Honored Vow Read Free Page B

Do… you… hear… me?”
    “I do.”
    “We will be there tomorrow with Derek Jackson and his men. Do not make the mistake of having me look for Crane or you. Understood?”
    “Yes.”
    “Yes?” he hissed, his fury and hatred boiling over.
    “Yes, semel-netjer.”
    I heard Logan hang up, and then I heard something shatter. I didn’t turn around. My guess was that he had wrenched the phone out of the wall and hurled it across the room. I saw his reflection behind me in the glass seconds later, saw him heaving for breath, saw the pain in his eyes, and felt the heat rolling off of him.
    “Jin….”
    I shook my head. If I spoke I would break down, and I was not ready to do that.
    “Go,” I heard Domin say behind us to the men still kneeling on the floor.
    “Semel-netjer,” Calvin Reynolds began. “I am so—”
    “Leave us,” Yuri said, cutting him off. “We thank you for our accommodations here, and we will leave shortly.”
    There were no more words. I heard them go, and when the door was closed, a silence fell that sucked all the air out of the room.
    “I’ll call Taj from the car,” Domin said, his voice dark and low. “Let’s get home and get you all packed.”
    I turned, walked around Logan, and headed for the door. Yuri was right behind me.
    “I’ll kill them all, Jin.”
    And even though as a reah my first instinct was usually forgiveness, in this instance his words wrapped around my heart and gave me comfort.
    “I promise.”
    It was all I could ask.

Chapter Two

     
    I WAS sitting on the chaise in my bedroom. Logan had knocked out a wall and put in heavy sliding-glass doors that slid open sideways onto the covered patio. There was a fireplace outside as well as in, and the floor that had once been tile was now black-veined marble. It was beautiful. He had completed it over the summer so it would be ready for winter.
    “You’re going to freeze,” Logan said, walking around me, wrapping me in a heavy down comforter, rubbing my arms to warm me faster. He bent and inhaled my scent, pressing his nose to the side of my neck, and I turned and kissed him.
    I made slow love to his mouth, licking, sucking, biting, my tongue sliding over his, rubbing hard. I loved the taste and feel of my mate, but this, of course, had a purpose.
    He leaned back, gasping for breath, sounding drugged when he spoke. “I forbid it.”
    I shoved him away from me.
    “And that’s my final word.”
    I couldn’t breathe. Didn’t he understand? How could he not understand?
    “I will never allow you back in that city. I will never let you step foot back in the territory where they hurt you. Once upon a time, I thought it would be fine. I thought your father would come around, I thought your old tribe would see the error of their ways. But your father and Crane’s father, they spoke to the priest of Chae Rophon and told him that you were an aberration. They said that my mate should have been killed. Does it make sense to you why, knowing all the facts that I know now, I will never let you go back there?”
    I looked out at the snow.
    “You need to trust me to bring Crane home. You need to let me punish them.”
    Tears welled up in my eyes.
    “Crane’s father will fall to Yuri and yours to me, and that’s the only way it can be. There can be no mercy, the wound is too deep. I thought once that there would be nothing between our two tribes, but now I know I was wrong. There will be blood, Jin, there has to be. I see no other recourse.”
    I shivered hard as tears rolled down my cheeks.
    “I will call you when I get there and tell you what was done,” he said, moving forward again, trailing his fingers through my long hair, which ran through his hand like water. “You will wait for me and not leave. Do you hear me?”
    I nodded.
    “I know you’re furious, I can feel it rolling off of you, but I can’t do what I need to do, be what I need to be, if you’re with me and I have to protect you.”
    Anger wrapped around