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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 ha**ng s*x 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 leoparde lionne, one that protects, before they promoted me to Nimir-ra."
"We called Gabriel leopard lionne," Zane said, "because he was all we knew, but the wolves were right, he was a lion passant."
"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.
"I won't let anyone else hurt you, Nathaniel," I said.
A single tear slid down his face. "I'm so tired of not belonging to anyone, Anita. So tired of being anyone's meat that wanted me. So tired of being scared."
"You don't have to be scared anymore, Nathaniel. If it's within my power to keep you safe, I will."
"I belong to you now?"
I didn't like the phrasing, but watching him cry, one crystalline tear at a time, I knew that now wasn't the time to quibble over semantics. I hoped I wasn't signing up for more up-close-and-personal care than I wanted, but I nodded. "Yes, Nathaniel, you belong to me." Words alone rarely impressed shapeshifters. It was like part of them didn't understand words.
I held out my hand to him. "Come, Nathaniel, come to me."
He crawled to me, not in that wild, muscular grace, but head down, crying, face hidden by his hair. He was sobbing full out by the time he reached me. He held one hand up to me blind, not looking at me.
Zane and Cherry had moved to either side, letting him come close to me.
I took Nathaniel's hand and wondered what to do with it. Shaking it wasn't enough, kissing it seemed wrong. I racked my brain for anything on leopards and just blanked. The one thing that the leopards did most often was lick each other. I couldn't think of anything else.
I raised Nathaniel's hand to my mouth, bending over to press my mouth to the back of his hand. I licked his skin, one quick movement, and the taste of him was familiar. I knew in that moment that Raina had licked this skin, ran lips, tongue, teeth, down this body.
The munin welled up inside of me, and I fought it. The munin wanted to bite his hand, to draw blood and lap it like a cat with cream. The imagery was too repulsive to me. My own horror helped me chase Raina away. I pushed her down inside me and realized that she never really left me anymore. That was why she came so quickly and so easily. I felt her hiding inside me like a cancer waiting to spread.
