Honored Vow

reah
    is—”
    “Never, ever concern yourself with my reah,” he said, his voice
    going from cold to warning in seconds.
    “But we request the presence of your reah.”
    “Your request is denied.”
    I would have said something, because I wanted, needed, to go, but if
    Logan forbade it, I could never protest… at least in public. He was going
    to get an earful when we were alone.
    “My sylvan wants to see his son, as does his mate, your reah’s
    mother.”
    My mother no more wanted to see me than my father did. It was
    crap.

    Honored Vow

    11

    “My reah will not step foot into your territory, and that is my final
    word. Now I will speak to Crane Adams, or you will prepare yourself for a
    challenge in the pit.”
    I heard him suck in his breath. Everyone had seen Logan fight in the
    pit the previous summer. All the leaders of the werepanther tribes traveled
    to Sobek, between Giza and Cairo, in Egypt, once a year for the feast of
    the valley. At the last feast, Logan had killed the semel of the tribe of
    Dendera because he had kidnapped and tortured me. In the pit, everyone
    had seen his size and seen how very lethal he was. The idea of a one-on-
    one challenge could not have been appealing to Archer Pike in any way.
    “I cannot grant your request, Logan Church, for Crane Adams is not
    conscious at this moment. Before I was present at his inquisition, he was
    scourged by my sheseru.”
    I had to grab for the back of the couch as the room tilted sharply to
    the left. A wave of nausea hit me, and I started to shake.
    Crane.
    They had tortured my best friend, and I hadn’t been there to stop it.
    “He was scourged,” Logan said like he was confused.
    “Yes.”
    There was no air in the room; my chest was in a vise as my eyes
    filled with tears. I bit the inside of my left cheek so I would not make a
    sound.
    He had been tortured and then disfigured. To be scourged meant you
    were cut into with a blade, your blood was spilled, and in some way, your
    body was mutilated. It was different from being marked as apophi ,
    disgrace to your tribe. When a semel marked one of his cats, scarring them
    or taking an eye, it was done fast, never meant as a killing stroke but as a
    testament, carved in flesh, of a failing. It was done at a tribe gathering or
    during a challenge in the pit with everyone there as witness.
    Scourging a cat was what a group of panthers of one tribe did to
    another that trespassed on their land without permission. Scourging was
    normally done at the end of a hunt and was led by the sheseru. The first
    night I had met Delphine, the sister of my mate, she had been alone on
    another panther’s land. She could have been scourged had Crane and I not
    interfered and if Markel, Domin’s sheseru at the time, had wanted to do
    anything more than scare her. A cat who was scourged could, or could not,

    12

    Mary Calmes

    be expected to live based on the level of punishment that the enforcer of
    the tribe chose to inflict. Pain was a precursor to being maimed and, in
    some tribes, defiled as well. There was no way to know what my best
    friend had been forced to endure without asking. The fact that his own
    father had disfigured him, allowed others to hold him down and torture
    him, hurt him, make him bleed, was beyond my understanding. There was
    no way I could not go now. None.
    I turned and walked to the window, looking out at the Las Vegas
    strip.
    “Semel,” Logan said, his voice low and edged in ice, “I have
    changed my mind.”
    “About bringing your reah?”
    “About bringing my sheseru,” he told him. “I will bring Yuri Kosa
    with me, and when I arrive, your sheseru will meet mine in the pit, and it
    will be a fight to the death.”
    “You cannot demand—”
    “I do demand!” Logan roared at him. “And I will contact the priest
    tonight and have Shu warriors there to witness it!”
    “I—”
    “He’s dead! By my sheseru’s hand or by that of the priest, he is
    dead!”
    “Yes,” he said breathlessly.
    “What made you think that you could touch the beset of my reah?
    Mine! I am not a friend, semel; we have no covenant bond between us!”
    “I—”
    “I am semel-netjer!”
    Even over the phone, not even standing face to face, Logan’s fury
    terrified Archer Pike. His whimper came over the line.
    “You will give me the names of any man who helped the sheseru
    maim the beset of my reah.”
    Maim .
    The word conjured too many horrors to think about.
    “Did you hear