Honored Vow Read Online Free PDF

think that with my pain alone, I could transform an entire room of people into panthers.
    But pain was not the only reason people shifted. There was passion as well, lust, and desire. Apparently my scent, when I was throbbing with my nekhene power, was intoxicating, and there was no way to tell what the trigger would be or to gauge my response. It terrified Logan. The priest, who was continuing to dig but finding scarce little in the way of information on nekhene cats, said that the most important thing we could do now, from what he had read, was to show the nekhene the bond between myself and my semel.
    The only reason I had been able to contain myself at the morgue and not let my power run out of me was Logan. If he was there, right there with me, hands on my skin, the nekhene was contained. The reah that I was first was Logan’s mate, so the nekhene responded to the familiarity of the bond. But if he was not close enough to touch me, kiss me, maul me, the wild creature that my body housed got restless when it was hurt or frightened or threatened.
    The priest had told me before I left Sobek that some of the ancient texts spoke of the nekhene as not a kind of cat at all but instead as an inherited power. But I knew the truth; it was simply a mutation of speed and size. And yet, in all shifts I had ever seen before mine, basic composition did not change, only musculature shifted. But now, for me, I morphed into something else altogether. It made sense, then, that the nekhene was power and not simply biology. And yet how could that be? Shifting wasn’t magic, so nekhene power had to be the same, something that could be explained logically.
    I told myself about logic and reason and science every single day, and every single day it made less sense. My skin, sometimes, was all that kept me from flying into a million pieces.
    “Jin.”
    And when I didn’t feel like me, I lost myself just a little.
    “Please, Jin,” I heard Yuri whisper from where he sat beside me. “Please try and breathe. Please calm down.”
    I had trouble focusing past whatever it was that had coaxed the nekhene power from me.
    “Jin!”
    My name, yelled, finally brought me from my thoughts at the same time I realized that my heart was pounding in my ears and I was breathless.
    “You’re making me sick,” Mikhail growled from across the room. “Please, Jin, please breathe.”
    I got up and walked to the picture window and stood there, my forehead pressed to the cold glass.
    “What’s going—oh,” Delphine gasped behind me. “I think I’m gonna shift.”
    There was shuffling in the room. I heard the front door lock open, the door hitting the wall with a bang, and then Yuri’s roar for his semel.
    There were others close by; I was aware of them, but my eyes were closed as the ache swelled inside, got bigger and suffocating, and the pain overtook me.
    “What’s—Jin,” I heard Logan say my name, felt him closing on me.
    “Logan,” Taj said from somewhere close. “Do something. I feel like I’m going to claw my way out of my own skin.”
    “I—” Mikhail gagged. “I’m going to shift right here. I can feel it.”
    “Logan,” Yuri panted, and I could hear his fist slowly pounding on the wall. “Please, I can’t… I’m gonna shift too.”
    “Jin!”
    When I felt Logan’s hand in my hair, I tried to lean away, but he was stronger and so grabbed me and held tight, not allowing any movement.
    “Stop,” he ordered sharply. “You think if I touch you, you’re gonna break. You won’t.”
    I didn’t turn to look at him.
    He yanked hard, cocking my head back at the same time his other hand wrapped around my throat. His mouth was at my ear. “You will submit to me because I’m stronger than you.”
    I took a deep, shuddering breath and felt something deep inside deciding. I could even imagine the gentle swish of a cat’s tail like a pendulum, thinking… thinking….
    “You’re mine, and all your pain is mine too. Trust me