I had the day I left for the sepat with Logan, that I didn’t need to say good-bye to Koren. There was nothing left between us.

“I think someday you’re going to find someone who absolutely transfixes you,” I said.

“I already have,” he said, furrowing his brow as he reached for my face.

My head swiveled as Jin and Crane and Kabore walked into the room, followed by several servants.

“You must eat and drink again, my lord,” Kabore announced, snapping his fingers at everyone, directing them. “And you,
ex
, move away from my lord.”

Koren clenched his jaw, but he got off the bed as my steward swept forward, his shiny black knee-high boots clicking on the stone tiles as he rushed to my bedside.

“Now, my lord, shift and eat. We’re all here, and the moment you regain your strength, we will go and find your mate.”

“Yeah,” Crane murmured. “What he said.”

I took a breath. “I have to get to Yuri.”

“Of course you do.” Jin’s eyes glowed quicksilver. “He’s your mate.”

Yes, he was.

T
HEY
fell asleep around me, all piled onto the bed I normally shared only with Yuri. I would have to give orders to have the bed stripped and the linens washed while I was gone. If my mate smelled Koren Church on the sheets, he would annihilate me. I sighed at the thought. Yuri being possessive of me, when no one else had ever been, never failed to arouse me.

I missed him, I wanted him beside me. I was hurt and I needed to rest, but even more, I needed my mate. His touch on my skin would be so good.

We had fought the night before he left. I had ranted and raved, and when he had defended me, even though I was telling him how horribly I was failing—he was always my staunchest supporter—I had launched myself at him only to be grabbed and thrown up against the wall.

I was strong, but Yuri was stronger, bigger, and had easily fifty pounds of muscle on me in human form. In my werepanther form, I would have had the upper hand, but that was not what I wanted. His might, a display of it, was what I craved.

“You try my patience, my semel,” he rumbled in my ear, holding me tight with a hand around the back of my neck, pressing my cheek hard against the stone wall, his knee pushed between my thighs, parting my legs.

I shuddered under his power exerted over me because only Yuri knew, no other lover ever suspecting, even Koren, that my desire to submit was just as strong as my need to dominate. It was absolutely necessary for me to relinquish control so that my mind could finally, just for a moment, rest.

The shirt I wore was torn away, swept to the floor in tatters. He licked up the side of my neck to behind my right ear and made my knees go weak even as I ordered him to get off me.

“You don’t want me off you,” he taunted, biting down hard into the tender skin. “Do you, my semel?”