Change of Heart 05 - Forging the Future Read Free

voice broken, frightened.
    “Wait!” Nazar, yanking roughly at my tie and collar, holding me immobile at the same time, snarled back.
    No one moved, because only a semel could challenge a sheseru, the enforcer of the tribe. Reaching over my shoulder, he yanked until the top buttons were ripped away, flying across the table laden with food.
    “As I thought,” he announced, wrenching my shirt down in back so that it nearly choked me in front as it pulled free from where it was tucked in my pants. “He bears a semel’s mark.”
    Instantly he released me, and I heard others gasp as I pivoted around to face the room. The sheseru, the man who’d just had his hands all over me, was on his knees in front of me.
    I couldn’t control the shiver that ran through my body. The manhandling was terrifying, and I wanted to run. Not just out of the restaurant, but all the way out of the territory that this sheseru called home. Swallowing fast, trying to coach my stomach from spasming, I breathed through my nose to try and settle down.
    “My ray-ah,” he breathed. “Forgive me for touching you without permission, but I had to be sure and my instincts were—hard to control.”
    I had no idea what he was talking about. Eliza had not gone over ray-ahs—whatever he was saying. “How—” I began. “—can you tell?”
    His gaze was locked on my face, and in his eyes I saw… devotion? “A sheseru would always know a ray-ah. We are enforcers of the tribe, yes, but all sheserus are first the protector of the true-mates, or ray-ahs. When we are made, it becomes instinctual.”
    “How?”
    He smiled at me and shrugged. “How does a semel know his ray-ah? How do we know how to shift the first time? It’s instinctual.”
    I cleared my throat. “Do I have a scent to you?”
    “No, and I’m thankful for that. I suspect if you did, I would be fighting every man in this room to keep you safe.”
    “And you would do that?”
    “I would do anything to keep you safe, my ray-ah.”
    “You would not fight your semel,” Catherine snapped.
    He turned away from me with some difficulty, still not rising, but giving her his attention. “All other duties are second to the protection of the true-mate of the semel.”
    “But he’s not your semel’s ray-ah, so it shouldn’t—”
    “Stop,” Alaine commanded, taking hold of his sheseru’s shoulder and squeezing gently. “I’m pleased that you know the law so well, Nazar.”
    It was easy to see the two men had a strong friendship and a tight bond, and while I was charmed, I could also see the semel was worried.
    “A male ray-ah, though?” he asked Nazar. “I heard about one, years ago at the Feast of the Valley, but I thought it was just a silly story. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”
    “No, I haven’t, but you saw that mark. Nothing else explains that.”
    “Yes. As soon as you showed it to me, I knew exactly what it was. No mistake there,” Alaine said crossly, taking a tentative step closer, reaching out a hand to me. “But a true-mate who’s a man is—”
    “An abomination,” Catherine spat, intercepting his hand, stopping him.
    He turned to her.
    “I meant to say mutation,” she quickly amended.
    “Catherine,” he began. “You have—”
    “I don’t want you to touch him,” she said harshly, her voice brittle. “He may not be that ray-ah, may not be truly mated. I would not be taurth if this man, this person, is in fact your true-mate.”
    It was unnerving being in the same room with them while they talked about me as though I weren’t. Alaine was appalled, Catherine was disgusted, and I was just supposed to stand there acting like them discussing how revolting the idea of having me in their tribe didn’t hurt.
    He inhaled deeply. “I can’t even catch his scent. There’s no possible way he’s anything to me. I would know a true-mate on sight, and I would definitely know his smell. He’s not my mate, my yareah. You’re in no danger.”
    But she