Change of Heart 05 - Forging the Future (20 page)

As werepanthers, the funeral pyre was a staple, and so was the speed with which arrangements were made after a death. The rites themselves were important, though, and had to be carried out to the letter, as was tradition.

Being burned after death ensured that your ancestors would meet you—they would see the smoke and be made aware of your passage into their realm.

A single white feather tucked into the closed fist of your right hand was to show Anubis that your heart was pure, a leftover from the Egyptian tradition.

The palm frond in your left hand signified eternal life, as it was a gift for your ancestors and shaded the faces of you and your loved ones on your journey home.

They were simple tokens from a simple time, but I saw what it meant to Irina that Logan had them there for Andrian. She kissed her mate good-bye, and then we all stepped back as Crane used a torch and set the pyre ablaze.

Danny sang a beautiful hymn, softly, sweetly, which somehow made everything more spiritual in appreciation of Andrian’s life.

I stood on Logan’s left, Irina on his right—as was tradition, the semel’s mate and the deceased’s mate, and we watched the flames engulf the body. Dmitri, as per the law, was too young to attend. It was Logan’s place to tell him the following day and present him with his father’s ceremonial dagger, that which every leader of the khatyu was given.

When the fire blazed high into the night sky, Logan excused Irina and told her to begin her mourning period. She wanted to cut her hair—it was an older tradition that some still practiced—and so Logan, who wanted to do whatever he could to help her grieve, used Andrian’s blade and sliced it all in one flick of his wrist. It went from hanging down her back to falling to her shoulders, but the act itself, the formality, sent her into hysterics.

I couldn’t imagine the pain; losing Logan was beyond my ability to comprehend. When Markel carried her into the house, Delphine promised to sit with her until she fell asleep.

Logan, Crane, Ivan, Danny, and I, and Markel when he returned, all sat outside and told stories about Andrian. I shared our first meeting and how he had said that Logan was getting old at the time, to still not have a mate at thirty-two.

Logan twisted on the step he sat on to look at me. “He thought I was thirty-two?”

I waggled my eyebrows at him.

He lifted his chin to speak to Andrian now above us in the night sky. “I was thirty-four, you idiot.”

I laughed and the others joined me.

“God, you’re old,” Ivan snickered.

Logan flipped him off and then squinted at Domin’s former sylvan. “Where’s your mate?”

Ivan shrugged. “He wants to stay here and remain in the tribe of Mafdet. That’s not an option for me.”

Leaning forward, Logan reached for Ivan, who immediately grasped his semel’s outstretched hand. “I’m sorry for your loss, Vanya, but I selfishly want you with me on my next adventure. I cannot lose anyone else I care about. It weighs too heavily.”

Ivan was visibly pleased and touched to be called by the familiar childhood name. “My parents are coming too. Wherever I’m going, they’re going as well.”

“Only child,” I teased.

“At least I have parents,” he said, shooting both Logan and I a smirk.

Crane snorted.

“What’s so funny?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

I was at a loss.

“You’re an orphan,” Crane began, enlightening me even as he chuckled. “My father’s dead, my mother disowned me years ago, and Logan has only a mother now.”

“And that’s funny to you?”

“No-no-no.” Danny snickered, and it was nice to see him smile. “Andrian was an orphan, so is his mate. Delphine’s in the same situation as Logan, Markel’s an orphan, I was disowned by my family, and Crane’s mate has no family that counts her among the living.”

“Yes, yes.” Crane lost it, laughing hard. “And fuckin’ Domin….” He turned to Logan. “Shit, does Domin have a mother? I mean, I know his father died.”

“No, he’s an orphan too,” Logan made known, snorting out a laugh.

“That’s not something to laugh about,” I assured him.

But apparently it was, because he leaned over and lost it, his laughter loud and deep and very sexy.

God, I loved him.

“None of you are orphans,” Eva proclaimed as she strode out onto the deck. “You all belong to Logan, and everyone knows the semel provides. The semel is life. Now bid Andrian a safe journey home, and all of you need to go to bed because you’re getting punchy out here.”

“Yes, Babushka,” Ivan said warmly, getting up to kiss her cheek.

She bent and kissed my forehead. “I know you’re grieving, but Delphine said as they went off and on the property tonight that no one gave them any trouble, even out at the main gate. To me that means everyone in the house was still in panther form even when they came back from Irina’s.”

I grinned up at her.

“You don’t know your own strength, angel.”

It was possible that my power was surging just a bit.

W
HEN
YOU
had a relationship with a house, you knew its sounds just as you did a lover’s. The creaks of a settling foundation, the cycle of a refrigerator, the hum of a heater or the air conditioner, all noises that could be accounted for. But when you were someplace new, and if, like me, you were a light sleeper, then floorboards squeaking in the hushed predawn hours were cause for alarm.

Despite my exhaustion—it had been after three when we all finally got to bed—my eyes still drifted open when I heard something odd, and I saw two things at once.

First, Ilia snuggled up against his father’s chest on the left, between Logan and me, and second, the enormous panther closing in on the bed.

Logan had his back to the door—he was vulnerable, and the animal was there, too close for me to shift and kill if his intent was to trade his life for my mate’s. He was already in his panther form, so I couldn’t grind him through the change, and my sleek, lithe panther form was no match for the ferocious strength I was looking at. It hit me that I couldn’t save them.

And yet… it wasn’t always supposed to be on me.

I’d been alone, and it was taking me some time to get back to where I was before I’d left, to instinctively put my safety in Logan’s hands. It was about trust and faith and not always thinking but simply reacting because I knew, in my heart and in my head, that he was there. He was my rock; I had to count on him.

All of that crossed my mind in an instant because my first impulse was to protect my mate and my son. But I wasn’t alone anymore.

“Logan!” I screamed.

The panther dove for my mate, but Logan rolled sideways in a blur of fluid motion and caught the snarling, murderous beast by the neck in his vise-like, clawed grip without even rising from the bed.

“Daddy?” Ilia asked sleepily.

“Avert his eyes, Jin,” Logan said, his voice a guttural command.

I folded Ilia close, his sweet little face pressed to the crook of my neck, and watched as Logan crushed the cat’s jugular, snapping his neck like a twig.

I did not have that kind of power in my werepanther or panther form, did not have the hair-trigger reflexes, but a semel was another matter, and people kept forgetting that. There seemed to be quite a bit of confusion over the difference.

“Yusuke!” Logan roared for his maahen, his voice booming through the house as he released the dead panther from his fist.

I couldn’t see to the other side of the floor, and so asked Logan simply, “Who?”

“Sasha,” he answered icily.

Exhaling, I reached for him, but he sprang from the bed, clad only in sleep shorts, and told me to keep hold of Ilia.

Yusuke was there in the doorway in moments, and how she did that—just came awake and ran at the sound of his voice—was beyond me. She crossed the floor quickly and stopped before him.

They were beautiful together: Her thick jet-black hair hanging heavy and straight just past her shoulders, her skin in the moonlight even more pale than usual, her face a study in fury. He stood there, every muscle in his body corded, ready to kill whatever else came for his family, and I saw both the beauty and rage in the man.

“How?” was his only word.

“I’ll check, but there’s only one way I can imagine,” she replied, “and that’s through the door from the deck, up the back stairs.”

Logan nodded.

“Crane and I are in the room at the front of the house, and you know, between the two of us, we would have heard him. There was no way he could get by.”

“Who’s sleeping in the back room?”

“Ivan,” she whispered.

“Okay,” he said soberly.

“Let me check the house. I’ll be right back.”

“No, I’ll go with you,” he snapped, head turning to me. “Stay here.”

“Yes.”

He bent, threw the lifeless naked body of Sasha Orlov over his shoulder, and followed Yusuke quickly from the room.

I gave my attention to the child stretching in my arms. “Hey,” I soothed Ilia as I leaned him back down on his pillow. “Everything’s fine, angel. Go back to sleep.”

He yawned and puffed out a breath and then fell back to sleep. That was the thing with my boy; he slept like a rock because of the shifting. Normal kids went through the change for the first time around puberty. Ilia, being half my line and half Logan’s, shifted all the time. He was the first and only werepanther cub I had ever seen.

After kissing the top of his head, I got out of bed, in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, and walked to the window. The moon was full, so the grounds were well-lit, and nothing moved outside.

“Papa?”

Turning, I heard breaking glass behind me and then, across the room, saw the glass on a picture crack.

Diving toward the bed, I grabbed Ilia and rolled to the floor, shielding him with my body as I shoved him into the corner.

Both windows exploded in machine-gun fire, wood splinters and glass flying everywhere. It was loud, and Ilia started screaming, clutching at me and yelling for Logan. I could feel his power rising and so kissed and hugged him, whispering that he was okay, and I wouldn’t let anything happen to him ever again, and that I knew it was scary, but we were going to be fine.

“Promise?” he whimpered.

“I promise, honey.”

He burrowed against my chest, and I squeezed him tight, more worried about what would happen once the shooting stopped than us getting killed in a hail of gunfire. Would men storm the house? How many were there? Without knowing the number of armed men, I wasn’t sure what the best course of action was.

In moments it was over, and in the quiet that followed, I tried to hear voices or anything that would let me know how many attackers there were.

“Jin?” Logan yelled as he barreled into the room.

I lifted a hand from the corner near the closet. “Here. We’re here.”

Bolting around the bed, he fell to his knees beside me, crushing Ilia and me as he hugged us to him.

“Is everyone okay?”

He pulled back to look at me. “They only shot up here. This is the only room they targeted.”

How would they have known which room Logan and I were in? “Did you find Ivan?”

“No, but I have Crane and Markel out looking.”

It made sense that my best friend would go instead of his wife. Even though Crane was stronger, Yusuke was far better trained. Her former mate, a master at both Jujutsu and Aikido, had ingrained the same intolerance for error in her as he had in his men. Yusuke had accepted the training as she did everything in her life, with an absolute unwavering drive for perfection, and as a result was both strong and deadly. Crane would have insisted that she stay and guard their family. It would not make her happy, though, and when Logan, Ilia, and I joined her in the living room, she was, in fact, pacing.

“Will you get away from the window,” she practically snarled at Delphine, who was looking to see if she could spot her mate.

“How many places could Vanya be?” Delphine snapped back. “And no, I won’t get away from the window—no one would dare hurt me.”

“But they would hurt the nekhene cat,” Yusuke said snidely.

They normally never took shots at each other; they were both just scared.

“What are you talking about?” Delphine asked irritably, turning to look at her and only then noticing Logan and me there with our son. “Oh, Jin, are you okay?”

She was late with her concern, but again, I understood.

“I’m fine now. Please, come away from the window. You’re carrying a child, Delphine. You have to be mindful of that.”

Grudgingly she moved to the overstuffed couch and flopped down. Seconds later Yusuke joined her, taking her hand and leaning close.

Danny came in and crossed the room to Logan. “I checked everything, and there’s no way that Russ’s new sylvan got in undetected. His scent is all over the back stairs.”

The muscles in Logan’s jaw clenched.

“What does that mean?” Delphine asked, her voice quavering.

“That means that Ivan betrayed us,” Yusuke concluded.

“No,” I said quickly. “We don’t know until we talk to him.”

“He—” Yusuke’s eyes flicked to Danny and then Ilia. “—might have done it for Koren. They’ve become close.”

“They’re fu—”

“Friends,” I cut off Danny, who was seething that fast, face red, hands clenched into fists. I felt so bad for him, because I, too, had thought that Koren had finally made a choice and took a stand. But it turned out he was his father’s man, and that meant not being gay, which meant throwing Danny away and fucking Ivan on the side.

“I gave away my title for him,” Danny whispered.

“But not your tribe,” Logan reminded him. “And you have a place in our family.”

Danny glanced at me.

I could remember now what had transpired and why I’d stripped my cousin of his title. I’d come inside into the middle of a meeting of Logan, Koren, and Peter. I could hear the yelling from outside, where I’d been with Ilia and Crane’s girls, and so had come in to see if I could help defuse whatever the situation was. Walking into the great room, I found my father-in-law and brother-in-law both pacing behind my mate, who was gazing out the large bay window, watching his son.