Jacinth laughed, the sound like bells chiming. Really, the Djinn was fascinating. Naomi had a hard time taking her eyes off her.
“Yes, my mother. She babysits for us sometimes… although not so much, now that Talya has come to live with us.”
The pizzas arrived just then, and conversation stalled as the pizza boxes were laid out in the dining room and everyone loaded their plates.
Naomi was into her third slice before she gathered the nerve to ask the question that had been burning in her mind since she’d met these people on the lawn of the inn the day before.
“Why don’t you hate me?” She blurted out, looking from Jacinth to Katerina. “Beatrice is my aunt, and she tried to kill you.”
Katerina shook her head, her tousled hair flying about her piquant face. Jacinth, however, leaned forward to take Naomi’s hand in a warm clasp.
“Youdidn’t try to kill anyone.Shedid.”
“Yes, but…”
“Yes, but, nothing,” Jacinth said firmly. “What she did is not on you. Liam told us you didn’t know she’d come up here, to New York.”
“No, I had no idea she wasn’t still in Miami. I left and came up to Manhattan to get away from them, especially Beatrice. She hated me even more than my mother and sisters did.”
“Besides,” Katerina put in, setting aside her slice of pizza to enter the conversation. “If it hadn’t been for Beatrice, I’d never have met Troy. At least, I’d have met him since he’s in practice with Douglas, but we might not have gotten to know each other well enough for him to become my Chosen.”
“We would have,” Troy assured her, his voice carrying the weight of conviction. He leaned over to kiss her lips lightly. “I took one look at you at that dinner party, and fell like a ton of bricks.”
And that was another thing. “What is a Chosen?”
Her words caused a sudden silence.
“They didn’t even teach you that?” Liam asked in amazement. “I can understand—in a way—them not wanting you to know about the Council or our laws…” he broke off, shaking his head. “Un-freaking-believable.”
“Your Chosen is your mate,” Katerina told her. “That one person you want to spend your life with above all others.” She smiled, looking around, and extending her hand to Troy. He took her hand, and pulled her off her chair so that she landed in his lap with a laugh.
“Your Chosen can be anyone,” Jacinth told her. “Human, Djinn, shifter…”
“Anyshifter,” Katerina said with a sudden frown. Looking around, Naomi could see flashes of anger and consternation on their faces.
“There’s a story there?”
Liam growled in his throat. “There is indeed. There was a group of male caracals that were all about pure lines. They imprisoned the females, and forced them to breed.”
At Naomi’s gasp, Jacinth nodded, her eyes flashing angrily. “It’s even worse than that. They kidnapped one of our people… Tamera, a receptionist at the clinic, and Kester’s Chosen… and took her to Morocco.”
“Just like you’d think of any kind of separatist or nationalist group,” Katerina said in disgust. “With a walled compound and iron bars on the windows where the women were forced to live.”
“I went with Tamera, in my Djinn form,” Jacinth told Naomi. “I was able to find her after they took her, and I stayed with her. The women weren’t allowed to go to school, and they were accompanied by the men any time they left the compound.”
“And they had to leave their children behind when they did go out, just in case they thought of escaping,” nodded Katerina, taking up the tale. “But that’s not the worst… the culling…” she shivered, and Troy’s arms tightened around her.
“Culling?” Naomi frowned, not understanding.
“Because there were so few women, every year at high summer the compound leaders would decide which of the boys were not considered worthy… worthy! … of beingallowedto breed. They were taken away in the night, and driven out into the desert and left there to die of exposure.”
Naomi gaped at her, speechless. Katerina nodded, her lips tightening, eyes flashing in anger.
“I recounted everything that was happening to another Djinn,” Jacinth said, “and a rescue group was put together of us here, since Tamera was one of ours, as well as the North African Shifter Council, who was totally unaware of what was going on. We got all the women and children out. Most of them came here, some to London, and one to Egypt.”
“What happened to the men?”
“I’m not sure, at least, not specifics, other than that they were captured,” Katerina admitted, looking toward Liam. “Do you know?”
