Free Honored Vow by Mary Calmes

but unsure what that could possibly be.
    “I was so honored to meet you,” he told me, his voice low. “And now I can barely stand to look at you.”
    I thought I might be sick myself.
     
     
    B ACK at the hotel after leaving the restaurant, I realized that the experience had proven to be too much for Delphine. She wasn’t mad, she said she wasn’t a thousand times, but she wouldn’t look at me. She apologized as she packed and took deep breaths and sniffled. There was a lot of sniffling, a lot of her blowing her nose and shivering. I tried to touch her, but that was out of the question. I was making her skin crawl. She didn’t want a hug goodbye; she wanted nothing to do with me at all. She just needed to go home and see Markel. Her thoughts were only of him.
    “I’m so sorry,” I told her as she was at the door, a cab downstairs waiting for her.
    “It’s not your fault,” she said, again without looking at me. “You just—it’s Crane, I know, but you took away choices from me, and it’s like… it felt like… like….”
    And she didn’t want to say, so she stopped herself. She didn’t want to say I had violated her, raped her, but it was how she felt. I had made her feel powerless, done it to all of them, and the only person who could have stopped it once it started was myself—or Logan. I had power but no control, and I was dangerous.
    “Please forgive me,” I said to her, moving slowly closer to her.
    “I have already,” she told me, her eyes finally flicking to mine, the green eyes she shared with all her brothers except my mate staring back at me, hers being the softest color, celadon. “It’s not in you to hurt anyone on purpose, and while I know that, it was brutal. I felt like I was being turned inside out, and even though I don’t hurt anymore, it was terrifying.”
    I had scared my girl.
    I was a monster.
    “I want to see Markel.”
    She must have said it a hundred times, and all I could do was nod like an idiot.
    “I should send Artem here, and Ivan, or—”
    “No, don’t do that,” I told her. “Just leave it—”
    “Fine,” she said, cutting me off, opening the door. “You know best. Bye.”
    She was gone that fast, and I let the wave of guilt come and flood me. My self-destructive streak that I could own having, sometimes it not only tried to drown me but everybody else as well. I needed to be more focused on what I was really doing. I sat down on the end of the bed, put my head in my hands, and tried to calm my racing heart. When my phone rang an hour later, I realized that I had not moved, and answered without checking to see who it was.
    “Hello?”
    “Where are you?”
    I cleared my throat to speak to my mate. “You know where I am.”
    “I gave explicit orders that you not leave the grounds.”
    “Russ was kidnapped.”
    “Taken, held, not kidnapped. I received word from Miguel Garza, the semel of Los Angeles, and Justin was on his way to negotiate Russ’s release and to determine if my brother would come and present his girlfriend to me or would accept the station of duat.”
    Of course my entire trip was useless, and it was my fault because I was mad and so had leaped before looking, as I always did.
    “How’s Crane?”
    “No. You don’t get to ask about Crane because now you have—”
    “Logan, tell me about Crane!” I shouted, my voice a rasp as the tears blurred my vision.
    “Crane is home! I’m home! You’re the only fucking one who’s not home because you’re a petulant child who doesn’t ever listen to anyone but himself! I’m the law in this tribe, Jin, not you, for this very reason. A reah is emotion, a semel is logic, and we see before us a clear example of this. You are not allowed to treat my orders like suggestions! You listen to me, and if you can’t, I’ll make you. Do you understand?!”
    I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even speak.
    “If you were here, you could see Crane. If you were where you were supposed to be, you