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I looked away, blushing. I turned my back on all of them, arms hugging my sides.
Someone touched my shoulder. I flinched.
"It's me, Anita," Jason said.
I shook my head.
He hugged me from behind, arms very carefully across my shoulders and no lower. "I'm not sorry you killed them, Anita. I'm just sorry you didn't kill Barnaby."
"Someone else is going to pay for my bravado, Jason. Like Mira last night. I do things, say things, around you guys, and it all goes wrong."
Zane moved around in front of me. I stared up at him with Jason's arms still around my shoulders like a bulky necklace. Zane's brown eyes were as serious as I'd seen them on this trip.
He reached out to touch my face, and only Jason's arms tightening ever so slightly kept me from backing away or saying, "Don't." Touching didn't mean the same thing to lycanthropes as it did to the rest of American society. I would say human , but there were a lot of countries that were more into casual touching than ours.
Zane's fingers trailed down my cheek while he studied my face, frowning. "Gabriel was our whole world. He and Elizabeth made us, chose us. As bad as you think he was, Gabriel saved most of us. I was a junkie, but he didn't allow drugs in his pard."
He leaned into me, sniffing along my skin, rubbing his cheek so that I could feel the fine stubble along his jaw. "Nathaniel was a street whore. Gabriel pimped him out but not to just anybody, not to everybody."
Cherry was on her knees. She took my hand, rubbing her face against my skin like a cat scent-marking. "I lost a leg in a hit-and-run accident. Gabriel offered me my leg back. He cut it off above the stump, and when I shifted, the leg grew back."
Zane laid a gentle kiss on my forehead. "He did care for us in his own, twisted way."
"But he never risked his life for us," Cherry said. She started licking my hand, again for all the world like a cat. She stopped licking me seconds before I told her to stop. Maybe she sensed my tension. "You risked your life to save Nathaniel. You risked the lives of your vampires for him."
Zane cradled my face in his hands, leaning back so he could see my face. "You love Asher. Why would you risk him for Nathaniel?"
I drew back gently from their hands until I was standing alone near the door. I wasn't going to make a break for it, I just needed some room.
Nathaniel crouched in the middle of the room. He was the only one who hadn't touched me.
"I don't love Asher," I said.
"We can smell your desire for him," Zane said.
Oh, great. "I didn't say I didn't think he was cute. I said I didn't love him." My eyes slid to the coffin. I knew he couldn't hear me, but …
Jason was leaning against the wall, gri
"I don't love him."
Cherry and Zane stared at me, wearing almost identical expressions, neither of which I could read. "You care for him," Cherry said.
I thought about that, then nodded. "Okay, I care for him."
"Why would you risk him for Nathaniel?" she asked. She was still on her knees. She went to all fours as she spoke. Her breasts hung down, moving as she crawled towards me. I'd never had a naked woman crawl towards me, ever. Naked men, but not naked women. It bothered me. Homophobic? Who me?
"Nathaniel is mine to protect. I'm his Nimir-ra, right?"
Cherry kept crawling towards me. Zane had dropped to all fours and was joining her. Muscles moved under the skin of their shoulders, their arms, muscles that shouldn't have been there. They moved forward in a wave of grace and muscled potential, like violence contained inside skin. Except for Nathaniel. He stayed crouched and immobile, as if waiting for some signal.
I looked past the oncoming wereleopards to Jason. "What's going on?"
"They want to understand you."
"There's nothing to understand," I said. "Colin hurt Nathaniel because he could, like you'd abuse a dog you didn't like. No one abuses my friends. It's not allowed."
Cherry had waited for Zane so that they moved in tandem towards me, a nearly matched pair. They were almost to me, almost within touching range, and I didn't want them to touch me. Something was going on, and I didn't like it.
"Nathaniel isn't your friend," Jason said. "It wasn't friendship that made you risk Asher."
I frowned at him. "Stop helping me."
Zane and Cherry looked up at me, and I think they would have touched me but weren't sure of their welcome. "Gabriel said he cared for us," Zane said, "but he risked nothing. He sacrificed nothing." He raised up on his knees, close enough that his otherworldly energy pressed like a warm wind against my bare legs. "You risked your life for one of us last night. Why?"
Cherry raised up on her knees, and again it was like an echo. Their power pressed against me like a great, warm hand. Their intensity, their need, filled their eyes. And I realized for the first time that it wasn't just Nathaniel that was needy. It was all of them. They had no home, no love, no care.
"It wasn't friendship," Zane said. "The wolf is right."
"You aren't having sex with Nathaniel," Cherry said.
I stared at them, at those eager faces. "Sometimes you do things just because it's the right thing to do," I said.
"You risked Asher and Damian, then you risked yourself," Zane said. "Why? Why?"
"Why did you protect me last night?" Jason asked. "Why did you stand between me and Barnaby?"
"You're my friend," I said.
Jason smiled. "Now, I am, but that wasn't why you protected me. You'd have done the same for Zane."
I frowned at Jason. "What do you want me to say, Jason?"
"The real reason why you protected me. The same reason you risked so much for Nathaniel. Not friendship, or sex, or love."
"Then why?" I asked.
"You know the answer, Anita."
I looked from him to the two kneeling wereleopards. I hated putting it into words, but Jason was right. "Nathaniel is mine now. He's on the list of people that I'll protect. He's mine, and no one can hurt him without answering to me. Jason's mine. You're all mine, and no one hurts what's mine. It's not allowed."
It sounded so arrogant saying it out loud. It sounded medieval, but it was still true. Some things just are true; you don't have to voice them, they just are. And somewhere along the way, I'd started collecting people. My people. It used to mean friends, but lately, it meant more than that, or less. It meant people like Nathaniel. We certainly weren't friends, but he was mine, just the same.
Staring down into Zane and Cherry's faces, it was like I could see all the disappointments, the small betrayals, the selfishness, the pettiness, the cruelty. I watched it fill their eyes. They'd seen so much of it that they simply couldn't understand kindness or honor; or worse, they just didn't trust it.
"If you mean that," Zane said, "we're yours. You can have all of us."
"Have?" I made it a question.
"They mean sex," Jason said. He wasn't smiling now. I wasn't sure why. He'd been enjoying the show a moment before.
"I don't want to have sex with either of you, any of you," I added hastily. Didn't want to have any misunderstandings.
"Please," Cherry said, "please choose one of us."
I looked at them. "Why do you want me to have sex with one of you?"
"You love some of the wolves," Zane said. "You feel true friendship for them. You feel none of that for us."
"But you feel lust," Cherry said. "Nathaniel disturbs you because you find him attractive."
That cut a little too close to home. "Look, guys, I don't sleep with people just because I find them attractive."
"Why not?" Zane asked.
I sighed. "I don't do casual sex. If you don't understand that, I'm not sure I can explain it to you."
"How can we trust you if you don't want anything from us?" Cherry said.
I didn't have an answer for that one. I looked at Jason. "Can you help me out here?"
He pushed away from the wall. "I think so, but you may not like it."
"Explain," I said.
"The problem is that they've never really had a Nimir-ra, not for real. Gabriel was an alpha, and he was powerful, but he wasn't a Nimir-raj, either."
"One of the werewolves described Gabriel as a lion passant , a passive leopard, one that had power but didn't protect," I said. "The pard called me a lйoparde lio
"We called Gabriel lйopard lio
"Great," I said, "so it's settled."
"No," Cherry said. "If Gabriel taught us anything, it was that you can't trust anyone unless they want something from you. You don't have to love us, but pick one of us for a lover."
I shook my head. "No. I mean thanks for the invitation, but no thanks."
"Then how can we trust you?" Cherry asked, voice almost a whisper.
"You can trust her," Jason said. "It's Gabriel that you couldn't trust. He's the one that convinced you that sex was so damned important. Anita isn't even sleeping with our Ulfric, but Zane saw her last night. He saw what she did to protect me."
"She did it to protect her vampire. The one she cares for," Zane said.
"I don't feel for Damian the way I feel for Asher, but I risked my life for him last night," I said.
The leopards frowned up at me. "I know," Zane said, "and I don't understand that. Why didn't you let him die?"
"I'd asked him to risk his life to save Nathaniel. I try never to ask of others what I'm not willing to do myself. If Damian was willing to risk his life, then I couldn't do less."
The leopards were lost. It showed in their faces, the tension that flowed through their power, as it breathed along my skin.
"Am I yours?" Nathaniel asked. His voice sounded small and lost.
I looked past the others to him. He was still crouched, huddled in the middle of the floor. He was huddled in around himself. His long, long hair had spilled around him, across his face. His flower-petal eyes stared out at me through that curtain of hair, like he was staring out through fur. I'd seen other lycanthropes that did that, hid behind their hair, and stared. Crouched there, he was suddenly feral and vaguely unreal. He brushed the hair back from one side, revealing a line of arm and chest. His face was suddenly young, open, and raw with need.