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  “We’ll all have to keep an eye on Domin,” I told Delphine.

  She smiled at me. “Isn’t it funny to even be thinking like that?”

  And it was.

  “You know, if Koren could actually pull his head out of his ass, then all my brothers would be on the right track, although Russ is being a little bit stupid as well.”

  “It was probably just a mistake.”

  “Oh, I forgot I wasn’t supposed to shift? Oopsy.”

  I smiled at her.

  “He wouldn’t have to worry about it being all or nothing if he wasn’t trying to turn his back on his entire culture.”

  “Well, apparently he’s picking and choosing what parts to keep.” I had filled her in about what I thought had happened while we were together on the plane.

  “Which is just fucking brilliant, I mean, Christ, Jin, you don’t get to keep the parts you want and say screw the parts you don’t. God, I’m gonna beat the crap out of him.”

  And she was certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she would get that opportunity. I really hoped she was right.

  Chapter Four

  “SO,” DELPHINE said as we walked toward the Italian bistro where Russ had gone to meet Blake Dempsey two days prior. “Tell me what an aker is, now?”

  I did a slow pan to her.

  “What?”

  “You were serious about that?”

  “Yes, I was serious, just tell me already.”

  I gave her an eye roll and got a swat on the arm as reward. “You’re supposed to respect me,” I told her.

  “I missed the memo,” she volleyed back.

  “Fine, in large tribes, ones with either a big territory or just a lot of members, there is usually a maahes, or prince, and under him are akers. There is normally a manu and a bakhu, always an even number, always ruling as a set. So, like, two people here, two there, whatever. They report to a maahes who, in turn, as you know, reports to the semel.”

  “So like a sheseru and a sylvan but not reporting to a semel, reporting to a maahes.”

  “Except it’s not a position that’s chosen, it’s a position that’s fought for. The strongest wins, you fight for it in the pit, and it can be challenged at any time.”

  “So if I wanna be a manu or a bakhu and I think I’m stronger than the guy or girl who has the title now, I just tell my maahes and he puts us in the pit?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That sounds barbaric.”

  “It’s survival of the fittest.”

  “But the positions of sylvan and sheseru aren’t decided that way.”

  “The semel chooses the strongest when he’s picking a sheseru and the smartest when he’s choosing a sylvan. If he decides that someone else is stronger or smarter, he replaces them.”

  She turned to look at me. “Are you kidding?”

  “No.” I smiled at her.

  “I had no idea that Logan could replace Mikhail or Yuri if he decided to.”

  I shook my head at her, and she playfully shoved me away.

  “But then how do you account for the bond between a sheseru and reah? Wouldn’t Yuri still have that even if, say, Logan replaced him?”

  “But that’s hardwired into the animal part of him, so that’s not logical, it’s primal. Yuri is the strongest after his semel, and as the strongest, he protects the mate of his leader. That’s all built into the part of Yuri’s brain that has nothing to do with him as a man and everything to do with him as a panther.”

  “I guess I don’t separate it because when I’m a panther, which I hate being, by the way, I’m not really aware of being a panther. I can’t look at the experience through my human eyes like I guess you and Logan can, I just become an animal.”

  “Logan can’t.”

  “Logan can’t?” She was surprised. “I thought he could?”

  I shook my head. “When Logan’s a panther, he knows me, and that’s as far as his reasoning goes. I mean, just like any other panther, he won’t attack a cat he knows or has scented before, but if another cat tried to get close to me when he’s in shifted form—he’d tear them to shreds.”

  “Anyone.”

  “Anyone,” I assured her.

  “Jesus.”

  “It’s why there’s a whole laundry list of precautions when dealing with a semel and his true-mate that are different if he has mated with a yareah.”

  She nodded.

  “But yeah, when he’s in his panther form, Logan isn’t really any more cognizant than you are.”

  She let out a deep breath.

  “What?”

  “I—I just thought he was just like you.”

  I shook my head.

  “Then you’re even more amazing.”

  “How so?”

  “Jin, when you shift, you’re still you. When I shift, I’m like a wild animal with no ties to anyone. I could kill Markel in that state and not even know it.”

  I chuckled. “No, love.”

  “No?” She looked so hopeful, like she had been thinking about this. “I wouldn’t hurt him?”

  My smile made her do the same. “Even though you think you’re just an animal when you shift, you’re still not.”

  “I’m not?”

  “No. All werepanthers make choices, even in their shifted form. You decide to kill or not kill, attack or not, fight or not, run or not. You would never hurt Markel because you know his scent; you know him on sight in human or cat form.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “But Logan would kill either me or Markel if we were close to you when he’s in his shifted form.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Semels and reahs mate for life.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, so the bond is different, it works on levels that a mating with a yareah doesn’t, that matings between regular cats don’t.”

  “Then what you’re saying is that if Logan had a yareah for a mate, I could be close to her when he’s in shifted form and he wouldn’t have a problem with that.”

  “Probably not.”

  “But you, because you’re his one true-mate, he’ll go nuts.”

  “Yes.”

  She was taking it all in. “Okay, so back to regular panthers, those cats that attacked Logan back when Domin had a tribe; they made that conscious choice to try and kill Logan.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Logan forgave them all how?”

  “Because they were following their semel at the time,” I told her. “There’s no punishment for loyalty.”

  “And the night you saved me from Markel, that’s almost two years ago now, he could have killed me and not even known because he didn’t actually know me then.”

  “Markel was a sheseru, so he’s stronger than you, he has more control. He was never going to kill you, he was trying to scare you, and he knew who you were. The target was Logan, not you.”

  “But let’s say Markel didn’t know me, he’s just out doing his thing in his territory and I came along. Would he attack and kill me then?”

  “Even if he never saw you before in his life, it’s still a decision he makes to attack you or hurt you. No panther is pure animal; we can’t be. Even when the attack is done purposely, panthers still retain their humanity.”

  “You lost me.”

  “Well, some semels, before a scheduled fight in the pit, they will have their khatyu, their fighters, shift to panther form and stay that way for the week before or for however long it is before the challenge.”

  “That makes no sense. You’d think a semel would want their khatyu to fight smart and fast, not long and bloody.”

  “You see, you think like a leader and not like a brute.”

  “God!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “See, I get why Russ hates all this bullshit. It’s crazy. I mean, it’s hard enough to live your life as a human being, but then you have to add the whole panther bullshit on top of it? H
ow do you do it?”

  “It’s different for me, like you said. I don’t have the whole animal-versus-human war going on in my head all the time. I’m just me.”

  “What is that like? You shift and you’re still you, still Jin, aware of everything, making sense of—”

  “Except when I change into my nekhene form,” I told her.

  “What?”

  I cleared my throat. “In Sobek, I changed into my nekhene form; you saw it.”

  “Yes. You saved Logan and Markel from the semel-aten’s men.”

  “In that form, I’m not me,” I confessed to her.

  “But my God, Jin, you have to either be threatened with Logan’s death or with forced separation from him to bring on that form. That’s not just something you choose or don’t choose to become. Circumstances make you into your nekhene form; it’s a purely visceral reaction.”

  And it was, but I didn’t like it.

  “What’s interesting to me about that is that the form you take changes. The first time you shifted, Logan said you looked more like an enormous werepanther, that form that only a semel or reah can be, and then another time he said you looked more like a dragon, and then when I saw you, it was like you were a cross between a scorpion and a panther, almost like a giant spider with a cat muzzle.”

  “All those forms sound horrible. I just want to be a panther or a man, nothing else.”

  “Well, you can have the panther form, I’ll just be me.”

  “If you shifted faster and it didn’t hurt, you might enjoy the freedom of being in your panther form.”

  She smiled at me. “That’s another part I don’t get, it seriously doesn’t hurt you even a little to shift?”

  “Not at all.”

  “But I’ve seen you shift, and it’s amazing. It’s like I blink and you’re a cat.”

  “We can increase the speed of your shift if you want.”

  “We can?”

  “It’s a skill just like anything else; if you practice, you’ll get faster.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Okay.”

  We were silent for several minutes, just walking together, enjoying being outside in the cool night air.

  “Jin.”

  I turned to look at her.

  “If protecting you is hardwired into Yuri specifically, then why does every sheseru want to protect you, and not just him?”

  “It’s hardwired in a sheseru to protect the mate of his semel, his yareah, but a reah, that notches up the feeling and pulls it from every sheseru that’s encountered. And in Yuri, because he is my sheseru—”

  “God, poor Yuri, he must want to sleep with you.”

  I gave her a look.

  “No, I just mean he must want to be with you and protect you all the time.”

  “Yuri’s stronger than people think, and I’m not talking about physically. He’s very disciplined mentally.”

  “Yuri’s a brute.”

  I shook my head. “He’s really not.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” She sighed heavily. “So back to these akers, where are they in hierarchy in relation to a sylvan and a sheseru?”

  “Like I said, they report to a maahes, and he, the maahes, is on the same level as a sylvan and a sheseru.”

  “So you think what? You think Russ got taken by a maahes?”

  I nodded. “Or a manu or a bakhu. I doubt the semel even knows he’s here.”

  “So, then, what’s your plan?”

  “This bistro was picked so whoever could talk to Russ. His answers, whatever they were, didn’t make them happy, and so they took him. We just need to go in there and talk to whoever approaches us.”

  She sucked in her breath. “I’m a little spooked, I have to be honest.”

  I squinted at her. “You’re with me, why would you be scared?”

  “See, this is what I don’t understand. Anybody passing through another semel’s territory must alert that semel that they’re there.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Oh God, could you just tell me?”

  I turned, and she stopped walking to look at me.

  “If you are going to spend more than a week in another’s territory, then and only then must you make that semel aware of your presence, or if you are traveling with more than two other panthers.”

  “So, like, if you were here with Logan and Yuri and Mikhail—”

  “Then we would need to call the semel of Los Angeles and ask his permission to be here.”

  “But since it’s just you and me, who cares?”

  “Right.”

  “I get it.”

  “But do you also see the problem?”

  “Well, yeah, Russ was here for months without telling the semel of LA he was here, so that’s why he’s in trouble.”

  “They probably think he’s an amenta.”

  “I’m lost again.”

  I just looked at her.

  “What?”

  “You know, really, I weep for your tribal education. Who taught all you guys?”

  “Just never mind, what the fuck is an amenta?” she snapped at me.

  “Well, it used to be that a semel would send an amenta into another’s territory to live and gather information and sometimes even join another tribe to learn all their secrets before they attacked and took over.”

  “Like a sleeper cell.”

  “I guess, sort of.”

  “And so they could, what, execute Russ as an amenta?” She giggled.

  “Yes,” I said solemnly.

  “Oh, Jin.” Her face scrunched up, and I saw the fear finally grab hold of her.

  “Honey,” I soothed her, taking her hand. “If they were going to do that, they would have to alert his family first, that’s the law, and since if anybody called the house it would forward to my phone,” I said, holding up my iPhone so she could see it, “we’re okay. They’re probably getting a hold of their maahes, and then he will contact his semel…. We have time to figure this all out.”

  “Okay.”

  “First things first, we have to make contact with the manu or the bakhu or the maahes.”

  “Okay,” she said again, calming down, “all right.”

  We started walking again.

  “But what keeps them from hurting us once we make contact with them?”

  “Love,” I said, smiling gently, “I’m a reah.”

  She took a deep breath. “I forget sometimes.”

  “Which I like.”

  She threw herself at me, and I grabbed her and hugged her tight. After a minute, we went on.

  The bistro was small and intimate, located close to the Santa Monica pier. There was seating outdoors close to some heaters, and when the waitress showed up after the hostess left, we ordered some flatbread to start and the house wine. It took only minutes for a very handsome man in a Versace suit, no tie, to show up at our table.

  “Good evening,” he greeted us. “I’m Dennis Jennings, the manager here. Welcome to Bella Mia.”

  “Thank you.” Delphine smiled at him, offering him her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  He took it, kissed it, and gave her a dazzling smile, all perfect white teeth and gleaming blue eyes. “The pleasure’s mine.”

  “I’m Delphine Kovac, and this is Jin Rayne.”

  He turned to me after reluctantly releasing Delphine’s hand.

  I offered him mine.

  The second he took it, he jolted and his hand tightened involuntarily. The smile was gone, the muscles of his jaw clenching tight instead.

  “I’m looking for Ruslan Church,” I told him, lowering my voice, narrowing my eyes as I looked up at him. “Tell me, have you seen him?”

  His eyes were huge as he stared at me, and I parted my lips, inhaling him, his scent, tasting his power or, as it turned out, lack thereof.

  “Are you the manu or the bakhu here?”

  “I—” He looked so confused. He understood I was powerful, but he also kn
ew I wasn’t a semel. He didn’t have the overwhelming feeling to submit to me, so I couldn’t be a semel. “I don’t.” He shook his head. “Who are you?”

  I released my pheromones, because he was fighting instead of answering.

  The man grabbed for the edge of the table, clutching at it to keep standing. My hand, he held onto for dear life.

  “Jin,” Delphine whimpered, her eyes, when I looked at her, heavy with need.

  Shit.

  I stood and eased the man down into the chair beside me. When I looked at him, his eyes were glassy and unfocused.

  “That was fuckin’ brilliant,” Delphine snipped at me, taking shallow in-and-out breaths.

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s because you’re missing Crane. Right now you don’t have 100 percent control over your power, and since you don’t know how strong it is to begin with….” She trailed off.

  “You’re saying I’m like some nuclear reactor or something?”

  “Yeah, an unstable one. Think about it. Back when I first met you, we could all tell you were different, but we couldn’t quite put our finger on why. The difference was noticeable but not overwhelming. Now your power sort of grabs you by the throat and shakes you.”

  “Great.”

  “And maybe this part just has to do with Logan being gone, but, sweetie, what’s pouring off you right now is like sex and candy all rolled up together.”

  I squinted at her.

  “You’re just oozing this yummy smell, and I just wanna taste,” she finished, her voice going guttural for a second as she closed her eyes and rode out whatever it was that was twisting her up inside.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my voice low and soft.