Change of Heart 05 - Forging the Future Read Online Free

members of his khatyu—guards—were outside the restaurant, waiting to pick me up.
    “I already told you that I—”
    “Jim,” Alaine said loudly, drowning out my words. “Please get in the car so we can drive you home. I have a phone for you, as I know you don’t have one, but I want to be able to get in contact with you if your semel reaches out to me.”
    “I like walking home alone,” I explained, because it was always nice, peaceful, distracting me from all the things I had no control over. The French Quarter absolutely thrummed with history, and I liked listening to the stories when I passed by the ghost tours and reading the plaques on the sides of the buildings and just marveling at the gorgeous architecture everywhere I turned.
    “I’m sure you love strolling through the Quarter at night,” Luther informed me. “So do I. But your safety is now in our hands. We’re responsible for you until your mate arrives here.”
    There were rules for everything, apparently, and another semel’s mate in your territory was not something that could be ignored.
    “You must understand that for my semel to lose you, accidentally let you be injured, or to allow any lapse in security, would open the door for your semel to call for his death.”
    I did not know that. “I understand.”
    “So please, allow us to accompany you home.”
    I had no choice but to agree.
    Inside the Lincoln Navigator, I noticed how coldly Catherine was regarding me and so settled my attention on the sheseru, Nazar, instead.
    “You have a question, my reah?”
    I smiled despite my fears. “Your reah?”
    His eyes warmed. “I cannot seem to make myself address you in any other way. All sheserus are the enforcers of their tribes, but the bond between a reah and a sheseru supersedes that. Even if I were not a sheseru, if my semel did not choose me, I would have still known what you are. As you are a reah born, I come from a long line of sheserus, and therefore have the senses of one. I knew what you were immediately.”
    “May I ask, Nazar, how you knew I was a reah?”
    “As I said, I sensed it,” he replied. “I don’t know how to explain because you don’t smell like anything at all.”
    “I know.”
    “May I ask how you’re doing that?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “Maybe it’s connected to your memory,” he offered.
    “It could very well be.”
    It was really the only thing that explained my lack of scent.
    “So would you like to shift and run with us on Saturday night?” Nazar asked. “That’s when we normally go.”
    “I work weekends,” I told him.
    “You should shift,” Luther cautioned. “You know that if you don’t, after a while, your body starts to ache with the need.”
    I didn’t know that. I’d asked Eliza about shifting, and she’d explained. I’d lied to the semel: I had shifted and run through the Quarter, sticking to the shadows in the early hours before dawn. It was never truly quiet, but I was fast and had stuck mostly to the rooftops when possible. And if I was spotted, hopefully the drunks would think they were seeing things, and others would go with me being a ghost or spirit. Because really, what else would a black panther in the French Quarter be?
    “I’ll shift as soon as I have a night off,” I assured him. “And perhaps you or your sheseru would show me the safe places to run.”
    “I have land out in the bayou,” the semel said, taking his yareah’s hand. “Luther or Nazar can accompany you there with some of my khatyu, when you’re able.”
    “Thank you,” I said, tired suddenly, just wanting to be alone in my apartment even though, after three months, it still didn’t feel like home. I had been waiting for it to magically feel that way, like the one place in the world where you were always relieved to find yourself. Lately I had been starting to think that it was people who made a home, not places or the things there. So what I needed was my people. I needed to find them even