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, grinning at me, arms crossed over his chest. The look on his face was enough.
"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 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.
I stood there with the taste of Nathaniel's skin in my mouth and did what Raina had never done: I gave comfort.
I raised Nathaniel's head gently until I could cradle his face between my hands. I kissed his forehead, I kissed the salty taste of tears from his cheeks.
He fell against me with a sob, arms locked around my legs, pressed against me. There was a moment when Raina tried to flare to life as Nathaniel's groin pressed against my bare legs.
I reached out to Richard, drawing on the mark between us. His power came to my call like a warm brush of fur. It helped chase away that awful, stinging presence.
I offered my hands to the other leopards. They pressed their faces to my skin, chin marking me like cats, licking me as if I were a kitten. I stood there with the three wereleopards pressed to me, borrowing Richard's power to keep Raina at bay. But it was more than that. Richard's power filled me, washed through me into the leopards.
I was like the wood in the center of a fire. Richard was the flame, and the wereleopards warmed themselves against that heat. They took it into themselves, bathed in it, wrapped it around themselves like a promise.
Standing there, caught between Richard's power, the wereleopards' needs, and that awful touch of Raina, like some foul perfume, I prayed: Dear God, don't let me fail them.